On the occasion of the Philosophy Symposium dedicated to the
memory of Msgr. Antonio Livi which was held in Venice on May 30 (here), I tried
to identify the elements that constantly recur throughout history in the work
of deception of the Evil One. In my examination (here), I focused on the fraud
of the pandemic, showing how the reasons given to justify illegitimate coercive
measures and no less illegitimate limitations of natural freedoms were in
reality prophasis, that is, pretexts: ostensible reasons that are actually
intended to conceal a malicious intent and a criminal design. The publication
of Anthony Fauci’s emails (here) and the impossibility of censoring the ever
more numerous voices of dissent with respect to the mainstream narrative have
confirmed my analysis and allow us to hope for a blatant defeat of the
supporters of the Great Reset.
In that address, you may recall, I dwelt on that fact that
the Second Vatican Council was also in a certain way a Great Reset for the
ecclesial body, like other historical events planned and designed in order to
revolutionize the social body. Also in this case, the excuses given to
legitimize liturgical reform, ecumenism, and the parliamentarization of the
authority of the Sacred Pastors were not founded on good faith but on deceit
and lies, in such a way so as to make us believe that we were renouncing things
that were unquestionably good – the Apostolic Mass, the uniqueness of the
Church as the means of salvation, the immutability of the Magisterium and the Authority
of the Hierarchy – for the sake of a higher good. But as we know, not only did
this higher good not come about (nor could it have), but in fact the true
intent of the Council manifested itself in all its disruptive subversive value:
churches were emptied, seminaries deserted, convents abandoned, authority
discredited and perverted into tyranny for the sake of the wicked Pastors or
rendered ineffective for the good ones. And we also know that the purpose of
this reset, this devastating revolution, was from the very beginning iniquitous
and malicious, despite being clothed in noble intentions in order to convince
the faithful and the clergy to obey.
In 2007 Benedict XVI restored full citizenship to the
venerable Tridentine liturgy, giving back to it the legitimacy that had been
abusively denied it for fifty years. In his Motu Proprio Summorum Pontificum he
declared:
It is therefore permitted to celebrate the Sacrifice of the
Mass following the typical edition of the Roman Missal, which was promulgated
by Blessed John XXIII in 1962 and never abrogated, as an extraordinary form of
the Church’s Liturgy. […] For such a
celebration with either Missal, the priest needs no permission from the
Apostolic See or from his own Ordinary (here).
In reality the letter of the Motu Proprio and the
implementing documents associated with it was never completely applied, and the
cœtus fidelium who today celebrate in the Apostolic Rite continue to have to go
to their Bishop to ask permission, essentially still abiding by the dictate of
the Indult of the preceding Motu Proprio of John Paul II Ecclesia Dei. The just
honor in which the traditional liturgy ought to be held was tempered by its
being placed on an equal level with the liturgy of the post-conciliar reform,
with the former being defined as the “extraordinary form” and the latter as the
“ordinary form,” as if the Bride of the Lamb could have two voices – one fully
Catholic and another equivocally ecumenical – with which to speak at one moment
to the Divine Majesty and at the next to the assembly of the faithful. But
there is also no doubt that the liberalization of the Tridentine Mass has done
much good, nourishing the spirituality of millions of people and bringing many
souls closer to the Faith who, in the sterility of the reformed rite, have not
found any incentive either for conversion or even less for spiritual growth.
Last year, displaying the typical behavior of the
Innovators, the Holy See sent a questionnaire to the dioceses of the world in
which they were asked to provide information about the implementation of
Benedict XVI’s Motu Proprio (here). The way in which the questions were written
betrayed, once again, a second purpose, and the responses that were sent to
Rome were supposed to create a basis of apparent legitimacy for imposing
limitations on the Motu Proprio, if not its total abrogation. Certainly, if the
author of Summorum Pontificum were still seated on the Throne, this
questionnaire would have allowed the Pontiff to remind the Bishops that no
priest needs to ask for permission to celebrate Mass in the ancient rite, nor
may a priest be removed from ministry for doing so. But the real intention of
those who wanted to consult the Ordinaries does not seem to reside in the salus
animarum so much as in theological hatred against a rite that expresses with
adamantine clarity the immutable Faith of the Holy Church, and which for this
reason is alien to the conciliar ecclesiology, to its liturgy, and to the
doctrine it presupposes and conveys. There is nothing more opposed to the
so-called magisterium of Vatican II than the Tridentine liturgy: every prayer,
every pericope – as liturgists would say – constitutes an affront to the
delicate ears of the Innovators, every ceremony is an offense to their eyes.
Simply tolerating that there are Catholics who want to drink
from the sacred sources of that rite sounds like a defeat for them, one that is
bearable only if it is limited to little groups of nostalgic elderly people or
eccentric aesthetes. But if the “extraordinary form” – which is such in the
ordinary sense of the word – becomes the norm for thousands of families, young
people, and ordinary people who consciously choose it, then it becomes a stone
of scandal and must be relentlessly opposed, limited, and abolished, since
there must be no counter to the reformed liturgy, no alternative to the squalor
of the conciliar rites – just as there can be no voice of dissent or argued
refutation against the mainstream narrative, and just as effective treatments
cannot be adopted in the face of the side effects of an experimental vaccine
because they would demonstrate the latter’s uselessness.
Nor can we be surprised: those who do not come from God are
intolerant of everything that even remotely recalls an era in which the
Catholic Church was governed by Catholic pastors and not by unfaithful pastors
who abuse their authority; an era in which the Faith was preached in its
integrity to the nations and not adulterated in order to please the world; an
era in which those who hungered and thirsted for Truth were nourished and
refreshed by a liturgy that was earthly in form but divine in substance. And if
all that until yesterday was holy and good is now condemned and made an object
of scorn, then allowing any trace of it to remain is inadmissible and
constitutes an intolerable affront. Because the Tridentine Mass touches chords
of the soul that the Montinian rite does not even begin to approach.
Obviously, those who maneuver behind the scenes in the
Vatican to eliminate the Catholic Mass see decades of work compromised in the
Motu Proprio, they see a threat against the possession of so many souls whom
today they keep subjugated and their tyrannical hold over the ecclesial body
weakened. The same priests and bishops who, like me, have rediscovered that
inestimable treasure of faith and spirituality – or which by the grace of God
they have never abandoned, despite the ferocious persecution of the
post-council – are not disposed to renounce it, having found in it the soul of
their Priesthood and the nourishment of their supernatural life. And it is
disturbing, as well as scandalous, that in the face of the good that the
Tridentine Mass brings to the Church, there are those who want to ban it or
limit its celebration on the basis of specious reasons.
Yet, if we place ourselves in the shoes of the Innovators,
we understand how perfectly consistent this is with their distorted vision of
the Church, which for them is not a perfect society instituted by God for the
salvation of souls but a human society in which an authority that is corrupt
and subservient to the elite it favors steers the needs of the masses for vague
spirituality, denying the purpose for which Our Lord willed it, and in which
the good Pastors are constrained to inaction by bureaucratic shackles which
they alone obey. This impasse, this juridical dead end, means that the abuse of
authority can be imposed on subjects precisely in virtue of the fact that they
recognize the voice of Christ in it, even in the face of evidence of the
intrinsic wickedness of the orders that are given, the motivations that
determine them, and the individuals who exercise it. On the other hand, even in
the civil sphere, during the pandemic, many people obeyed absurd and harmful
rules because they were imposed on them by doctors, virologists, and
politicians who should have had the health and well-being of citizens at heart;
and many did not want to believe, not even in the face of evidence of the
criminal design, that they could directly intend the death or illness of
millions of people. It is what social psychologists call cognitive dissonance,
which induces individuals to take refuge in a comfortable niche of
irrationality rather than recognize that they are victims of a colossal fraud
and therefore having to react manfully.
So let us not ask ourselves why – in the face of the
multiplication of communities tied to the ancient liturgy, the flowering of
vocations almost exclusively in the context of the Motu Proprio, and the
increase in the frequent reception of the Sacraments and consistency of
Christian life among those who follow it – there is a desire to wickedly
trample an inalienable right and hinder the Apostolic Mass: the question is
wrong and the answer would be misleading.
Let us ask ourselves, rather, why notorious heretics and
fornicators without morals would tolerate their errors and their deplorable way
of life being placed into question by a minority of the faithful and clergy
without protectors when they have the power to prevent it. At this point we
understand well that this aversion cannot fail to be made explicit precisely by
putting an end to the Motu Proprio, abusing a usurped and perverted authority.
Even at the time of the Protestant pseudo-Reformation, tolerance towards
certain liturgical customs rooted in the people was short-lived, because those
devotions to the Virgin Mary, those hymns in Latin, those bells rung at the
Elevation – which no longer existed – necessarily had to disappear, since they
expressed a Faith that Luther’s followers had denied. And it would be absurd to
hope that there could be a peaceful coexistence between the Novus and Vetus
Ordo, as well as between the Catholic Mass and the Lutheran Lord’s Supper,
given the ontological incompatibility between them. On closer inspection, at
least the defeat of the Vetus hoped for by the supporters of the Novus is
consistent with their principles, just as the defeat of the Novus by the Vetus
should likewise be hoped for. They are mistaken therefore who believe that it
is possible to hold together two opposing forms of Catholic worship in the name
of a plurality of liturgical expression that is the daughter of the conciliar
mentality no more and no less than it is the daughter of the hermeneutic of
continuity.
The modus operandi of the Innovators emerges once again in
this operation against the Motu Proprio: first some of the most fanatical
opponents of the traditional liturgy call for the abrogation of Summorum
Pontificum as a provocation, calling the ancient Mass “divisive.” Then the
Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith asks the Ordinaries to respond to a
questionnaire (here), the answers to which are practically pre-packaged (the
Bishop’s career depends on the way he goes along with what he reports to the
Holy See, because the content of his responses to the questionnaire will also
be made known to the Congregation of Bishops). Then, with a nonchalant air,
during a closed-door meeting with the members of the Italian Episcopate,
Bergoglio says that he is concerned about seminarians “who seem good, but are
rigid” (here) and the spread of the traditional liturgy, always reiterating
that the conciliar liturgical reform is irreversible. Furthermore, he appoints
a bitter enemy of the Vetus Ordo as Prefect of Divine Worship who will be an
ally in the application of any future restrictions. Finally, we learn that
Cardinals Parolin and Ouellet are among the first to desire this downsizing of
the Motu Proprio (here). This obviously leads “conservative” Prelates to come
scurrying in defense of the present system of the co-existence of the two
forms, ordinary and extraordinary, giving Francis the opportunity to show that
he is the prudent moderator of two opposing currents by moving towards “only” a
limitation of Summorum Pontificum rather than its total abrogation: which – as
we know – was exactly what he was aiming for from the start of his operation.
Regardless of the final outcome, the deus ex machina of this
predictable play is, as always, Bergoglio, who is even ready to take credit for
a gesture of clement indulgence towards conservatives as well as unloading the
responsibilities for a restrictive application onto the new Prefect, Archbishop
Arthur Roche, and his followers. Thus, in the event of a choral protest of the
faithful and an unhinged reaction by the Prefect or other Prelates, once again
Bergoglio will enjoy the clash between progressives and traditionalists, since
he will then have excellent arguments to affirm that the coexistence of the two
forms of the Roman Rite causes divisions in the Church and that it is thus more
prudent to return to the pax montiniana, that is, the total proscription of the
Mass of all time.
I exhort my Brothers in the Episcopate, Priests, and laity
to strenuously defend their right to the Catholic liturgy solemnly sanctioned
by the Saint Pius V’s Bull Quo Primum, and by means of it to defend the Holy
Church and the Papacy, which have both been exposed to discredit and ridicule
by the Pastors themselves. The question of the Motu Proprio is not in the least
negotiable, because it reaffirms the legitimacy of a rite that has never been
abrogated nor is able to be abrogated. Furthermore, in addition to the certain
damage that airing these novelties will cause to souls and to the certain
advantage that will come from them to the Devil and his servants, there is also
added the indecorous rudeness displayed to Benedict XVI, who is still living,
by Bergoglio, who ought to know that the authority the Roman Pontiff exercises
over the Church is vicarious and that the power which he holds comes to him
from Our Lord Jesus Christ, the One Head of the Mystical Body. Abusing the
Apostolic authority and the power of the Holy Keys for a purpose opposed to
that for which they were instituted by the Lord represents an unheard-of
offense against the Majesty of God, a dishonor for the Church, and a sin for
which he will have to answer for to the One whose Vicar he is. And whoever
refuses the title of Vicar of Christ knows that by doing so the legitimacy of
his authority also fails.
It is not acceptable for the supreme authority of the Church
to allow itself to cancel, in a disturbing operation of cancel culture in a
religious key, the inheritance it has received from its Fathers; nor is it permissible
to consider as being outside of the Church those who are not prepared to accept
the privation of the Mass and the Sacraments celebrated in the form that has
molded almost two thousand years of Saints. The Church is not an agency in
which the marketing office decides to cancel old products from the catalog and
propose new ones in their stead according to customer requests. Imposing the
liturgical revolution with force on priests and the faithful in the name of
obedience to the Council, stripping away from them the very soul of the
Christian life and replacing it with a rite that the Freemason Bugnini copied
from Cranmer’s Book of Common Prayer, was already painful. That abuse,
partially healed by Benedict XVI with the Motu Proprio, cannot be repeated in
any way now in the presence of elements that are all largely in favor of the
liberalization of the ancient liturgy. If one really wanted to help the people
of God in this crisis, the reformed liturgy should have been abolished, which
in fifty years has caused more damage than Calvinism has done.
We do not know if the feared restrictions that the Holy See
intends to make to the Motu Proprio will affect diocesan priests, or if they
will also affect the Institutes whose members celebrate the ancient rite
exclusively. I fear, however, as I have already had the occasion to say in the
past, that it will be precisely on the latter that the demolishing action of
the Innovators will be unleashed, who can perhaps tolerate the ceremonial
aspects of the Tridentine liturgy but absolutely do not accept adherence to the
doctrinal and ecclesiological structure that they imply, which contrasts
sharply with the conciliar deviations that the Innovators want to impose
without exception. This is why it is to be feared that these Institutes will be
asked to make some form of submission to the conciliar liturgy, for example by
making the celebration of the Novus Ordo mandatory at least occasionally, as
diocesan priests must already do. In this way, whoever makes use of the Motu
Proprio will be constrained not only to an implicit acceptance of the reformed
liturgy but also to a public acceptance of the new rite and its doctrinal mens.
And whoever celebrates the two forms of the rite will find himself ipso facto
discredited above all in his consistency, passing off his liturgical choices as
a merely aesthetic – I would say almost choreographic – in fact, depriving him
of any sort of critical judgment towards the Montinian Mass and the mens that
gives it form: because he will find himself forced to celebrate that Mass. This
is a malicious and cunning operation, in which an authority that abuses its
power delegitimizes those who oppose it, on the one hand by granting the
ancient rite, but on the other hand making it a merely aesthetic question and
obligating an insidious bi-ritualism and an even more insidious adherence to
two opposing and contrasting doctrinal approaches. But how can a priest be
asked to celebrate a venerable and holy rite in which he finds perfect
coherence between doctrine, ceremony, and life at one moment, and at the next a
falsified rite that winks at heretics and contemptibly keeps silent about what
the other proudly proclaims?
Let us pray, therefore: let us pray that the Divine Majesty,
to which we render perfect worship celebrating the venerable ancient rite, will
deign to enlighten the Sacred Pastors so that they desist from their purpose
and indeed promote the Tridentine Mass for the good of Holy Church and for the
glory of the Most Holy Trinity. Let us invoke the Holy Patrons of the Mass –
Saint Gregory the Great, Saint Pius V, and Saint Pius X in primis, and all the
Saints who over the course of the centuries have celebrated the Holy Sacrifice
in the form that has been handed down to us, so that we may faithfully preserve
it. May their intercession before the throne of God beg for the preservation of
the Mass of all time, thanks to which we are sanctified, strengthened in
virtue, and able to resist the attacks of the Evil One. And if ever the sins of
the men of the Church should merit for us a punishment so severe as that
prophesied by Daniel, let us prepare to descend into the catacombs, offering
this trial for the conversion of the Shepherds.
+ Carlo Maria Viganò, Archbishop
