Taken from Sermon by Fr Black on the "Excommunications" Sunday, 19th June, 1988, published in the Australian Bulletin of the SSPX, December, 1988:
"... It may be a revelation to you that I was actually at one point in favour of the Agreement, provided that our position was stringently safeguarded, and I wrote to the Archbishop suggesting that the advantages of the Agreement might be greater than the disadvantages - and this is what the Archbishop wrote to me on 13th of June:
Dear Fr. Black,
Your reasoning is right if limited to only these two points: the recognition of the Society and the Bishop, but it is necessary to think about all that surrounds and conditions these two points and the use to which the Roman authorities intend to make of them.
For them, the Society is a provisional institution, and the object of these Agreements is to make us go back to our respective dioceses.
[Why did the Archbishop say that? Partly because Cardinal Ratzinger is reputed to have said to a member of the French Diplomatic Service that there was no need to worry, if an agreement was signed in Rome little by little the Society could be worn down and things would revert to "normal"]
The bishop must have the "profile" that they want and therefore I must present not three names but many more, so that they can find a bishop who will help them in their work of destroying Tradition.
They were always saying to me "There is only one Church", i.e. the Church of Vatican II. It is unacceptable that we should oppose this Church of today.
We have loyally made an approach to Rome to sound out their good will, and their intentions. It is still modernist and conciliar Rome, opposed to Tradition.
Therefore it is impossible after 15 years of struggle for us to put ourselves into the hands of a Pope and a Cardinal who are modernist, and decided to finish all opposition.
We cannot compromise the Catholic Faith of all the families who put their confidence in us. We have no sufficient guarantee against the modernist influences of Rome and the local bishops.
I realise that it is a grave decision to stop the dialogue and consecrate four bishops, but it is the saving of Tradition and the Church, against the conjuration of all of the friends of the Revolution against the reign of Our Lord.
Certainly we will still have to suffer persecutions, but this is the example that the martyrs, witnesses to the Faith, have given us.
These lines are very few to explain everything, but I am certain that you will understand our prudence, which I trust is supernatural, in this new stage of our struggle.
Believe me to be, dear Father Black,
Your devotedly in Christo et Maria
+Marcel Lefebvre
That is the Archbishop's reply. In other words, he does not trust them really to implement the Agreement..."
Topic: 1988 Letter of Archbishop Lefebvre to Fr Edward Black SSPX (Read 2427 times)