Monday, June 25, 2007

Characters of the Intervention: des Lauriers (1898-1988)


On May 7, 1981 Bishop Ngo Dinh Thuc consecrated one Fr. Michel Louis Guérard des Lauriers a bishop. 1933 - in Belgium des Lauriers taught philosphy at the university of Le Saulchoir and there served as a dominican priest.
Guérard was assigned professorship at the pontifical Lateran University in Rome during the pontificate of Pope Pius XII, the date of which is unknown, and was also a member of the pontifical academy of St. Thomas D' Aquine. While there a professor, the second Vatican Council was called by John XXIII, after which, Guérard was a principle author of a work [the Ottaviani Intervention] critical of the New Mass to be promulgated by the Council's decree.
Some time around 1970 Paul VI had him booted out of the university; it seems he was not modernist enough to contribute anything worthwhile to the Vatican II agenda.

Expelled from Rome, des Lauriers went to a notorious traditionalist, Archbishop Marcel Lefebvre, and applied to join his ranks in preserving the timeless traditions of the Catholic Church. Lefebvre placed him in his St. Pius X Seminary in Écône, Switzerland, as a professor and lecturer, where in 1977, he was expelled in for his views on the papacy. Some time later, des Lauriers developed a postulation known as the Cassiciacum Thesis. This thesis espoused papa materialiter non formaliter ideology, that the papal claimant, and his 3 predecessors did not hold the fullness of the Papacy due to their modernist views, an idea that has come to be called Sedeprivationism.

Des Lauriers believed that the validity of new rites of consecration and ordination were also doubtful, and, in order to ensure the continuation of a valid line of Orders, and so, he was consecrated a bishop in a private ceremony in Toulon, France on May 7, 1981 by Mgr. Pierre Martin Ngo Dinh Thuc. Des Lauriers went on to consecrate Fr. Gunther Storck, Fr. Robert Fidelis McKenna, O.P., and Fr. Franco Munari as Bishops.

2 comments:

Unknown said...

I like the article. I have heard of this theologians name in several commentaries on the validity of Thuc Orders and consecrations. It seems that Bishop De Castro Mayer believed that Bishop Lauriers was the man who could give an explicit response to that question. Yes they are all valid; I did not realize he too was of Thic lineage. Many leave that out. Good item.

Geremia said...

Here's a good article on the Cassiciacum Thesis.