Apologia Pro Marcel Lefebvre vs Vatican II’s “Dignitatis Humanae” (Religious Liberty)
The Church Tolerates Error But Does Not Give It RightsArchbishop Marcel Lefebvre, a French bishop and founder of the Society of Saint Pius X (SSPX), was a prominent critic of certain aspects of the Second Vatican Council (Vatican II), particularly its 1965 declaration “Dignitatis Humanae” on religious liberty. He argued that this document marked a rupture with traditional Catholic teaching, which permitted only conditional “tolerance” of non-Catholic religions in a Catholic State (ex. to avoid greater evils like civil unrest) rather than affirming an inherent human right to religious freedom. In Lefebvre's view, Vatican II's approach equated truth with error, promoted indifferentism (the idea that all religions are equally valid paths to salvation), religious syncretism (pan-religious union) and undermined the Catholic confessional state’s duty to uphold, promote, and defend Catholicism as the one true religion, and to offer Catholic worship only in public .
Key Reasons for His Objections
1. Contradiction with Pre-Vatican II Papal Teachings on Liberty of Conscience and on Religious Indifferentism
Archbishop Lefebvre contended that Vatican II’s “Dignitatis Humanae” reversed longstanding condemnations of religious liberty as a natural right. For instance, he cited Pope Gregory XVI's 1832 encyclical “Mirari Vos”, which denounced religious indifferentism—the belief that salvation can be achieved through any faith or religion—and labeled unrestricted liberty of conscience as "absurd and erroneous" or even "insanity." Similarly, Pope Pius IX's 1864 encyclical “Quanta Cura” and accompanying “Syllabus of Errors” infallibly condemned the notion that "freedom of conscience and of worship is a right of each and every sort of man, which should be proclaimed by law," teaching that it leads to moral corruption and that States must distinguish between true (Catholic) and false religions, repressing the latter where possible except for when public order is endangered, when false religions might be tolerated privately, or even publicly but only temporarily. Archbishop Lefebvre gravely questioned Vatican II's assertion of a right to religious freedom, free from coercion, as that teaching seemingly directly opposed the infallible traditional social teaching of the papal magisterium, specifically regarding the non-existence of subjective human rights, the non-existence of a human right to adhere to error, religious freedom, religious indifferentism, and pan-religious syncretism, which infallibly taught that error (non-Catholic religions, and beliefs) has no inherent rights.
2. The Catholic State's Obligation to the True Religion vs. Secular Indifference
Traditional doctrine, as articulated by Pope Leo XIII in encyclicals like ”Immortale Dei” (1885) and “Libertas” (1888), held that the state, as a perfect society under Christ's social kingship, must recognize and protect Catholicism as the sole true religion, favoring it through laws while tolerating other faiths only to prevent greater harm or achieve a higher good. Lefebvre argued (dubitum) that “Dignitatis Humanae” seemingly promoted state indifferentism by treating the Church as just one association among others in civil society, without affirming the Catholic state's subordination (indirectly) to the Church's spiritual authority, both having been established by God to help us attain salvation. He considered this apparent contradiction as scandalous, as, in a Catholic State, it allowed and promoted the public manifestation of error (ex. non-Catholic worship) on equal footing with public Catholic worship, thus, effectively it destroyed the Catholic faith by depriving Catholic legislators of tools to protect Catholic souls in their own Catholic State, leading to secularism, religious indifferentism, the corruption of Catholic moral doctrine, and the erosion, and eventual potential destruction of Catholic societies globally.
3. Secular “Human Dignity” and “Human Rights” of the French Revolution vs the Loss of Human Dignity and Human Rights through Original Sin
Archbishop Lefebvre interpreted ”Dignitatis Humanae”’s grounding of religious liberty in secular “human dignity” and secular “human rights” as flawed, distinguishing between "ontological dignity" (inherent to being, yet damaged by original sin through the loss of original justice, or sanctifying grace) and "operative dignity" (dependent on adherence to objective truth and objective goodness). Adam and Eve, created in the state of original justice, possessed “objective human dignity” and “objective human rights,” both a gift from God, but lost those gifts when Adam committed his original sin. Objective dignity and objective rights ceased to exist after the loss of Original Justice by Adam and Eve. Secular subjective human dignity and secular subjective human rights are, therefore, a fiction invented by the Enlightenment. In keeping with the traditional teaching of the Church, Archbishop Lefebvre taught that no one has the objective right to error, nor the objective right to sin, and that only those embracing the Catholic truth possess full operative dignity, implying that non-Catholics forfeit rights to true religious freedom by choosing error. We are free to embrace the Catholic religion. We are not objectively free to adhere to false religions. This, he argued, aligned with traditional teaching that “religious liberty,” understood in a Catholic sense, is not a subjective, universal human right, but simply a negative immunity from coercion, permissible only under certain temporary circumstances for the greater good, and in specific well-defined contexts—not the positive ”subjective ontological right” Vatican II seemed to endorse, which he equated with condemned false latitudinarianism (the broad tolerance of false doctrines on equal footing with true doctrine). He further rejected the document's basis in a duty to seek truth, asserting that non-Catholics, due to sin's effects, cannot authentically pursue, and attain it without the Church and her mission to evangelize the whole world.
4. Broader Implications for Church Doctrine and Practice
Archbishop Lefebvre believed Vatican II's ambiguities, such as stating that the "sole Church of Christ subsists (primarily) in the Catholic Church" rather than identifying the Catholic Church as the One True Church, outright (ie. “the sole Church of Christ is the Catholic Church”), fostered a false oecumenism, and diminished the call for conversion to Catholicism, as well as diminishing the necessity of the Church’s missionary activity. He saw Vatican ll as the cause of a larger "crisis" in the Church, post-Vatican II, whose consequences are the anthropomorphic post-conciliar liturgy with accompanying loss of faith, and religious practice, and the almost universal blindness to the council's consequences in such things as the revolutionary seminary training of priests, and the loss of Catholic catechetical teaching, and the proliferation of pan-syncretistic professions of faith. In his view, affirming “religious liberty” in a new sense as a secular “subjective human right” independent of God and without reference to objective truth, or falsehood, contradicted the Church's historical practices, like the duty of the Catholic State to officially offer Catholic public worship, suppressing heresies in a majority Catholic State, and risked moral and spiritual corruption of the Catholic majority through the uncensored actions of a non-Catholic minority.
These criticisms led Lefebvre to consecrate bishops without papal mandate in 1988, citing the need to preserve and promote the traditional Catholic priestly formation, and to ordain traditional Catholic priests so they can administer traditional sacraments, and teach the integrity of traditional Catholic teaching until Rome and the papacy return to the Tradition calling it “Operation Survival.“ This was not an act of schism as Archbishop Lefebvre did not, in principle, deny the papacy, nor communion with the reigning pope, no more than St. Paul denied the papacy, and submission to St. Peter, the first pope, when he sternly, yet respectfully, corrected the pope’s false teaching of the “Jewish rites error.” St. Peter thus confronted then corrected himself. While defenders of Vatican II argue that ”Dignitatis Humanae” represents a development in continuity (ex. emphasizing freedom from coercion without endorsing error), Archbishop Lefebvre maintained that Vatican II’s teaching on “religious liberty” represents a break with Tradition, a reversal of the 2,000 year old, social doctrine of the Church, culminating in the teaching of a long series of XIXth and XXth century popes regarding the infallible doctrine of social kingship of Jesus Christ. “Christ is King!” “Vivo Christo Rey!”