Just after writing an Open Letter to President Donald Trump who acknowledged and thanked him and has no doubt caused Bergoglio to have a screaming fit, has now unloaded on the truth of the evil fraud of the Second Vatican Council and his own past defense of it.
He remains in hiding.
Letter of Archbishop Carlo Maria Viganò
9 June 2020
Saint Ephrem
I read with
great interest the essay of His Excellency Athanasius Schneider published on
LifeSiteNews on June 1, subsequently translated into Italian by Chiesa e post
concilio, entitled There is no divine positive will or natural right to the
diversity of religions. His Excellency’s study summarizes, with the clarity
that distinguishes the words of those who speak according to Christ, the
objections against the presumed legitimacy of the exercise of religious freedom
that the Second Vatican Council theorized, contradicting the testimony of
Sacred Scripture and the voice of Tradition, as well as the Catholic
Magisterium which is the faithful guardian of both.
The merit of His
Excellency’s essay lies first of all in its grasp of the causal link between
the principles enunciated or implied by Vatican II and their logical consequent
effect in the doctrinal, moral, liturgical, and disciplinary deviations that
have arisen and progressively developed to the present day. The monstrum
generated in modernist circles could have at first been misleading, but it has
grown and strengthened, so that today it shows itself for what it really is in
its subversive and rebellious nature. The creature that was conceived at that
time is always the same, and it would be naive to think that its perverse
nature could change. Attempts to correct the conciliar excesses – invoking the
hermeneutic of continuity – have proven unsuccessful: Naturam expellas furca,
tamen usque recurret [Drive nature out with a pitchfork; she will come right
back] (Horace, Epist. I,10,24). The Abu Dhabi Declaration – and, as Bishop
Schneider rightly observes, its first symptoms in the pantheon of Assisi – “was
conceived in the spirit of the Second Vatican Council” as Bergoglio proudly
confirms.
This “spirit of
the Council” is the license of legitimacy that the innovators use to oppose
their critics, without realizing that it is precisely confessing that legacy
that confirms not only the erroneousness of the present declarations but also
the heretical matrix that supposedly justifies them. On closer inspection,
never in the history of the Church has a Council presented itself as such a
historic event that it was different from any other council: there was never
talk of a “spirit of the Council of Nicea” or the “spirit of the Council of
Ferrara-Florence,” even less the “spirit of the Council of Trent,” just as we
never had a “post-conciliar” era after Lateran IV or Vatican I.
The reason is
obvious: those Councils were all, indiscriminately, the expression in unison of
the voice of Holy Mother Church, and for this very reason the voice of Our Lord
Jesus Christ. Significantly, those who maintain the novelty of Vatican II also
adhere to the heretical doctrine that places the God of the Old Testament in
opposition to the God of the New Testament, as if there could be contradiction
between the Divine Persons of the Most Holy Trinity. Evidently this opposition
that is almost gnostic or cabbalistic is functional to the legitimization of a new
subject that is voluntarily different and opposed to the Catholic Church.
Doctrinal errors almost always betray some sort of Trinitarian heresy, and thus
it is by returning to the proclamation of Trinitarian dogma that the doctrines
that oppose it can be defeated: ut in confessione veræ sempiternæque deitatis,
et in Personis proprietas, et in essentia unitas, et in majestate adoretur
æqualitas: Professing the true and eternal Divinity, we adore what is proper to
each Person, their unity in substance, and their equality in majesty.
Bishop Schneider
cites several canons of the Ecumenical Councils that propose, in his opinion,
doctrines that today are difficult to accept, such as for example the
obligation to distinguish Jews by their clothing, or the ban on Christians
serving Muslim or Jewish masters. Among these examples there is also the
requirement of the traditio instrumentorum declared by the Council of Florence,
which was later corrected by Pius XII’s Apostolic Constitution Sacramentum
Ordinis.
Bishop
Athanasius comments: “One may rightly hope and believe that a future Pope or
Ecumenical Council will correct the erroneous statement made” by Vatican II.
This appears to me to be an argument that, although made with the best of
intentions, undermines the Catholic edifice from its foundation. If in fact we
admit that there may be Magisterial acts that, due to a changed sensitivity,
are susceptible to abrogation, modification, or different interpretation with
the passage of time, we inevitably fall under the condemnation of the Decree
Lamentabili, and we end up offering justification to those who, recently,
precisely on the basis of that erroneous assumption, declared that the death
penalty “does not conform to the Gospel,” and thus amended the Catechism of the
Catholic Church. And, by the same principle, in a certain way we could maintain
that the words of Blessed Pius IX in Quanta Cura were in some manner corrected
by Vatican II, just as His Excellency hopes could happen for Dignitatis
Humanae.
Among the examples
he presents, none of them is in itself gravely erroneous or heretical: the fact
that the Council of Florence declared that the traditio instrumentorum was
necessary for the validity of Orders did not in any way compromise priestly
ministry in the Church, leading her to confer Orders invalidly. Nor does it
seem to me that one can affirm that this aspect, however important, led to
doctrinal errors on the part of the faithful, something which instead has
occurred only with the most recent Council. And when in the course of history
various heresies spread, the Church always intervened promptly to condemn them,
as happened at the time of the Synod of Pistoia in 1786, which was in some way
anticipatory of Vatican II, especially where it abolished Communion outside of
Mass, introduced the vernacular tongue, and abolished the prayers of the Canon
said submissa voce; but even more so when it theorized about the basis of
episcopal collegiality, reducing the primacy of the pope to a mere ministerial
function. Re-reading the acts of that Synod leaves us amazed at the literal
formulation of the same errors that we find later, in increased form, in the
Council presided over by John XXIII and Paul VI. On the other hand, just as the
Truth comes from God, so error is fed by and feeds on the Adversary, who hates
the Church of Christ and her heart: the Holy Mass and the Most Holy Eucharist.
There comes a
moment in our life when, through the disposition of Providence, we are faced
with a decisive choice for the future of the Church and for our eternal
salvation. I speak of the choice between understanding the error into which
practically all of us have fallen, almost always without evil intentions, and
wanting to continue to look the other way or justify ourselves.
We have also
committed the error, among others, of considering our interlocutors as people
who, despite the difference of their ideas and their faith, were still
motivated by good intentions and who would be willing to correct their errors
if they could open up to our Faith. Together with numerous Council Fathers, we
thought of ecumenism as a process, an invitation that calls dissidents to the
one Church of Christ, idolaters and pagans to the one True God, and the Jewish
people to the promised Messiah. But from the moment it was theorized in the
conciliar commissions, ecumenism was configured in a way that was in direct
opposition to the doctrine previously expressed by the Magisterium.
We have thought
that certain excesses were only an exaggeration of those who allowed themselves
to be swept up in enthusiasm for novelty; we sincerely believed that seeing
John Paul II surrounded by charmers-healers , buddhist monks, imams, rabbis,
protestant pastors and other heretics gave proof of the Church’s ability to
summon people together in order to ask God for peace, while the authoritative
example of this action initiated a deviant succession of pantheons that were
more or less official, even to the point of seeing Bishops carrying the unclean
idol of the pachamama on their shoulders, sacrilegiously concealed under the
pretext of being a representation of sacred motherhood.
But if the image
of an infernal divinity was able to enter into Saint Peter’s, this is part of a
cresecendo which the other side foresaw from the beginning. Numerous practicing
Catholics, and perhaps also a majority of Catholic clergy, are today convinced
that the Catholic Faith is no longer necessary for eternal salvation; they
believe that the One and Triune God revealed to our fathers is the same as the
god of Mohammed. Already twenty years ago we heard this repeated from pulpits
and episcopal cathedrae, but recently we hear it being affirmed with emphasis
even from the highest Throne.
We know well
that, invoking the saying in Scripture Littera enim occidit, spiritus autem
vivificat [The letter brings death, but the spirit gives life (2 Cor 3:6)], the
progressives and modernists astutely knew how to hide equivocal expressions in
the conciliar texts, which at the time appeared harmless to most but that today
are revealed in their subversive value. It is the method employed in the use of
the phrase subsistit in: saying a half-truth not so much as not to offend the
interlocutor (assuming that is licit to silence the truth of God out of respect
for His creature), but with the intention of being able to use the half-error
that would be instantly dispelled if the entire truth were proclaimed. Thus
“Ecclesia Christi subsistit in Ecclesia Catholica” does not specify the
identity of the two, but the subsistence of one in the other and, for
consistency, also in other churches: here is the opening to interconfessional
celebrations, ecumenical prayers, and the inevitable end of any need for the
Church in the order of salvation, in her unicity, and in her missionary nature.
Some may
remember that the first ecumenical gatherings were held with the schismatics of
the East, and very prudently with other Protestant sects. Apart from Germany,
Holland, and Switzerland, in the beginning the countries of Catholic tradition
did not welcome mixed celebrations with Protestant pastors and Catholic priests
together. I recall that at the time there was talk of removing the penultimate
doxology from the Veni Creator so as not to offend the Orthodox, who do not
accept the Filioque. Today we hear the surahs of the Koran recited from the
pulpits of our churches, we see an idol of wood adored by religious sisters and
brothers, we hear Bishops disavow what up until yesterday seemed to us to be
the most plausible excuses of so many extremisms. What the world wants, at the
instigation of Masonry and its infernal tentacles, is to create a universal
religion that is humanitarian and ecumenical, from which the jealous God whom
we adore is banished. And if this is what the world wants, any step in the same
direction by the Church is an unfortunate choice which will turn against those
who believe that they can jeer at God. The hopes of the Tower of Babel cannot
be brought back to life by a globalist plan that has as its goal the
cancellation of the Catholic Church, in order to replace it with a
confederation of idolaters and heretics united by environmentalism and
universal brotherhood. There can be no brotherhood except in Christ, and only
in Christ: qui non est mecum, contra me est.
It is
disconcerting that few people are aware of this race towards the abyss, and
that few realize the responsibility of the highest levels of the Church in
supporting these anti-Christian ideologies, as if the Church’s leaders want to
guarantee that they have a place and a role on the bandwagon of aligned
thought. And it is surprising that people persist in not wanting to investigate
the root causes of the present crisis, limiting themselves to deploring the
present excesses as if they were not the logical and inevitable consequence of
a plan orchestrated decades ago. If the pachamama could be adored in a church,
we owe it to Dignitatis Humanae. If we have a liturgy that is Protestantized
and at times even paganized, we owe it to the revolutionary action of Msgr.
Annibale Bugnini and to the post-conciliar reforms. If the Abu Dhabi
Declaration was signed, we owe it to Nostra Aetate. If we have come to the
point of delegating decisions to the Bishops’ Conferences – even in grave
violation of the Concordat, as happened in Italy – we owe it to collegiality,
and to its updated version, synodality.
Thanks to
synodality, we found ourselves with Amoris Laetitia having to look for a way to
prevent what was obvious to everyone from appearing: that this document,
prepared by an impressive organizational machine, intended to legitimize
Communion for the divorced and cohabiting, just as Querida Amazonia will be
used to legitimize women priests (as in the recent case of an “episcopal
vicaress” in Freiburg) and the abolition of Sacred Celibacy. The Prelates who
sent the Dubia to Francis, in my opinion, demonstrated the same pious
ingenuousness: thinking that Bergoglio, when confronted with the reasonably
argued contestation of the error, would understand, correct the heterodox
points, and ask for forgiveness.
The Council was
used to legitimize the most aberrant doctrinal deviations, the most daring
liturgical innovations, and the most unscrupulous abuses, all while Authority
remained silent. This Council was so exalted that it was presented as the only
legitimate reference for Catholics, clergy, and bishops, obscuring and
connoting with a sense of contempt the doctrine that the Church had always
authoritatively taught, and prohibiting the perennial liturgy that for
millennia had nourished the faith of an uninterrupted line of faithful,
martyrs, and saints. Among other things, this Council has proven to be the only
one that has caused so many interpretative problems and so many contradictions
with respect to the preceding Magisterium, while there is not one other council
– from the Council of Jerusalem to Vatican I – that does not harmonize
perfectly with the entire Magisterium or that needs so much interpretation.
I confess it
with serenity and without controversy: I was one of the many people who, despite
many perplexities and fears which today have proven to be absolutely
legitimate, trusted the authority of the Hierarchy with unconditional
obedience. In reality, I think that many people, including myself, did not
initially consider the possibility that there could be a conflict between
obedience to an order of the Hierarchy and fidelity to the Church herself. What
made tangible this unnatural, indeed I would even say perverse, separation
between the Hierarchy and the Church, between obedience and fidelity, was
certainly this most recent Pontificate.
In the Room of
Tears adjacent to the Sistine Chapel, while Msgr. Guido Marini prepared the
white rocchetto, mozzetta, and stole for the first appearance of the “newly
elected” Pope, Bergoglio exclaimed: “Sono finite le carnevalate! [The carnivals
are over!],” scornfully refusing the insignia that all the Popes up until then
had humbly accepted as the distinguishing garb of the Vicar of Christ. But
those words contained truth, even if it was spoken involuntarily: on March 13,
2013, the mask fell from the conspirators, who were finally free of the
inconvenient presence of Benedict XVI and brazenly proud of having finally
succeeded in promoting a Cardinal who embodied their ideals, their way of
revolutionizing the Church, of making doctrine malleable, morals adaptable,
liturgy adulterable, and discipline disposable. And all this was considered, by
the protagonists of the conspiracy themselves, the logical consequence and
obvious application of Vatican II, which according to them had been weakened by
the critiques expressed by Benedict XVI. The greatest affront of that
Pontificate was liberally permitting the celebration of the venerated
Tridentine Liturgy, the legitimacy of which was finally recognized, disproving
fifty years of its illegitimate ostracization. It is no accident that
Bergoglio’s supporters are the same people who saw the Council as the first
event of a new church, prior to which there was an old religion with an old
liturgy.
It is no
accident: what these men affirm with impunity, scandalizing moderates, is what
Catholics also believe, namely: that despite all the efforts of the hermeneutic
of continuity which shipwrecked miserably at the first confrontation with the
reality of the present crisis, it is undeniable that from Vatican II onwards a
parallel church was built, superimposed over and diametrically opposed to the
true Church of Christ. This parallel church progressively obscured the divine
institution founded by Our Lord in order to replace it with a spurious entity,
corresponding to the desired universal religion that was first theorized by
Masonry. Expressions like new humanism, universal fraternity, dignity of man,
are the watchwords of philanthropic humanitarianism which denies the true God,
of horizontal solidarity of vague spiritualist inspiration and of ecumenical
irenism that the Church unequivocally condemns. “Nam et loquela tua manifestum
te facit [Even your speech gives you away]” (Mt 26, 73): this very frequent,
even obsessive recourse to the same vocabulary of the enemy betrays adherence
to the ideology he inspires; while on the other hand the systematic
renunciation of the clear, unequivocal and crystalline language of the Church
confirms the desire to detach itself not only from the Catholic form but even
from its substance.
What we have for
years heard enunciated, vaguely and without clear connotations, from the
highest Throne, we then find elaborated in a true and proper manifesto in the
supporters of the present Pontificate: the democratization of the Church, no
longer through the collegiality invented by Vatican II but by the synodal path
inaugurated by the Synod on the Family; the demolition of the ministerial
priesthood through its weakening with exceptions to ecclesiastical celibacy and
the introduction of feminine figures with quasi-sacerdotal duties; the silent
passage from ecumenism directed towards separated brethren to a form of
pan-ecumenism that reduces the Truth of the One Triune God to the level of
idolatries and the most infernal superstitions; the acceptance of an
interreligious dialogue that presupposes religious relativism and excludes
missionary proclamation; the demythologization of the Papacy, pursued by
Bergoglio as a theme of his pontificate; the progressive legitimization of all
that is politically correct: gender theory, sodomy, homosexual marriage,
Malthusian doctrines, ecologism, immigrationism... If we do not recognize that
the roots of these deviations are found in the principles laid down by the
Council, it will be impossible to find a cure: if our diagnosis persists,
against all the evidence, in excluding the initial pathology, we cannot
prescribe a suitable therapy.
This operation
of intellectual honesty requires a great humility, first of all in recognizing
that for decades we have been led into error, in good faith, by people who,
established in authority, have not known how to watch over and guard the flock
of Christ: some for the sake of living quietly, some because of having too many
commitments, some out of convenience, and finally some in bad faith or even
malicious intent. These last ones who have betrayed the Church must be
identified, taken aside, invited to amend and, if they do not repent they must
be expelled from the sacred enclosure. This is how a true Shepherd acts, who
has the well-being of the sheep at heart and who gives his life for them; we
have had and still have far too many mercenaries, for whom the consent of the
enemies of Christ is more important than fidelity to his Spouse.
Just as I
honestly and serenely obeyed questionable orders sixty years ago, believing
that they represented the loving voice of the Church, so today with equal
serenity and honesty I recognize that I have been deceived. Being coherent
today by persevering in error would represent a wretched choice and would make
me an accomplice in this fraud. Claiming a clarity of judgment from the
beginning would not be honest: we all knew that the Council would be more or
less a revolution, but we could not have imagined that it would prove to be so
devastating, even for the work of those who should have prevented it. And if up
until Benedict XVI we could still imagine that the coup d’état of Vatican II
(which Cardinal Suenens called “the 1789 of the Church”) had experienced a
slowdown, in these last few years even the most ingenuous among us have
understood that silence for fear of causing a schism, the effort to repair
papal documents in a Catholic sense in order to remedy their intended
ambiguity, the appeals and dubia made to Francis that remained eloquently
unanswered, are all a confirmation of the situation of the most serious
apostasy to which the highest levels of the Hierarchy are exposed, while the
Christian people and the clergy feel hopelessly abandoned and that they are
regarded by the bishops almost with annoyance.
The Abu Dhabi
Declaration is the ideological manifesto of an idea of peace and cooperation
between religions that could have some possibility of being tolerated if it
came from pagans who are deprived of the light of Faith and the fire of
Charity. But whoever has the grace of being a Child of God in virtue of Holy
Baptism should be horrified at the idea of being able to construct a
blasphemous modern version of the Tower of Babel, seeking to bring together the
one true Church of Christ, heir to the promises made to the Chosen People, with
those who deny the Messiah and with those who consider the very idea of a
Triune God to be blasphemous. The love of God knows no measure and does not
tolerate compromises, otherwise it simply is not Charity, without which it is
not possible to remain in Him: qui manet in caritate, in Deo manet, et Deus in
eo [whoever remains in love remains in God and God in him] (1 Jn 4:16).
It matters
little whether it is a declaration or a Magisterial document: we know well that
the subversive mens of the innovators plays games with these sort of quibbles
in order to spread error. And we know well that the purpose of these ecumenical
and interreligious initiatives is not to convert those who are far from the one
Church to Christ, but to divert and corrupt those who still hold the Catholic
Faith, leading them to believe that it is desirable to have a great universal
religion that brings together the three great Abrahamic religions “in a single
house”: this is the triumph of the Masonic plan in preparation for the kingdom
of the Antichrist!
Whether this
materializes through a dogmatic Bull, a declaration, or an interview with
Scalfari in La Repubblica matters little, because Bergoglio’s supporters wait
for his words as a signal to which they respond with a series of initiatives
that have already been prepared and organized for some time. And if Bergoglio
does not follow the directions he has received, ranks of theologians and clergy
are ready to lament over the “solitude of Pope Francis” as a premise for his
resignation (I think for example of Massimo Faggioli in one of his recent
essays). On the other hand, it would not be the first time that they use the
Pope when he goes along with their plans and get rid of him or attack him as
soon as he does not.
Last Sunday, the
Church celebrated the Most Holy Trinity, and in the Breviary it offers us the
recitation of the Symbolum Athanasianum, now outlawed by the conciliar liturgy
and already reduced to only two occasions in the liturgical reform of 1962. The
first words of that now-disappeared Symbolum remain inscribed in letters of
gold: “Quicumque vult salvus esse, ante omnia opus est ut teneat Catholicam
fidem; quam nisi quisque integram inviolatamque servaverit, absque dubio in
aeternum peribit – Whosoever wishes to be saved, before all things it is
necessary that he hold the Catholic faith; For unless a person shall have kept
this faith whole and inviolate, without doubt he shall eternally perish.”
+ Carlo Maria
Viganò
Translated by
Giuseppe Pellegrino
