Liturgy as a source of ecclesial unity The Second Vatican Council was the greatest event the Catholic Church had experienced since the Council of Trent. Its reception was often carried out in a climate of polemics even contestation. The epitome of such an attitude was Archbishop Marceli Lefebvre. His Confraternity of St Pius X spoke out against the Council, especially the liturgical renewal. The Council portrayed the liturgy as the source and summit of the life of the Church. Its celebrant is the community of the Church. Its members, as a priestly people, according to their giftedness deriving from the sacrament of baptism and the sacrament of Holy Orders, perform the true liturgical functions for the sacramental making present of Christ's paschal mystery. Opponents of the conciliar renewal made a kind of 'canonisation' of the Tridentine liturgy, considering it to be the Mass of all time and the only way to safeguard the Catholic faith. Successive popes, from Paul VI to Francis, entered into dialogue with the Confraternity. With their documents, they standardised the manner of celebrating the Eucharist according to the 1962 Missal of John XXIII. They defined this manner as an extraordinary form of the Roman rite. The problem of the Brotherhood's co-worship unity is still open.