Incardination and the Legal Existence of the SSPX

We can rightly put down our codes of Canon Law and think with our Catholic common sense (p. 62)

I have not read ahead yet, but this feels like whatever is argued for next is directly illegal in Canon Law.

critics will suggest that Lefebvre was referring to Eternal Rome as a sort of dog whistle to express his belief that there was a Rome before the council which was not eternal… (p. 67)

The 1974 Lefebvre declaration:

We hold fast, with all our heart and with all our soul, to Catholic Rome, Guardian of the Catholic Faith and of the traditions necessary to preserve this faith, to Eternal Rome, Mistress of wisdom and truth.

On the other hand, we refuse, and have always refused, to follow the Rome of the neo-Modernist and neo-Protestant tendencies which clearly manifested themselves in the Second Vatican Council and, after it, in all the reforms which issued from it.

For it is impossible to reconcile these tendencies with the doctrine of the Church. We refuse to collaborate in any way with this destruction of the Church, which is in direct contradiction with the orders of Christ and of His Vicar on earth, the Sovereign Pontiff.

All the new errors which are seeping into the Church today are born of this same Modernist root, and we refuse to take any part in them. We hold it to be our duty to transmit integrally the doctrine and the moral teaching of the Church, as well as the immutable principles of the natural law, to the students who are entrusted to us, and to form them to piety, to abnegation, to the exercise of the sacred ministry according to the traditional rules of the Church.

The only attitude of faithfulness to the Church and to Catholic doctrine, in view of our salvation, is a categorical refusal to take part in the Reformation and to put ourselves at the service of this Reformation, which is in no way Catholic.

That is why, without any spirit of rebellion, but out of fidelity to our mission, we continue to form priests according to the traditional principles of the Church, and we shall continue to do so, God willing, in spite of the unjust and tyrannical measures taken against us.

By doing this, with the grace of God and the help of the Blessed Virgin Mary, and that of St. Joseph and St. Pius X, we are assured of remaining faithful to the Roman Catholic Church and to all the successors of Peter, and of being the fideles dispensatores mysteriorum Domini Nostri Jesu Christi in Spiritu Sancto.

Amen.

Marcel Lefebvre
Albano, on the Feast of the Presentation of the Blessed Virgin Mary, November 21, 1974

This seems to be a clear rejection of the Pope’s authority.

“Its suppression was illegal and in any case unjust. One day Providence will allow its official rehabilitation. But it still exists before God and the Church” (p. 77)

I did not follow the source of the long excepts on pages 69 - 77. I imagine it was a long defense of the non-supppression of the SSPX in the 1970’s.

But this Lefebvre quote above seems to recognize the SSPX was suppressed, he just thinks illegally or unjustly.

But when we look at the heretic reformers that left Rome we find that they were not only disobedient to the particular acts or commands of this or that prelate, but instead were disobedient to the hierarchy in principle (p. 78)

Disobedience to the Pope is disobedience to the hierarchy in principle.
Lefebvre disobeyed the Pope, who warned him directly in advance.

While it is useful to use canon law and to attempt to do things in a normal way to show respect for the legitimacy of the Church’s laws, it is also necessary to understand that we are operating during a time of arguably the greatest crisis in Church history. (p. 81)

I take this as a concession the SSPX in not a real church institution and “the crisis” must be invoked to operate outside of Canon law.