‘We love ... mystery’

Press, 14 November 1981, Page 6

‘We love ... mystery’

> The Catholic Mass was too < close to Protestantism when : it was not said in Latin, said i the controversial Archbishop I Marcel Lefebvre in t Christchurch yesterday. I “God is a mystery, and we ' love the mystery of the serI vice,” he said. i The French cleric was in i Christchurch for an hour on his way from Wanganui to Melbourne. He is on a tour of New Zealand and Australia to say the traditional Tridentine Mass and to hold.confirmations for traditionalists. i Services in Latin were i banned in 1969 after the ; Second Vatican Council, i which introduced reforms. * Archbishop Lefebvre was ; suspended by Pope Paul VI , in 1976 for his refusal to obey I Vatican 11.

"For me the suspension is non-existent," he said. "There has been no trial, so it is invalid. “It is a non-issue with Pope John Paul II; he does not talk about it."

He had met Pope John Paul II a month after his election, and he had been friendly. Regular contact was maintained through an intermediary, Cardinal Seper, and it was hoped to arrive at a solution eventually.

“The solution for me would be to stop the persecution against the traditional Mass so that we can freely give the sacraments as before,” he said.

His suspension had been the work of cardinals in Rome, and cardinals influenced the present Pope, who was not very strong. He had nothing against the Pope, but just against some acts of the papacy.

The Archbishop has said that he would never say the modern Mass and that the influence of the “Modernists" had been bad for the Church.

He was opposed to Charismatic believers, because they did not hold the traditional rites, and were not

traditional Catholics. The Archbishop was formerly the Archbishop of Dakar. Senegal, and superiorgeneral of the order of Holy Ghost Fathers.