Académique Documents
Professionnel Documents
Culture Documents
Fr. V. A. Berto.
1
The words “Liberal” and “Liberalism”
are used throughout the book in their anti-Catholic
context and are not with reference to political parties
or to ideologies. (Trans.)
PREFACE TO THE AMERICAN EDITION
The reader will no doubt find this a difficult
book to read. But he will not fail to recognize
that the struggle at Vatican Council II of a small
number of conciliar fathers became, in the long
run, the same struggle carried on by the small
number of those who resist the world-wide
subversion of Socialism-Communism.
The ecumenical Liberalism which triumphed
at the Council was the greatest victory of
Communism against Christian civilization, which
lost its self-confidence and thought it could
adopt the principles of its enemies: rights of
man, human dignity and religious liberty.
In doing this, it opened a dialogue in which
one side does not listen and raised the banner of
détente and of pacifism, thanks to which
Communism has spread over the world without
hindrance.
Vatican II, which should have been the anti-
Communist Council. as the Council of Trent was
anti-Protestant, was taken over by the Liberals
and became the instrument for the destruction
of all the moral and spiritual barriers against
Communism.
When soldiers have lost the ideal for which
they fight their weapons fall from their hands.
Since there is no longer a Christian civilization to
defend the field is left open to the Satanic
revolution.
In the discussions which appear in these
pages, nothing less than the Catholic Faith and
the future of so-called Christian nations is at
stake. Those who worked to disarm the truth and
surrender it to error bear a heavy responsibility.
May these pages kindle the courage to revive
the Catholic Faith for which so many martyrs
shed their blood.
May those who contributed so much to this
edition be abundantly rewarded. May God
recompense them by a wide distribution of this
book.
Marcel Lefebvre
Rickenbach,
March, 1982
A NOTE ON THE TITLE
Why is this book called I Accuse the Council?
We have chosen this title because we are
justified in asserting—a judgment based on both
internal and external criticism—that the spirit
which dominated the Council and which inspired
so many of its ambiguous, equivocal and even
clearly erroneous texts, was not that of the Holy
Ghost, but the spirit of the modern world, the
spirit of Liberalism, of Teilhard de Chardin, of
Modernism, in opposition to the kingdom of Our
Lord Jesus Christ.
Submission to the official reforms and
orientations coming from Rome is demanded
and imposed in the name of that Council. The
tendency of all of these, it will be noted, is
openly Protestant and Liberal.
It is only since the Council that the Church, or
at least churchmen in possession of key posts,
has taken a direction definitely opposed to
tradition, i.e., to the official Magisterium of the
Church.
Such men have imagined themselves to be
the living Church, which is the mistress of the
truth, free to impose new dogmas advocating
progress, evolution, change, and a blind,
unconditional obedience on clergy and laity
alike. They have turned their backs on the true
Church; they have given her new institutions, a
new priesthood, a new form of worship, new
teachings ever in search of something fresh, and
always in the name of the Council.
It is easy to think that whoever opposes the
Council and these people’s new Gospel shall be
considered as excommunicated, as outside
communion with the Church. But one may well
ask them, communion with what Church? They
would answer, no doubt: with the Conciliar
Church.
It is imperative, therefore, to shatter the
myths which have been built up around Vatican
II—this Council which they wanted to make a
pastoral one, because of their instinctive horror
for dogma, to facilitate the introduction of
Liberal ideas into an official text of the Church.
By the time it was over, however, they had
dogmatized the Council, comparing it with that
of Nicaea, and claiming that it was equal if not
superior to the Councils that had gone before it!
Fortunately this operation of exploding the
erroneous ideas of the Council has already
begun, and begun satisfactorily with the work of
Professor Salet in the Courrier de Rome2 on the
Declaration on Religious Liberty. His conclusion
is that this declaration is heretical.
There are a number of points about the
Council which should be studied thoroughly and
analyzed, for example:
• the questions of the relationship of the
bishops and the Pope, the Constitutions
on The Church, on The Bishops, and on
The Missions;
• the priesthood of clergy and laity in the
introduction to Lumen Gentium;
2
A fortnightly publication issued in
Paris (14), at 25 rue Jean Dolent. (Trans.)
• the purpose of marriage in Gaudium et
Spes:
• liberty of worship and conscience and the
concept of liberty in Gaudium et Spes:
• ecumenism and relations with non-
Christian religions and with atheists, etc.
Marcel Lefebvre
Paris
August 27, 1976
3
1789 was the year of the French Re-
volution, the year when a statue of the goddess
Reason was enthroned on the high altar of Notre
Dame Cathedral. (Trans.)