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Lefebvrism–Jansenism revisited?
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 28 February 2024
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Jansenism and Lefebvrism arose in profoundly different worlds. Yet there are striking similarities between them in beliefs and practices—common tendencies, attitudes and assumptions.
Important similarities in the circumstances of their origins and development help to explain these. Not, of course, that the same weight can be given to all these similarities.
For example, both movements have been led by people with charismatic personalities. Central to the development of Jansenism was a series of individuals with powerful personalities such as Saint-Cyran, the Arnaulds, Nichole and Pascal. Their biographies are well recorded—all too well, for the Jansenists loved writing hagiographies of each other—and need not be retold here. Suffice it to say that ‘the personal factor’ was pre-eminent in the direction of the coterie.
Though vacillating and, by his own admission, inclined toward inordinate indignation, the personality and strong personal authority of Marcel Lefebvre, leader of the so-called ‘Tridentine movement’, has been central throughout the events linked with his name: his leadership at the Second Vatican Council of the conservative faction known as the Coetus Internationalis Patrum and his attack there against collegiality, against the declarations on religious liberty and against relations with non-Christians; his founding after the Council of the diocesan society ‘The Priestly Fraternity of S. Pius X’ in Fribourg; his setting-up of the seminary boasting preconciliar discipline, training and rites which was soon moved to Ecône; his illicit celebration of ‘Tridentine’ Masses and ordination of deacons, priests and finally bishops.
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- Copyright © 1990 Provincial Council of the English Province of the Order of Preachers
References
1 cf. Weaver, F.E., The Evolution of the Reform of Port‐Royal (Paris, 1978)Google Scholar.
2 Lefebvre, M., A Bishop Speaks, Edinburgh, n.d. (1976?), p. 205Google Scholar.
3 Interventions on 11.10.63, 8.11.63, 24.9.64, 17–19.11.64, 20.9.65, 14.10.65.
4 The Congregation of Bishops suspended him a divinis on 24.7.76, and excommunicated him on 1.7.88.
5 cf. Delumeau, J., Le catholicisme entre Luther et Voltaire (Paris, 1971; ET London, 1977), p. 124Google Scholar; Namer, G., L'abbé Leroy et ses amis: Essai sur le Jansénisme extrémiste intramondain (Paris, 1964)Google Scholar.
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8 cf. Chadwick, O., The Popes and European Revolution (Oxford, 1981), p. 392Google Scholar; Mills, J.O. OP, ‘Quelle tradition?’ (editorial), New Blackfriars, July‐August 1988, p. 306Google Scholar; Nichols, P., The Pope's Divisions: The Roman Catholic Church Today (London, 1981), pp. 26–28Google Scholar.
9 Delumeau, p. 124, calls Paris Jansenism's ‘influxive centre’.
10 Corresponding to the French Revolution's ‘Satanic’ ideas of liberté, egalité and fraternité; cf. Lefebvre, pp. 16, 31–2, 45, 48, 54, 82, 135–6, 182, 202.
11 Si si no no, 10.12.84.
12 Lefebvre, pp. 189–90.
13 To Jean Guitton 8.9.76, quoted in P. Hebblethwaite, ‘Road to Schism’, The Tablet, 3.9.88, p. 1008.
14 Establishing a Commission to seek reconciliation with followers of Lefebvre, allowing a wider use of the ‘Tridentine rite’, and allowing for a society of priests and religious following the old discipline: L'Osservatore Romano (Eng. ed.), 27.6.88.
15 Augustinus, vol. III, 3, ch. 13 (condemned in Cum occasione, 1653).
16 Especially of Luis de Molina.
17 Chadwick, pp. 23, 47; Daniel‐Rops, H., L'Eglise des Temps Classiques: Le Grand Siècle des Ames (Paris, 1963Google Scholar; ET London, 1963), p. 342. Also see R. A. Knox, in his polemical but often quite insightful Enthusiasm (Oxford, 1950), pp. 212–3Google Scholar, also pp. 202; 215–7.
18 Lefebvre, p. 139.
19 ibid. pp. 90–1, 112–3, 126–7, 156, 216.
20 Brown, N., ‘Ruled by a hard God’, The Bulletin (Sydney), 21.2.89, 108–9Google Scholar.
21 e.g. Jansen, Augustinus, vol. II, Proemium; Jansen to St‐Cyran 5.3.1621 (de Lubac, p. 68); Arnauld, Frequente Communion.
22 Arnauld, Apologie pour M. Jansenius.
23 According to the Memoire of Sebastien Zamet, Bishop of Langres, Mere Angélique ‘spoke of nothing but the primitive church’.
24 cf. Weaver, chs VI & VII, and sources therein.
25 Lefebvre, pp. 203, 230.
26 Cited in Yves Congar OP, Challenge to the Church, the Case of Archbishop Lefebvre (London, 1977), and his similar 1978 article, ‘Archbishop Lefebvre, Champion of “Tradition”? Some necessary clarifications’; likewise at Ecône 30.6.88.
27 Lefebvre, p. 139.
28 ibid. pp. 90–91, 112–3, 126–7.
29 ibid. pp. 111, 114.
30 ibid. p. 115.
31 ibid. p. 103.
32 ibid. p. 109.
33 ibid. p. 184.
34 ibid. pp. 96, 108–11, 114, 137, 192–204.
35 ibid. pp. 176, 215; cf. Congar; Williamson in the Melbourne Age 4.7.88.
36 ibid. pp. 136, 138, 143, 203.
37 cf. Hudson, David, ‘The nouvelles ecctésiastiques, Jansenism and conciliarism, 1717–1735’, Catholic Historical Review, 70 (1984), 389–406Google Scholar.
38 Lefebvre, pp. 21–27, 37, 39, 46, 53, 69–70, 207. He also declared that 'where there is any contradiction between the faith of our bishop and that of Peter, there can be no hesitation, we must keep that of Peter, (p. 83) and told the Abbe of Nantes (another ultraconservative and a sede vacantist): ‘Be assured that if any bishop breaks with Rome, it will not be I’ (pp. 191, 208).
39 ibid. p. 116; cf. pp. 225, 229.
40 Congar; L'Osservatore Romano (Eng. ed.), 27.6.88.
41 L'Osservatore Romano (Eng. ed.), 27.6.88.
42 Delumeau, p. 116.
43 The Arnaulds were a very ‘well‐connected’ dynasty. The Jansenists sought ‘influence’. They drew their membership from well‐respected upper middle‐class or aristocratic families, and in their schools they only educated the same. Their wide penumbra of semi‐adherents included ‘fashionable ladies’, parliamentarians, writers and clerics.
44 cf. Gazier, C., Histoire du Monastère de Port‐Royal (Paris, 1929)Google Scholar.
45 e.g. ‘not being able to fortify justice, force has been justified’ and ‘force is queen of the world’, Pensées, 299 and 303.
46 cf. Taveneaux, R., Le Jansénisme et politique (Paris, 1965)Google Scholar.
47 One way of reading the Jansenist crisis is as a ‘Gallican drama’: cf. Chadwick, pp. 279–84; Daniel‐Rops, pp. 406–25; Ores‐Gayer, J.M., ‘The Unigenitus of Clement XI: a fresh look at the issues’, Theological Studies 49 (1988), p. 259–82CrossRefGoogle Scholar, esp. pp. 278–9.
48 e.g. Lefebvre, pp. 54, 63, 70, 77, 181, 202.
49 The movement ‘Tradition, Family and Property’, of which he is ecclesial patron, is an extreme anti‐socialist organisation which also deplores the concepts of liberté, égalité, fraternité, and Christian participation in left‐wing politics. Founded in Brazil, it now has cells and has advertised its views widely elsewhere.
50 Lefebvre, pp. 4, 44, 48, 66, 228.
51 Melbourne Age 4.7.88.
52 Aubert, Roger (ed.), The Church in a Secularised Society (London, 1978), pp. 200–3Google Scholar; Poulat, E., ‘Intégrisme et national‐catholicisme’, Esprit, November 1959Google Scholar; Beeck, F.J. van SJ, ‘Integralism’, God Encountered: A Contemporary Catholic Systematic Theology (London, 1989), pp. 57–62Google Scholar.
53 cf. Ward, L., The Condemnation of the ‘Action Française’ (London 1928)Google Scholar.
54 op. cit.
55 Lefebvre, p. 101. Chalet, J., Monseigneur Lefebvre (Paris, 1976), pp. 205–6Google Scholar; Congar, Challenge, pp. 46–7; ‘Lefebvre’, p. 99.
56 Delumeau, pp. 104–5.
57 Lubac, Henri de SJ, Augustinianism and Modern Theology (London, 1969), p. 37Google Scholar.
58 cf. Augustinus, vol. Ill, chs. 5–8; de Lubac, p. 92.
59 Lefebvre, pp. 100, 106–7, 152–3, 166.
60 ibid. pp. 33, 62, 78, 129.
61 L 'Osservatore Romano (Eng. ed.), 27.6.88.
62 Felici's attempt to have liberal sections of Nostra aetate on the Jews redrafted by a commission including Lefebvre was overruled by Paul VI; later Lefebvre broke Council rules by circulating a letter calling on the Fathers to reject the declaration.
63 Lefebvre, pp. 4, 36, 44, 66, 71, 82, 95, 181, 203.
64 For example, that bet ween fait and droit proposed by Arnauld in Lett res a un Due et Pair.
65 de Lubac, pp. 37, 44; H. Daniel‐Rops, pp. 343–4, 423.
66 e.g. Menozzi, The Tablet 25.6.88, p. 715.
67 cf. Congar, Challenge, 79–80; Hebblethwaite, p. 1009.
68 In a letter of 20.8.87 attributed to him.
69 The Chapter of Utrecht completed the schism by electing as the new Archbishop the Jansenist Cornelius Steenoven without mandate from Rome.
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