THE CATHOLIC TRADITIONALISTS

From the book Holy Blood Holy Grail
In 1977 a new and particularly significant "Prieuré document" appeared—a six-page pamphlet entitled Le Cercle d'Ulysse written by one Jean Delaude. In the course of his text the writer addresses himself explicitly to the Prieuré de Sion. And although he rehashes much old material, he also furnishes certain new details about the order:
In March 1117 Baudouin was compelled, at Saint Léonard d'Acre, to negotiate and prepare the constitution of the Order of the Temple, under the directives of the Prieuré de Sion. In 1118 the Order of the Temple was then established by Hugues de Payen. From 1118 to 1188 the Prieuré de Sion and the Order of the Temple shared the same Grand Masters. Since the separation of the two institutions in n88, the Prieuré de Sion has counted twenty-seven Grand Masters to the present day. The most recent were
Charles Nodierfrom 1801 to 1844
Victor Hugofrom 1844 to 1885
Claude Debussyfrom 1885 to 1918
Jean Cocteaufrom 1918 to 1963
and from 1963 until the advent of the new order, the Abbé Ducaud-Bourget.
For what is the Prieuré de Sion preparing? I do not know, but it represents a power capable of confronting the Vatican in the days to come. Monsignor Lefebvre is a most active and redoubtable member, capable of saying: "You make me Pope and I will make you King." (Delaude, Cercle d'Ulysse, p. 6 (v).)

There are two important new fragments of information in this extract. One is the alleged affiliation with the Prieuré de Sion of Archbishop Marcel Lefebvre. Monsignor Lefebvre, of course, represents the extreme conservative wing of the Roman Catholic Church. He was vociferously outspoken against Pope Paul VI, whom he flagrantly and flamboyantly defied. In 1976 and 1977, in fact, he was explicitly threatened with excommunication; and his brazen indifference to this threat nearly precipitated a full-scale ecclesiastical schism. But how could we reconcile a militant "hard-line" Catholic like Monsignor Lefebvre with a movement and an order that was Hermetic, if not downright heretical, in orientation? There seemed to be no explanation for this contradiction, unless Monsignor Lefebvre was a modern-day representative of the nineteenth-century Freemasonry associated with the Hiéron du Val d'Or—the "Christian, aristocratic and Hermetic Freemasonry" that presumed to regard itself as more Catholic than the Pope.
The second major point in the extract quoted above is, of course, the identification of the Prieuré de Sion's grand master at that time as Abbé Ducaud-Bourget. François Ducaud-Bourget was born in 1897 and trained for the priesthood at—predictably enough—the Seminary of Saint Sulpice. He is thus likely to have known many of the Modernists there at the time—and, quite possibly, Emile Hoffet. Subsequently he was conventual chaplain of the Sovereign Order of Malta. For his activities during the Second World War he received the Resistance Medal and the Croix de Guerre. Today he is recognized as a distinguished man of letters—a member of the Académie Française, a biographer of important French Catholic writers such as Paul Claudel and François Mauriac, and a highly esteemed poet in his own right.
Like Monsignor Lefebvre the Abbé Ducaud-Bourget assumed a stance of militant opposition to Pope Paul VI. Like Monsignor Lefebvre he is an adherent of the Tridentine Mass. Like Monsignor Lefebvre he has proclaimed himself a "traditionalist" adamantly opposed to ecclesiastical reform or any attempt to "modernize" Roman Catholicism. On May 22, 1976, he was forbidden to administer confession or absolution—and like Monsignor Lefebvre he boldly defied the interdict imposed on him by his superiors. On February 27, 1977, he led a thousand Catholic traditionalists in their occupation of the Church of Saint-Nicolas-du-Chardonnet in Paris.
If Marcel Lefebvre and François Ducaud-Bourget appear to be "right-wing" theologically, they would seem to be equally so politically. Before the Second World War Monsignor Lefebvre was associated with Action Française—the extreme right of French politics at the time, which shared certain attitudes in common with National Socialism in Germany. More recently the "rebel archbishop" attracted considerable notoriety by warmly endorsing the military regime in Argentina. When questioned on this position, he replied that he had made a mistake. He had not meant Argentina, he said, but Chile! François Ducaud-Bourget would not appear to be quite so extreme, and his medals, at any rate, attest to patriotic anti-German activity during the war. Nevertheless, he has expressed a high regard for Mussolini and the hope that France would "recover its sense of values under the guidance of a new Napoleon."
Our first suspicion was that Marcel Lefebvre and François Ducaud-Bourget were not, in fact, affiliated with the Prieuré de Sion at all, but that someone had deliberately attempted to embarrass them by aligning them with the very forces they would, in theory, most vigorously oppose. And yet according to the statutes we had obtained from the French police, the subtitle of the Prieuré de Sion was Chevalerie d'Institutions et Règles Catholiques, d'Union Indépendante et Traditionaliste. An institution with such a name might very well accommodate individuals like Marcel Lefebvre and François Ducaud-Bourget.
There seemed to us a second possible explanation—a farfetched explanation admittedly, but one that would at least account for the contradiction confronting us. Perhaps Marcel Lefebvre and François Ducaud-Bourget were not what they appeared to be. Perhaps they were something else. Perhaps, in actuality, they were agents provocateurs whose objective was systematically to create turmoil, sow dissent, foment an incipient schism that threatened Pope Paul's pontificate. Such tactics would be in keeping with the secret societies described by Charles Nodier, as well as with the Protocols of the Elders of Sion. And a number of recent commentators journalists as well as ecclesiastical authorities—have declared Archbishop Lefebvre to be working for, or manipulated by, someone else.' (Monsignor Brunon, who replaced Lefebvre as bishop of Tulle, said that in his opinion Lefebvre was being manipulated by others. See The Guardian (London, Sept. 1, 1976), p. 4. Gianfranco Svidercoschi, de-scribed by The Times as being "an experienced and usually well in-formed Vatican correspondent," declared the Pope to be aware that "Msr. Lefebvre was being conditioned surreptitiously by other people." See The Times (London, Aug. 31, 1976), p. 12.)
Farfetched though our hypothesis might be, there was a coherent logic underlying it. If Pope Paul were regarded as "the enemy," and if one wished to force him into a more liberal position, how would one go about it? Not by agitating from a liberal point of view. That would only have entrenched the Pope more firmly in his conservatism. But what if one publicly adopted a position even more fiercely conservative than Paul's? Would this not, despite his wishes to the contrary, force him into an increasingly liberal position? And that, certainly, is what Archbishop Lefebvre and his colleagues accomplished—the unprecedented feat of casting the Pope as a liberal.
Whether our conclusions were valid or not, it seemed clear that Archbishop Lefebvre, like so many other individuals in our investigation, was privy to some momentous and explosive secret. In 1976, for example, his excommunication seemed imminent. The press, indeed, was expecting it any day, for Pope Paul, confronted by brazen and repeated defiance, seemed to have no alternative. And yet at the very last minute the Pope backed down. It is still unclear precisely why he did so, but the following excerpt from the Guardian, dated August 30, 1976, suggests a clue:

The Archbishop's team of priests in England . . . believe that their leader still has a powerful ecclesiastical weapon to use in his dispute with the Vatican. No one will give any hint of its nature, but Father Peter Morgan, the group's leader . . . describes it as being something "earth-shaking." (The Guardian (Aug. 30, 1976), p. 16. Intrigued by this, we wrote to Father Peter Morgan, asking him if he would clarify this matter. Father Morgan did not reply.)

What kind of "earth-shaking" matter or "secret weapon" could thus intimidate the Vatican? What kind of Damoclean sword, invisible to the world at large, could have been held over the Pontiff's head? Whatever it was, it certainly seems to have proven effective. It seems, in fact, to have rendered the archbishop wholly immune to punitive action from Rome. As Jean Delaude wrote, Marcel Lefebvre did indeed seem to "represent a power capable of confronting the Vatican"—head-on if necessary.
But to whom did he—or will he—allegedly say: "You make me Pope and I will make you king"?

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