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You write, "Lefebvre was mistaken." Surely you realize this makes no difference--even if he was mistaken, so long as he believed a State of Necessity existed, the excommunication was void.

I understand that you hold the " State of Necessity " clause as Lefebvre's loophole. But, as I have explained before, Lefebvre's loophole can, and was, trumped.This is from Canon Law 1323, the pertinent phrase: An excommunication is null and void if someone acted "by reason of necessity or grave inconvenience, UNLESS, however, the act is intrinsically evil or tends to be harmful to souls; That word "unless" is key here. I'll grant, for argument's sake, that Lefebvre really believed he had a reason of necessity. But that reason of necessity is voided by the "unless" clause. Because, the pope judged Lefevre's reason of necessity to be intrinsically evil, and/or harmful to souls. How do we know this? In Ecclesia Dei the pope wrote:" Everyone should be aware that formal adherence to the schism is a grave offence against God and carries the penalty of excommunication decreed by the Church's law."A grave offense against God is harmful to souls. I hope you would agree with that. Therefore, the state of necessity becomes void.

I am aware that I have explained this before. I regret that I've needed to again. I just want you to be certain that I understand your defense of Lefebvre. You should understand that I don't buy it because of the "unless" clause. That's all.

Let me get at this from another angle. First, it is certain that the act of consecrating bishops in disobedience to the Pope is not in itself intrinsically evil. This is because an intrinsically evil act is by definition always and everywhere evil. Abortion is considered by the Church an intrinsically evil act. This is because good motives would not change the essential evil of the act, though it would mitigate it.

Archbishop Lefebvre's act of disobediene in consecrating bishops could not be an intrinsically evil act in that sense. Doctors of the Church teach that even the Pope may be disobeyed under certain circumstances--when he supercedes his own authority and commands that which would harm the Church, for instance. Whether this was the case or not with Archbishop Lefebvre, what is indisputable is that his was not an intrinsically evil act. On the contrary, it was an act that was good or bad, depending on circumstances and perceptions. For Lefebvre, the attempt by Modernists to change essential Church doctrines and to destroy Church institutions, coupled with the systemic corruption that was spreading everywhere within the Church, was sufficient reason for believing a State of Necessity existed.

But did his action harm souls? The evidence is it did not and could not--unless it put his followers in formal schism. SSPX, after all, teaches and practices Catholicism as it was taught and practiced for two thousand years, adding nothing that is in any way novel or extreme. Surely such Catholicism is not harmful to souls! But did Archbishop Lefebvre place his followers in schism?

Cardinal Ratzinger himself has answered this question when, as Prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, he overturned the excommunication decree of the Bishop of Honolulu against six Catholics who attended SSPX Masses despite repeated warnings. The bishop had charged the six were formerly schismatic. But the decision by Cardinal Ratzinger stated explicitly that their actions did not constitute acts "of formal schism" as the bishop had supposed.

It is no secret that it is the opinion of top canonists in Rome that the excommunication of Lefebvre was void by reason of his perception of a State of Necessity and that his fraternity consequently had never been in true schism. This seems the basis for the Ratzinger decision. It also seems the basis for the continued inistence that the whole matter of Rome's relation with the SSPX is "an internal matter of the Church" and does not properly fall under the aegis of the Prefect of Ecumenical Relations for those outside the Church.

There is this claim, however, that somehow attending SSPX Masses might eventually lead to a schismatic tendency or attitude--but this danger is never defined or explained and appears as just another attempt to discourage traditionalist Catholics from attending SSPX Masses. Since the SSPX acknowledges the Pope as the head of the Church and prays for him at every Mass and when it leads the faithful in recitations of the rosary, how are the faithful placed in jeopardy? The truth is traditionalists who follow the fraternity must put up with a lot of abuse by badly informed Catholics who claim--on the basis of diocesan pundits who demonize the SSPX every chance they get--that its followers are either schismatic or heretical. These charges are thrown around willy-nilly without any attempt to decipher the legal and moral intricacies of the debate from both sides. This is done to dampen enthusiasm for the traditionalist movement in general.

So getting back to your initial objections: 1) the Archbishop's act of disobedience was not intrinsically evil; 2) it did not in any way harm souls; 3) the argument of the State of Necessity therefore was a valid one and voided any excommunication.