Declaration of 21 November 1974

The declaration is signed by Archbishop Marcel Lefebvre. The Society of St Pius X, which publishes it, says that he wrote it on 21 November 1974 for the seminarians of its seminary at Écône, ten days after two visitors sent from Rome had been there. It opens by holding fast to “Catholic Rome” and “Eternal Rome”, and then refuses to follow what it calls the Rome of neo-Modernist and neo-Protestant tendencies, which it says were evident in the Second Vatican Council and in all the reforms that issued from it. It names the reform of the Mass in particular, says that no authority can oblige its author to diminish the faith as the church taught it for nineteen centuries, and ends by holding to what was believed and practised before the council.

It is one party’s statement, written in protest, and is cited in the Second Vatican Council only as evidence, in his own words, that some Catholics rejected the council’s reforms. The English wording differs slightly between the society’s national sites.