The Lefebvre movement's troubled relationship with Judaism

The four Catholic bishops whose excommunication was lifted by the Vatican on Jan. 21 are members of the Lefebvre movement, whose long, troubled relationship with Judiasm the National Catholic Reporter documents today.

John L. Allen Jr. writes:

A troubled history with Judaism has long been part of the Catholic traditionalist movement associated with the late French Archbishop Marcel Lefebvre — beginning with Lefebvre himself, who spoke approvingly of both the World War II-era Vichy Regime in France and the far-right National Front, and who identified the contemporary enemies of the faith as “Jews, Communists and Freemasons” in an Aug. 31, 1985, letter to Pope John Paul II.

That helps explain in part why a man with the extreme views expressed by Bishop Richard Williamson, who denies the Holocaust, can find a home there. Other Lefebvre followers have taken similarly extreme positions, as Allen documents:

In 1997, one of the four bishops ordained by Lefebvre in 1988, Bernard Tissier de Mallerais, said, “The church for its part has at all times forbidden and condemned the killing of Jews, even when ‘their grave defects rendered them odious to the nations among which they were established.’ ... All this makes us think that the Jews are the most active artisans for the coming of Antichrist.”

Nor has their record been confined simply to making statements. In 1989, Paul Touvier, a fugitive charged with ordering the execution of seven Jews in 1944, was arrested in a priory of the Fraternity of St. Pius X in Nice, France. The fraternity stated at the time that Touvier had been granted asylum as “an act of charity to a homeless man.” When Touvier died in 1996, a parish church operated by the fraternity offered a requiem Mass in his honor.

We can perhaps accept that Pope Benedict XVI’s action in no way canonized such views, but rather acted to promote church unity and avoid schism.

We can accept that all that happened was that the four had their excommunications lifted. As far as the church is concerned, all four remain suspended.

We can accept that any further restoration will be part of a long process.

Yet the Lefebvre movement's anti-Semitic views and sometimes actions and the associated history loom over every aspect of the Vatican's action.

As Allen concluded:

Early returns, however, suggest that in the court of broader public opinion, disentangling the pope’s logic from the taint of association with anti-Semitism will be a tough sell. The chief rabbi of Rome, Riccardo Di Segni, sounded despondent on Monday about where things will go from here.

“I don’t know what kind of resolution there can be at this point,” Di Segni said.