Lefebvre dilemma faces Pope as he reads cardinal's report

by Desmond O'Grady in Rome
POPE John Paul II faces an awkward decision now that the report on rebel Archbishop Marcel Lefebvre's St Pius X Priestly Fraternity has been completed.
The report, by the Canadian Cardinal Edouard Gagnon, follows visits to the ultraconservative group's schools and seminaries in Switzerland, France and Germany.
On the basis of the report, the Vatican must decide the terms for restoring full communion to the St Pius X Priestly Fraternity which has 211 priests, five seminaries with 252 seminarians and convents and schools in 28 countries.
The threat that Lefebvre would ordain bishops at the end of 1987, which would have initiated a schismatic church, seems to have prompted the head of the Vatican Doctrinal Congregation, Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, to offer Lefebvre last October some kind of reconciliation on condition that he accept an apostolic visitor (Gagnon) whose report would be that basis for determining the terms of the agreement. The 30-page report was completed in January. The French news agency, Agence France Press, claims Lefebvre's entourage has said that if the Vatican does not conclude the agreement by April 17, Lefebvre will ordain bishops.
Reportedly John Paul has passed the report to Ratzinger. It is as if he does not want to be influenced by the fact that Lefebvre has insulted him. But whatever decision is taken will affect John Paul's image.
There are persistent if unconfirmed reports that Lefebvre will be asked to publicly recognise the Pope's authority, but not to declare formally that he accepts all the Vatican Council's decrees.
This could look like a sellout of the Council which John Paul has always claimed to be his Pontificate's programme. The danger is that an agreement can seem confirmation that Lefebvre was right all along.
To seek reconciliation is admirable, but John Paul has come across as severe with leftists such as the Nicaraguan Priest-Government minister Ernesto Cardenal (ticked off publicly in Managua). So will he be lenient with rightists such as Lefebvre?
Lefebvre is a representative of that sector of French Catholicism which has never recovered from the trauma of the French Revolution and identifies religion with resistance to change.
Blue-eyed Lefebvre is smiling and cordial. His drastic statements indicate a man who is convinced he has the one true faith and the rest of the Catholic Church is hellbound. Unless he publicly accepts the Council's decrees, he is likely to consider reconciliation simply as vindication.