#193
Interview with Aldo Maria Valli
July 14, 2023
Your Excellency, some say that among these latest cardinals could be Francis' successor. Do you agree?
I doubt that the College of Cardinals - once the Sacred College - will want to elect a conservative or even moderately progressive pope; rather, it is clear that the upcoming Conclave will be a provocation. Almost all the Cardinals were created "in the image and likeness" of Bergoglio and they will be the ones to choose his successor-perhaps him alive, given the new fashion for Renunciation. If the electors had even a modicuм of love for the Church, they should make themselves docile to the action of the Holy Spirit; but we know that this congerie of heretics and immoral people - with rare exceptions - has no intention of letting the Lord do that, for if they did it would mark their own condemnation. But the good Lord sometimes reserves unexpected surprises.
What is the logic followed by Bergoglio in his appointments?
Bergoglio's logic is most evident: he wants to create the premises for a schism, which in words he denies and deplores, but which he has been preparing for some time. Bergoglio wants to separate, in one way or another, the good part of the faithful and clerics from the official Church; and to achieve this, to get them to turn away from the modernist Sanhedrin, he has placed in the key posts of the Roman Curia those people who guarantee the worst management of the Dicasteries entrusted to them, with the worst possible result and the greatest damage to the ecclesial body.
The progressive restrictions on the celebration of the ancient Liturgy serve to confine conservatives to hunting grounds, only to channel them to the St. Pius X Fraternity, as soon as the Synod brings to their tragic consequences the doctrinal, moral and disciplinary changes that are in the pipeline and cause an exodus of Catholics to what, after the suppression or normalization of the Ecclesia Dei Institutes, will become the "monopolist" of Tradition. But at that point-when, that is, traditional Catholics have migrated into the Fraternity and its leaders believe they have achieved a victory over the competition of the suppressed Summorum Pontificuм-a new intolerable provocation will force at least a parade of the St. Pius X Fraternity to distance itself from Bergoglian Rome, sanctioning the "excommunication" of traditionalism, no longer represented within the official Church, assuming it ever was. That is why in my opinion it is important to preserve a certain parcelization, so as to make the malicious maneuver of ousting traditional Catholics from the ecclesial body more complex.
Diaconesses, abolition of ecclesiastical celibacy, blessing of ɧoɱosɛҳųαƖ couples, tolerance for polygamy, gender theory, LGBTQ ideology, ecological pantheism à la Teilhard de Chardin: these are the points of confrontation that Begoglio is deliberately opening between the conservative (but not traditional, already distant or out of touch) wing and the ultra-progressive wing. His aim is to create the clash, let it grow, encourage with appointments and promotions the proponents of the most extreme instances, and then witness the predictable reaction of condemnation of the few remaining good bishops, priests and religious, who before Bergoglio's pitfall will have two choices: return to suffer in silence or stand up, denounce the betrayal of Catholic Truth and be forced to leave their posts and exercise their ministry in hiding or at least in apparent canonical irregularity.
Once the inconvenient pastors are ostracized and the conservative faithful removed, the Bergoglian hierarchy will be able to exercise full control over clergy and people, certain of the obedience of those left behind. And this sect, which of Catholic will have only the name (and perhaps not even that anymore), will totally eclipse the Bride of the Lamb, in the paradox of a treacherous and corrupt Hierarchy abusing Christ's authority to destroy His Church.
This is what the principals of Bergoglio and his minions would like, but the sensus fidei of God's Holy People could lead many to reject this fraud and take part in an action of firm resistance and determined denunciation. The Lord will allow the Church to appear dead, for the forces of the underworld to believe they have defeated it, because He wants the Mystical Body to follow the way of the Cross and Burial, like His divine Head, if He wants to join Him in the glory of the Resurrection.
The College of Cardinals, as desired by Francis, is said to represent the universal Church: really?
If we were to submit an anonymous questionnaire to the eminent members of the College of Cardinals, in which they have to answer "true" or "false" to a series of propositions on which the Magisterium has already infallibly expressed itself, we would discover to our horror that the absolute majority, if not almost all, of the Cardinals are not Catholics, tout court. And in the number of those I believe we would also find some conservatives. The notorious heresy of many Prelates is confirmed by their own statements, before which Bergoglio has been very careful not to open his mouth, as he knows how to do without too many scruples in regard to those few Prelates who have remained faithful. The current College of Cardinals is the quintessence of the Bergoglian Church: its members represent the capillary spread of modernism and conciliar progressivism in the world. Certainly, however, they are not an expression of the universal Church: first, because they are not part of it except only apparently, being precisely heretics; and second, because by God's grace the faithful and clergy are learning-after sixty years of horrors, for ten even more obvious ones-to not take for granted everything that comes out of the mouth of the pope, bishop or parish priest. Thus these, after preaching disobedience to the true Magisterium, find themselves suffering the consequences of a disobedience this time good and rightful, because in obedience to Christ.
We are witnessing the systematic erasure of a whole part of the Church-identifiable geographically, but also ideologically-still remaining Catholic: some American bishops, with their dioceses; many African bishops, faithful especially on moral issues; and an ever-growing number of parish priests, priests, religious men and women who are realizing that they are the next victims of the purges of Santa Marta - the case of the Monasteries of Pienza and Marradi have not gone unnoticed - and are preparing for alternative forms of ministry, uniting, confronting, organizing. This is the purpose of the Exsurge Domine association (www.exsurgedomine.org) that was formed under my patronage and is dedicated to helping and organizing the resistance of clerics and religious persecuted by the Argentine junta.
Why does Francis continue to ignore locations like Milan, Turin, Venice, Genoa, Naples?
He does so because he wants to take away the moral prestige of certain Episcopal Sees, traditionally cardinals, for the benefit of a management of appointments to the Porpora marked by a blatant ideological nepotism. All of Bergoglio's friends, and friends of friends, have their careers paved, even at the cost of stubbornly denying their scandals, their doctrinal errors, their obvious unworthiness or incompetence. They like "shepherds who reek of the smell of sheep," even if they are mercenaries and if the sheep have no desire to be led by them. Which reveals a lack of human virtues even more disheartening than the total absence of theological virtues. I have to say that not naming the Archbishop of Milan a Cardinal ends up not being a disgrace after all; but it is regrettable that the Patriarch of Venice, precisely because of his very moderate conservatism, is not recognized with the Purple that was all his predecessors'. The message for aspirants to the Vatican cursus honorum is to pander to power with courteous servility, under penalty of commissioning, Apostolic Visitation, transfer or even dismissal without new appointments (see Burke and Gaenswein, among others).
Tucho Fernández will be a cardinal. Until recently it seemed like a joke.
It remains a joke, because what has been happening for ten years now pertains to farce rather than tragedy. All that the Santa Marta sect gives birth to is a fraud: the supposed "democratization" of the Synod on Synodality, in which the questions that are submitted to local communities are formulated in such a way as to obtain the desired answers, always according to a precise subversive design that starts from Bergoglio himself. The involvement of women in the governance of the Church is a lie: this is contrary to the will of Our Lord, and no power, however tyrannical and authoritarian it may be, can change the matter of the Sacrament of Orders. The scandalous winks of Prelates and clerics to the vices and lifestyles of the so-called "LGBTQ community" are a deception: they are using the weaknesses of lay people led astray by woke ideology to legitimize their personal sins, which sooner or later emerge in their embarrassing prosaicness. Fernández himself, who has been courting Bergoglio for years with public attestations of esteem, of confidence in his reforming capacity, of certainty of the inexorability of his "prophetic" (in the conciliar neo-language, a synonym for "heretical") action as the Church's supreme Pastor, is also a constructed character.
Fernández stands to Bergoglio as Zelenskyj stands to Biden: they are puppets in the hands of puppets. The strings are always pulled by that same subversive elite that links the White House to the Vatican, Podesta's emails to Ratzinger's abdication, the deep state to the deep church, Nancy Peℓσѕι to "Father" James Martin sj.
Surely Fernández was put in charge of the former Holy Office to do nothing of what the Prefect of this very important, now downgraded Dicastery should be doing. He will do exactly the opposite: he will encourage the heresies and moral deviations of the theologians in vogue today, of the bishops eager to move to the Santa Marta hotel, of the proponents of gender; and instead he will act with ruthless firmness for the priest who criticizes a heretical statement by Bergoglio or one of his protégés, for the bishop who denounces the deviations of the Synod, for the seminary professor who still teaches the magisterial acts prior to Vatican II. We shall see how far this Fernández's zeal will go in order to please his sponsor, and how far those who should be targeted by the Pachamama Taliban will endure these attacks without replying or even simply ignoring them.
Are the cardinals wanted by Francis really all yes-men or is there anyone capable of autonomy of judgment?
In order to be Cardinals today, it is necessary to have what our elders used to call "hair on the stomach": for sixty years the purges have continued relentlessly, and even some of the Most Eminent created by Benedict XVI have proven to fall completely short of the expectations of the conservative faithful, and not infrequently opportunists or cowards. Of the brave - shall we say - Dubia's there are not many survivors left, who witnessed things at the last Conclave that they do not publicly denounce, however. So, yes: they are all yesmen; which, for those who should defend the Holy Church usque ad effusionem sanguinis, is inconsistent to say the least.
The present crisis is the punishment with which the Lord punishes the Church and the world for the unfaithfulness of His ministers and the rulers of nations. We look upon this scourge as the stern gesture of a Father too long offended but who still wants to save us. Conversion is the only possible way: let us return to God, before Mercy yields to Justice.
July 14, 2023
S. Bonaventuræ Episcopi Confessoris et Ecclesiæ Doctoris.
The Pope ought to be the faithful guardian and teacher of the Deposit of Faith, Divine Revelation, Scripture and Tradition. That is his sacred duty. But can he be unfaithful, and can we know if he is?
The answer is: yes, he can be unfaithful, when not teaching infallibly. And we most certainly can know. Every Catholic should know this. Not everything the Pope says when he teaches, even if he is teaching the universal Church, even if he is teaching on faith and morals, is infallible. He must also invoke his Supreme Apostolic Authority. Otherwise, in his Ordinary Magisterium, he must teach in accord with Tradition (=UOM).
Cardinal Torquemada OP (1388-1468) explained it very nicely: To know in what cases he is to be obeyed and what not, it is said in the Acts of the Apostles: 'One ought to obey God rather than men'; therefore, were the Pope to command anything against Holy Scripture, or the articles of the Faith, or the truths of the Sacraments, or the commands of the natural or the divine law, he ought not to be obeyed, but in such commands, to be passed over, ignored." - Summa de Ecclesia, p47-48
This has always been Catholic teaching and is even clearer now since the First Vatican Council. If you consider carefully the quotes provided by MP above, they absolutely do not preclude resisting the Pope who is teaching error and trying to destroy the Church. It is a total perversion of their meaning to make them say that a pope is to be followed in all things, or can be judged to be not pope if he errs:
Quote 1: To adhere loyally to the Pope does not mean false obedience. True loyalty requires true obedience, and even resisting the Pope to his face, as St Paul did St Peter, if required.
Quote 2: Refusing obedience to an evil command of one in authority is not denying he has the authority and therefore not schism.
Quote 3: Again, resisting the evil exercise of authority is not denying the authority exists. The R&R position does not deny the universal jurisdiction of the Pope, but it refuses to confuse it with infallibility as the Sedevacantist advocates so often do.
If you recognize him as pope you have to obey:
(https://i.imgur.com/jV5qPm2.png)
Could Non-Infallible Papal Teaching be Heretical? (https://novusordowatch.org/2023/03/could-fallible-teaching-be-heretical/)
March 31, 2023
Answering a common misconception…
Could Non-Infallible Papal Teaching be Heretical?
(https://novusordowatch.org/wp-content/uploads/wondering-shutterstock_1454442374_1189462978.png)
A lot of people in the theological camp we call the “recognize-and-resist” position believe that whatever teaching from the Roman Pontiff is not protected by infallibility, that is, whatever papal teaching is not divinely guaranteed to be free from all error, could for that very reason be heretical.
Consequently, they infer that for a Pope to teach heresy “non-infallibly” is entirely within the purview of what is possible in the Church, and therefore Francis’ magisterial heresies (https://novusordowatch.org/2021/02/francis-ecuмenical-martyrdom-heresy/) cannot be used as an argument that he is not a valid Pope.
Knowing to distinguish the fallible from the infallible, so these “recognize-and-resisters” reason, is the key to understanding why Francis may be a bad Pope, but certainly not a false one (https://novusordowatch.org/2019/10/bad-popes-objection/). That non-infallible teachings of the Pope are not binding, at least not if one has privately determined them to be erroneous or heretical, goes without saying for them.
Thus they go on their merry way, thinking they have avoided the “Ultramontanist” or “hyper-papalist” (https://novusordowatch.org/2021/02/ultramontanism-gallicanism-pope-pius9-semi-trads/) extreme, which effectively makes all papal teaching infallible — and the sedevacantist (https://novusordowatch.org/2020/10/why-would-anybody-be-a-sedevacantist/) extreme, which makes one reject not just papal error or heresy, but the Pope altogether. Or so they think.
Sound familiar? If you know a non-sedevacantist traditionalist, you have probably heard this line of argumentation before.
In this post, we intend to expose and refute the misconceptions that underlie this specious reasoning, by demonstrating the following:
- The mere fact that a papal teaching is not protected from all error does not necessarily mean that it could be heretical
- Catholics have an obligation to assent to all papal teaching, infallible or not
- The Pope’s teaching cannot be heretical, nor can it contain any other harmful error
- We Sedevacantists do not reject submission to the Pope, we reject someone’s claim to being the Pope
So let us proceed, step by step.
(1) The mere fact that a papal teaching is not protected from all error does not necessarily mean that it could be heretical.
Logic can be tricky. Sometimes what seems to follow at first sight, doesn’t follow at all, or at least not necessarily, upon closer examination.
Heresy is a very specific kind of error, in fact, the worst possible kind. It is not just a proposition that is false, it is a denial of what God has revealed. The 1945 Dictionary of Dogmatic Theology (https://archive.org/details/dictionaryofdogm0000pare/page/122/mode/2up) defines heresy as: “A teaching which is directly contradictory to a truth revealed by God and proposed to the faithful as such by the Church” (p. 123).
For a Pope to teach heresy would mean teaching the faithful something that denies the Catholic Faith, something that contradicts what the Church has already taught infallibly in the past and requires her members to accept and profess under pain not only of mortal sin but of expulsion from her.
After all, willful assent to what one knows to be heresy makes one automatically cease to be a Catholic, at least insofar as this is manifest externally, since the Church is a visible body:
Actually only those are to be included as members of the Church who have been baptized and profess the true faith, and who have not been so unfortunate as to separate themselves from the unity of the Body, or been excluded by legitimate authority for grave faults committed. …
Nor must one imagine that the Body of the Church, just because it bears the name of Christ, is made up during the days of its earthly pilgrimage only of members conspicuous for their holiness, or that it consists only of those whom God has predestined to eternal happiness. it is owing to the Savior’s infinite mercy that place is allowed in His Mystical Body here below for those whom, of old, He did not exclude from the banquet. For not every sin, however grave it may be, is such as of its own nature to sever a man from the Body of the Church, as does schism or heresy or apostasy.
(Pope Pius XII, Encyclical Mystici Corporis (https://www.papalencyclicals.net/pius12/p12mysti.htm), nn. 22-23; underlining added.)
A statement that is heretical is obviously not protected by infallibility, else it could not contain heresy, which is an error.
At the same time, a statement that is merely erroneous (false, but not rising to the level of heresy) is also not protected by infallibility, since it too contains error.
Therefore, one cannot conclude, from the mere fact that a statement is not protected by infallibility, that it therefore could contain heresy, for this may very well be ruled out by some other stipulation.
But is there some other reason to suppose that non-infallible teachings of the Pope cannot be heretical?
As a matter of fact, there is:
(2) Catholics have an obligation to assent to all papal teaching, infallible or not.
The Pope is the Supreme Teacher in the Catholic Church. Because he teaches with the authority of Christ, all Catholics are obliged to adhere to his teaching:
We likewise define that the holy Apostolic See, and the Roman Pontiff, hold the primacy throughout the entire world; and that the Roman Pontiff himself is the successor of blessed Peter, the chief of the Apostles, and the true vicar of Christ, and that he is the head of the entire Church, and the father and teacher of all Christians; and that full power was given to him in blessed Peter by our Lord Jesus Christ, to feed, rule, and govern the universal Church; just as is contained in the acts of the ecuмenical Councils and in the sacred canons.
(Pope Eugene IV, Council of Florence, Bull Laetentur Coeli; Denz. 694 (http://denzinger.patristica.net/denzinger/#n700).)
But the supreme teacher in the Church is the Roman Pontiff. Union of minds, therefore, requires, together with a perfect accord in the one faith, complete submission and obedience of will to the Church and to the Roman Pontiff, as to God Himself. This obedience should, however, be perfect, because it is enjoined by faith itself, and has this in common with faith, that it cannot be given in shreds; nay, were it not absolute and perfect in every particular, it might wear the name of obedience, but its essence would disappear….
In defining the limits of the obedience owed to the pastors of souls, but most of all to the authority of the Roman Pontiff, it must not be supposed that it is only to be yielded in relation to dogmas of which the obstinate denial cannot be disjoined from the crime of heresy. Nay, further, it is not enough sincerely and firmly to assent to doctrines which, though not defined by any solemn pronouncement of the Church, are by her proposed to belief, as divinely revealed, in her common and universal teaching, and which the [First] Vatican Council declared are to be believed “with Catholic and divine faith.” But this likewise must be reckoned amongst the duties of Christians, that they allow themselves to be ruled and directed by the authority and leadership of bishops, and, above all, of the Apostolic See.
(Pope Leo XIII, Encyclical Sapientiae Christianae (http://www.papalencyclicals.net/Leo13/l13sapie.htm), nn. 22, 24)
All know to whom the teaching authority of the Church has been given by God: he, then, possesses a perfect right to speak as he wishes and when he thinks it opportune. The duty of others is to hearken to him reverently when he speaks and to carry out what he says.
(Pope Benedict XV, Encyclical Ad Beatissimi Apostolorum (https://www.papalencyclicals.net/Ben15/b15adbea.htm), n. 22)
…[T]his sacred Office of Teacher in matters of faith and morals must be the proximate and universal criterion of truth for all theologians, since to it has been entrusted by Christ Our Lord the whole deposit of faith — Sacred Scripture and divine Tradition — to be preserved, guarded and interpreted….
Nor must it be thought that what is expounded in Encyclical Letters does not of itself demand consent, since in writing such Letters the Popes do not exercise the supreme power of their Teaching Authority. For these matters are taught with the ordinary teaching authority, of which it is true to say: “He who heareth you, heareth me” [Lk 10:16]; and generally what is expounded and inculcated in Encyclical Letters already for other reasons appertains to Catholic doctrine.
(Pope Pius XII, Encyclical Humani Generis (http://www.papalencyclicals.net/pius12/p12human.htm), nn. 18, 20)
Therefore, when it is a question of instructions and propositions which the properly constituted shepherds (i.e. the Roman Pontiff for the whole Church, and the Bishops for the faithful entrusted to them) publish on matters within the natural law, the faithful must not invoke that saying (which is wont to be employed with respect to opinions of individuals): “the strength of the authority is no more than the strength of the arguments.” Hence, even though to someone, certain declarations of the Church may not seem proved by the arguments put forward, his obligation to obey still remains.
(Pope Pius XII, Allocution Magnificate Dominum (https://novusordowatch.org/pius12-magnificate-dominum/))
Here we see that infallibility is not a criterion which the Pope’s teaching must first meet before the faithful have an obligation to assent. On the contrary, that idea is clearly repudiated.
But if God constituted His Church in such a way that the faithful have an obligation to assent to what the Sovereign Pontiff teaches, by the mere fact that he, the Supreme Teacher, is exercising his magisterial office, then it stands to reason that such teaching, although not always infallible, can never contain any pernicious error; that is, it could never contain anything that could harm the souls who embrace and follow it.
This is not simply speculation by a sedevacantist writer — it is the certain and common teaching of the theologians from before Vatican II.
Fr. Joseph Fenton, one of the finest American theologians of the 20th century who received papal honors in 1954 (https://thecatholicnewsarchive.org/?a=d&d=cns19540301-01.1.65&e=-------en-20--1--txt-txIN--------), explains:
Despite the divergent views about the existence of the infallible pontifical teaching in the encyclical letters, there is one point on which all theologians are manifestly in agreement. They are all convinced that all Catholics are bound in conscience to give a definite internal religious assent to those doctrines which the Holy Father teaches when he speaks to the universal Church of God on earth without employing his God-given charism of infallibility. Thus, prescinding from the question as to whether any individual encyclical or group of encyclicals may be said to contain specifically infallible teaching, all theologians are in agreement that this religious assent must be accorded the teachings which the Sovereign Pontiff includes in these docuмents. This assent is due, as Lercher has noted, until the Church might choose to modify the teaching previously presented or until proportionately serious reasons for abandoning the non-infallible teaching contained in a pontifical docuмent might appear. It goes without saying that any reason which would justify the relinquishing of a position taken in a pontifical statement would have to be very serious indeed.
(Rev. Joseph Clifford Fenton, “The Doctrinal Authority of Papal Encyclicals, Part I” (https://archive.org/details/sim_american-ecclesiastical-review_1949-08_121_2/page/144/mode/2up), American Ecclesiastical Review CXXI [August, 1949], p. 144)
Notice that Fenton says nothing concerning the kind or gravity of error that might be possible. All he says is that despite the fact that the doctrine is not guaranteed to be without error, “a definite internal religious assent” must be given to what the Pope teaches in encyclicals.
Now Fenton does grant, following the theologian Fr. Ludwig Lercher, that in an exceptional situation such assent could conceivably be withheld — however, we must be careful not to jump to conclusions.
First, it is one thing to be permitted to withhold assent, and another to be required to. Heresy or some other serious error would obviously require one to withhold assent, yet, what pre-Vatican II theologian has ever taught that assent to a non-infallible papal teaching might ever have to be withheld — under pain of mortal sin and loss of Church membership?! It is an absurd idea.
Second, in his Dogmatic Theology III: The Sources of Revelation (https://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/1989905218/) [Westminster, MD: The Newman Press, 1961], Mgr. Gerard van Noort writes that suspension of internal assent to a non-infallible teaching will be “extremely rare” and would be permitted only to expert theologians who are waiting for a judgment concerning their objections from the Holy See, “meanwhile keeping a reverential silence” (n. 254, p. 275 (https://twitter.com/Vae_Victis_1958/status/1357339944155369481)). In other words, someone who is “just a dad with a webcam” wouldn’t be allowed to go on YouTube and blast his dissent all over the internet, trashing the Pope for preaching a “new religion” and encouraging everyone to join him in his “resistance”. Just saying.
The obligation to adhere to everything the Roman Pontiff teaches should really not present a problem for Catholics. The reason for this is found in our next thesis:
(3) The Pope’s teaching cannot be heretical, nor can it contain any other harmful error.
Does this seem excessive? It shouldn’t, for it simply follows from what we just saw. But there is no need to take our word for it, as Father Fenton himself draws this conclusion:
It might be definitely understood, however, that the Catholic’s duty to accept the teachings conveyed in the encyclicals even when the Holy Father does not propose such teachings as a part of his infallible magisterium is not based merely upon the dicta of the theologians. The authority which imposes this obligation is that of the Roman Pontiff himself. To the Holy Father’s responsibility of caring for the sheep of Christ’s fold, there corresponds, on the part of the Church’s membership, the basic obligation of following his directions, in doctrinal as well as disciplinary matters. In this field, God has given the Holy Father a kind of infallibility distinct from the charism of doctrinal infallibility in the strict sense. He has so constructed and ordered the Church that those who follow the directives given to the entire kingdom of God on earth will never be brought into the position of ruining themselves spiritually through this obedience. Our Lord dwells within His Church in such a way that those who obey disciplinary and doctrinal directives of this society can never find themselves displeasing God through their adherence to the teachings and the commands given to the universal Church militant. Hence there can be no valid reason to discountenance even the non-infallible teaching authority of Christ’s vicar on earth.
(Fenton, “The Doctrinal Authority of Papal Encyclicals, Part I” (https://archive.org/details/sim_american-ecclesiastical-review_1949-08_121_2/page/144/mode/2up), pp. 144-145; underlining added.)
The mere fact that a papal teaching is not protected from all error does not mean it is not protected from any error.
Heresy is clearly the kind of error from which God protects the Pope’s ordinary teaching. The Papacy, we must always keep before us, was established by God Himself as the highest teaching office in “the church of the living God, the pillar and ground of the truth” (1 Tim 3:15). If we truly believe and trust our Blessed Lord Jesus Christ, who is the invisible Head of the Church and whose very Vicar the Roman Pontiff is, why should this present a problem? “O thou of little faith, why didst thou doubt?” (Mt 14:31).
When our Lord commissioned the 72 disciples, He did not endow them with infallibility. Nevertheless, He said to them: “He that heareth you, heareth me; and he that despiseth you, despiseth me; and he that despiseth me, despiseth him that sent me” (Lk 10:16). Even though not infallible, they nonetheless preached with authority, the very authority of Christ Himself.
All this is entirely consistent with reason. It would be of no use for Catholics to have a Pope whom it would be safe to follow only when he teaches infallibly — and at all other times, not only would simple error be possible but even the most obnoxious blasphemies and most dangerous errors, not excluding heresy! What sort of a “pillar and ground of the truth” would this be? How trustworthy would such an institution be?
On what grounds could the Catholic Church credibly condemn the false doctrines of Protestant sects, which don’t claim to be infallible at any time, if she were to issue heretical declarations herself on occasion? Would it not be the height of absurdity if the Pope could, on the one hand, condemn others for teaching heresy, but then at the same time propose heretical doctrine himself — just not infallibly?
What would we think of a mother who guarantees she will never poison her children at Sunday night dinner, or on a few other special occasions, but won’t guarantee that her food is safe for the little ones at any other time of the week? And if this mother then justified herself on the grounds that at all other meals, she’s not requiring her children to eat anything but merely offering them food — what would we think of her? Would we not be aghast at such a wicked and cynical monster? Of course we would!
But is our Blessed Lord not infinitely more solicitous for His “little children” (Jn 13:33) than a mere human mother is for hers? “Can a woman forget her infant, so as not to have pity on the son of her womb? and if she should forget, yet will not I forget thee” (Is 49:15).
No one cares more lovingly for His flock than the Good Shepherd:
I am the good shepherd. The good shepherd giveth his life for his sheep. But the hireling, and he that is not the shepherd, whose own the sheep are not, seeth the wolf coming, and leaveth the sheep, and flieth: and the wolf catcheth, and scattereth the sheep: And the hireling flieth, because he is a hireling: and he hath no care for the sheep. I am the good shepherd; and I know mine, and mine know me.
(John 10:11-14,4-5)
If our Blessed Lord is the Good Shepherd, so are His Vicars, and necessarily so, for He delegated to them His very own mission: “Feed my lambs… Feed my lambs… Feed my sheep” (Jn 21:15,16,17). The Popes are not guaranteed to be holy — in fact, some of them have been appallingly sinful and scandalous in their personal lives — but in the exercise of their teaching office, they are guaranteed to be entirely safe to follow:
- The “But we’ve had Bad Popes before” Objection (https://novusordowatch.org/2019/10/bad-popes-objection/)
- St. Robert Bellarmine defends Popes accused of Error (https://novusordowatch.org/2015/10/papal-error-bellarmine/)
- Do Catholics have to Assent to Non-Infallible Church Teaching? (https://novusordowatch.org/2019/03/catholics-assent-non-infallible-teaching/)
It is a most beautiful mystery, but then Christianity is a religion of mysteries.
(4) We Sedevacantists do not reject submission to the Pope, we reject someone’s claim to being the Pope.
From all the preceding it should be evident that we Sedevacantists do not, by any stretch, deny or doubt the Papacy. On the contrary, we affirm the Church’s doctrines regarding the Papacy (https://novusordowatch.org/the-catholic-papacy/) most firmly. Unlike semi-trad Dr. Peter Kwasniewski (https://novusordowatch.org/2023/02/against-new-papacy-peter-kwasniewski/), we do not attempt to “rethink” the Papacy (https://novusordowatch.org/2023/01/rethinking-peter-kwasniewski/) to make it fit Jorge Bergoglio. If Bergoglio doesn’t fit the papal office (https://novusordowatch.org/2017/07/stumbling-block-papacy-francis-wont-fit/), the problem is not with the Papacy but with Bergoglio.
We do not reject the Pope, we reject Bergoglio’s manifestly false claim to being the Pope. And the same goes for the other five false papal claimants since the death of Pope Pius XII (https://novusordowatch.org/2018/10/sixty-years-since-death-pope-pius12/) in 1958.
How do we know they’re false popes? We know it from the fact that the assistance God has promised to His Vicars has manifestly not been operative in them. This increasingly obvious effect requires a proportionate cause to account for it, and the only cause that could possibly produce this effect — given that God is faithful to His promises and can neither lie nor be mistaken — is that they were not in fact true Popes, that is, they never received the papal authority from Christ. Even though they were ostensibly elected in their respective conclaves, for one reason or another they did not actually become Pope (some say it is because their acceptance of the office was vitiated by a contrary intention (https://novusordowatch.org/2022/03/apostolic-succession-after-pius12-catholic-hierarchy/), whereas others argue that public manifest heresy made them ineligible (http://www.fathercekada.com/2014/05/07/bergoglio-hes-got-nothing-to-lose/) to be elected validly).
But regardless of what caused the invalidity of their papacies, it is evident that they have not enjoyed the divine assistance, and so their invalidity is certain. Only because they are not actually true Popes do we have the right (and duty) to refuse them submission. After all, submission must be rendered to all true Popes as a condition for eternal salvation: “…we declare, we proclaim, we define that it is absolutely necessary for salvation that every human creature be subject to the Roman Pontiff” (Pope Boniface VIII, Bull Unam Sanctam (https://www.papalencyclicals.net/bon08/b8unam.htm)).
The Good Shepherd rules and guides His flock: “And when he hath let out his own sheep, he goeth before them: and the sheep follow him, because they know his voice” (Jn 10:4). Our Lord does so through His visible Vicars: “…there is only one chief Head of this Body, namely Christ, who never ceases Himself to guide the Church invisible, though at the same time He rules it visibly, through him who is His representative on earth” (Pius XII, Mystici Corporis (https://www.papalencyclicals.net/pius12/p12mysti.htm), n. 40).
The sheep follow the Good Shepherd obediently and without suspicion. But a stranger, a hireling, or a wolf the sheep will not hear: “But a stranger they follow not, but fly from him, because they know not the voice of strangers. My sheep hear my voice: and I know them, and they follow me” (Jn 10:4,27).
“The voice of strangers” is precisely what Catholics have been hearing from the Vatican since Cardinal Angelo Roncalli presented himself to the world as ‘Pope John XXIII’ (https://novusordowatch.org/john-xxiii/) in 1958. Never has this been more obvious than now, under the reign of (t)error of ‘Pope Francis’ (https://novusordowatch.org/francis/).
Concluding Thoughts
Obviously, we are living in extremely bizarre and confusing times. However, this does not allow us to throw traditional Catholic teaching out the window. We cannot simply declare pre-Vatican II Catholic doctrine obsolete or suspended and appeal to “diabolical disorientation” as a justification, just so we can have an incredibly visible ‘Pope’ — to whom we then refuse submission because he does not teach Catholicism but a dangerous perversion of it. Surely this is no way to ‘save the Church’ or the Faith.
As the Mystical Body of Christ, it is not surprising that the Catholic Church should emulate her Divine Head in being persecuted and ultimately suffering a mystical Passion (https://novusordowatch.org/2017/02/papacy-passion-of-church-fatima-conference-2016/) of her own. However, in such a Passion the Pope, being Christ’s Vicar, would, like the rest of the Church, be the victim, not the perpetrator.
In no wise could the Ark of Salvation suddenly turn into the Ark of Damnation. Neither could the Immaculate Bride of Christ turn away from her divine mission (https://novusordowatch.org/2021/03/deadly-defection-eric-sammons/) and become the Whore of Babylon, doing the bidding no longer of Christ but now of Antichrist:
During the lapse of centuries, the mystical Spouse of Christ has never been contaminated, nor can she ever in the future be contaminated, as Cyprian bears witness: “The Bride of Christ cannot be made false to her Spouse: she is incorrupt and modest. She knows but one dwelling, she guards the sanctity of the nuptial chamber chastely and modestly” [De Cath. Ecclesiae unitate, 6].
(Pope Pius XI, Encyclical Mortalium Animos (https://www.papalencyclicals.net/pius11/p11morta.htm), n. 10)
On the other hand, what is possible is that God would allow the “mystery of iniquity” to eclipse the Church for a time by removing, temporarily, His Vicar, who keeps the mystery from prevailing:
Let no man deceive you by any means, for unless there come a revolt first, and the man of sin be revealed, the son of perdition Who opposeth, and is lifted up above all that is called God, or that is worshipped, so that he sitteth in the temple of God, shewing himself as if he were God. Remember you not, that when I was yet with you, I told you these things? And now you know what withholdeth, that he may be revealed in his time. For the mystery of iniquity already worketh; only that he who now holdeth, do hold, until he be taken out of the way. And then that wicked one shall be revealed whom the Lord Jesus shall kill with the spirit of his mouth; and shall destroy with the brightness of his coming, him, whose coming is according to the working of Satan, in all power, and signs, and lying wonders, and in all seduction of iniquity to them that perish; because they receive not the love of the truth, that they might be saved. Therefore God shall send them the operation of error, to believe lying: that all may be judged who have not believed the truth, but have consented to iniquity.
(2 Thessalonians 2:3-11)
Cardinal Henry Manning’s lecture series given in 1871 explores the riches of Sacred Tradition concerning this passage and the frightful days that appear to be upon us now:
- The Pope and the Antichrist: The Great Apostasy foretold (https://novusordowatch.org/2015/04/the-pope-and-the-antichrist/)
Given all of the foregoing, we have seen that the semi-traditionalists cannot argue that ordinary papal teaching may be heretical, simply because it is not guaranteed to be free from all error.
Their recognize-and-resist position is a contrived human pseudo-solution that saves nothing and ultimately reduces the Church to an absurd circus, devoid of all credibility in her claim to being “the true and only Church of Christ” (Pope Pius IX, Encyclical Amantissimus (https://www.papalencyclicals.net/pius09/p9amant2.htm), n. 3), indeed that “one holy Catholic and apostolic Church, outside of which there is no salvation” (Pope St. Pius V, Bull Regnans in Excelsis (https://www.papalencyclicals.net/pius05/p5regnans.htm)).
https://novusordowatch.org/2023/03/could-fallible-teaching-be-heretical/
https://remnantnewspaper.com/web/index.php/fetzen-fliegen/item/6732-vigano-interviewed-on-the-conclave-continued
Dear friends, there have been loud reverberations stemming from the interview that Archbishop Carlo Maria Viganò did with me a few days ago [here (https://remnantnewspaper.com/web/index.php/fetzen-fliegen/item/6717-archbishop-vigano-on-the-conclave-provocations-schism-fernandez-is-to-bergoglio-what-zelenskyy-is-to-biden)], which was translated into several languages. The dialogue offered numerous important points for reflection, especially regarding the strategy pursued by Bergoglio and, as a consequence, the type of response that ought to be offered in defense of the Faith and correct Catholic doctrine. In order to deepen the themes addressed in the interview, we approached Archbishop Viganò again and engaged in a second conversation. We will publish it in two parts.
Aldo Maria Valli: Your Excellency, I think it is appropriate to start our conversation again with what you said responding to my question about the logic followed by Bergoglio in his most recent nomination of cardinals. You said:
Archbishop Carlo Maria Viganò: Bergoglio’s logic is very evident: he wants to create the premises for a schism, which he denies and deplores in words, but which he has been preparing for some time. Bergoglio wants to separate, in one way or another, the good part of the faithful and clergy from the official Church; and to achieve this, to ensure that they distance themselves from the modernist Sanhedrin, he is placing in key positions in the Roman Curia those characters who guarantee the worst possible management of the Dicasteries entrusted to them, with the worst possible result and the greatest damage to the ecclesial body.
The progressive restrictions on the celebration of the ancient liturgy serve to confine conservatives to hunting reserves, in order to then channel them towards the Society of Saint Pius X, as soon as the Synod leads the doctrinal, moral and disciplinary changes that are in the pipeline to their tragic consequences, causing an exodus of Catholics into what, after the suppression or normalization of the Ecclesia Dei Institutes, will become the “monopolist” of Tradition. But at that point – that is, when the traditional Catholics have migrated into the Society and its leaders believe they have won a victory over the competition due to the suppression of Summorum Pontificuм– a new intolerable provocation will force at least one faction of the Society of Saint Pius X to distance themselves from Bergoglian Rome, sanctioning the “excommunication” of traditionalism, which is no longer represented within the official Church, if it ever was. For this reason, in my opinion, it is important to maintain a certain fragmentation, in order to make the malicious maneuver of expelling traditional Catholics from the ecclesial body more complex.
Deaconesses, the abolition of ecclesiastical celibacy, the blessing of ɧoɱosɛҳųαƖ couples, tolerance for polygamy, gender theory, LGBTQ ideology, and ecological pantheism à la Teilhard de Chardin: these are the points of confrontation that Begoglio is deliberately opening up between the conservative wing (but not the traditional wing, which is already distant or out of the picture) and the ultra-progressive one. His purpose is to create confrontation, let it grow, encourage the supporters of the most extreme requests with appointments and promotions, so as to then witness the predictable reaction of condemnation by the few good remaining Bishops, priests and religious, who, in front of Bergoglio’s trap door, will have two choices: either to return to suffer in silence, or or to stand up, denounce the betrayal of Catholic Truth, and be forced to leave one’s post and exercise the ministry clandestinely or at least in apparent canonical irregularity.
Once the inconvenient Pastors have been ostracized and the faithful conservatives have been dismissed, the Bergoglian hierarchy will be able to exercise full control over the clergy and people, certain of the obedience of those who remain. And this sect, which will only have the name of Catholic (and perhaps not even that anymore), will totally eclipse the Bride of the Lamb, in the paradox of a traitorous and corrupt Hierarchy that abuses Christ’s authority to destroy his Church.
In short, the logic seems to be to create conditions that will make true Catholics abandon the Barque of Peter. Is this correct?
Look, already back in 2019 (here (https://www.lastampa.it/vatican-insider/it/2019/09/10/news/il-papa-non-paura-di-uno-scisma-nella-chiesa-1.37435836/)) Bergoglio said clearly that he does not fear a schism. And while he stated that “schismatics always have one thing in common, they detach themselves from people, from the faith of the people, from the faith of the people of God,” he added: “The morality of ideology leads you to rigidity, and today we have so many schools of rigidity within the Church, which are not schisms, but they are pseudo-schismatic Christian ways that will end badly: when you see rigid Christians, bishops, and priests, there are problems behind them, there is not the sanity of the Gospel.” As usual, he accused Catholics of doing what he himself was about to do.
In order to further highlight the strategy adopted by Bergoglio, you have mentioned an essay by an American author who already in 2018 highlighted certain lines of action which were soon confirmed. Can you tell us about this essay?
Of course. The author is Patrick Archbold, and his essay appeared in five installments in 2018 at Creative Minority Report, entitled Actuating Schism (here (https://creativeminorityreport.com/blog/2018/11/27/actuating-schism-part-1/), here (https://creativeminorityreport.com/blog/2018/11/28/actuating-schism-part-ii-no-quarter/), her (https://creativeminorityreport.com/blog/2018/11/29/actuating-schism-part-iii-death-blow/)e, here (https://creativeminorityreport.com/blog/2018/11/30/actuating-schism-part-iv-honey-pot/), here (https://creativeminorityreport.com/blog/2018/12/03/actuating-schism-part-v-hammer-drop/)).
In the essay, with great lucidity, the author outlines what in his opinion was the malicious action of the Argentine intended to deliberately cause a schism in the heart of the Catholic Church. Archbold wrote:
We can count on this process to continue. Gamed synods producing pre-ordained results to continue to move the heretical ball down the field. […] The Church has been in a de facto state of schism for some time, only that those who no longer hold to the Church’s teachings refused to leave. Now, they are not just here but they are in charge. They didn’t seek their own alternative church or power structure, they instead took the long view and were covetous of the name Catholic and its power structure. They didn’t want their own Church, they wanted ours. Now they have the power and they use power.
Archbold continues:
So this is the question that stays with me. How do you get rid of those Catholics who are fighting against your power? How do you get rid of faithful Catholics who, by definition, tenaciously cling to the one true church? How do you get the true Catholics out of the true Church? How do you turn a de facto schism into a real one?
And here Archbold wisely outlines the scheme adopted by the Central Committee of Santa Marta, identifying it by the consistencies that are detectable in several different cases: the Franciscans of the Immaculate, Bishop Rogelio Livieres Plano in South America, Bishop Martin Holley in the United States, the Petites Sœurs de Marie Mère du Rédempteur in France. To this short list we can add the names of many other Bishops and religious communities – especially communities of religious women – who since 2018 have been given a taste of Bergoglian mercy.
The system is always the same: there is an Apostolic Visitation made with very short notice, no report is ever made about the results, or about any critical issues found, and there is no possibility of clarification or defense for those who are the object of the investigation.
The message and the method is clear. When they want you gone, they can make you gone. They aren’t even going through the motions any more and any and all sense of due process or rights under canon law have been dispensed with. That should make any Bishop nervous, which is exactly the point.
In parallel with this completely illegitimate canonical action, Bergoglio’s emissaries do not hesitate to intimidate the Bishops and communities so as to prevent them from welcoming those who are ostracized: we remember well the way that Father Fidenzio Volpi participated irregularly in the meeting of the Italian Bishops’ Conference in order to carry out an act of terrorism against the Franciscans of the Immaculate, threatening the Episcopate by telling them not to incardinate the conservative friars into their Dioceses.
But when the rules allowed for other Bishops to possibly provide an escape hatch for the abused, those prelates were threatened and the rules were changed to make sure that no bishop could allow new faithful Catholic groups to form in some far flung diocese.
It seems to me that Traditionis Custodes is precisely the expression of this plan...
Exactly. Traditionis Custodes claimed for the Holy See the faculty to canonically erect “traditional” institutes, and it made the Bishops understand that no diocesan priest would obtain permission to celebrate according to the ancient rite. The cancellation of Summorum Pontificuм goes in this same direction, this is obvious. It’s enough to think of, among others, the case of the Benedictine Sisters of Pienza or the Dominican Sisters of Marradi who just happen to find themselves in a situation that is no different from the Petites Sœurs de Marie Mère du Rédempteur: “they have committed the double crime of being a little too conservative and of possessing real estate coveted by the local Ordinary” – a property on a hill overlooking the Val d’Orcia or an enormous 16th-century convent in the Appenines. The same thing happened with the Carmel of Arlington, Texas, where the fury against the conservatism of the nuns led to the shameful defaming of the Mother Prioress, who was subjected to a commissioner and dismissed in violation of the canonical norms. There too, it is a Monastery with a vast amount of property and a oil field.
But while the Vatican does not hesitate to limit the rights of Bishops to prevent them from helping certain traditional communities to survive, it significantly extends the rights of other Bishops beyond the law – by sanating the irregularities and abuses of its own lackeys – whenever it serves to suppress and persecute such communities. To this we may add the Constitution Vultum Dei Quærere and the Instruction Cor Orans, with which Bergoglio has deprived monastic communities of their autonomy and arranged them into federations under the strict control of ultra-progressives – along with Chinese-style reprogramming – of the self-styled Dicastery for Religious.
The politburo approved Catholic media (https://twitter.com/holysmoke/status/1062340832982908929?ref_src=twsrc^tfw|twcamp^tweetembed|twterm^1062340832982908929&ref_url=http%3A%2F%2Fwdtprs.com%2Fblog%2F2018%2F11%2Fsolipsistic-self-aggrandizing-fatherrosica-dares-to-vet-catholic-news-sources%2F) will tell you that synodality is all about decentralizing the governance of the Church closer to the people in the form of the Bishop’s conference. This, obviously, could not be further from the truth. In an incredible validation of the lie, before the ink was even dry on the synod docuмent on synodality, the Pope personally intervened to publicly castrate the USCCB before they even thought about even discussing doing something useless about the abuse scandal. It was quite the show, even for veteran Church watchers.
Archbold sums up this pattern with the following words:
It is about making sure that no stray orthodox bishop can be a bastion of tradition and a safe space for traditional Catholicism. He can’t allow new groups of religious to form in his diocese, he can’t invite traditional nuns to set up shop in his diocese, and if he does anything too traditional, he will be on the receiving end of an apostolic visitation for the crime of not getting along with his Bishop’s conference. All of this has been about cutting off all escape paths for traditional Catholics.
At this point Archbold quotes a passage from The Art of War by Sun Tzu: “To a surrounded enemy, you must leave a way of escape.”
Archbold comments:
To surround the enemy, you must cut off all other paths of escape. You need to get the enemy, traditional and red-pilling conservative Catholics, all into one place where they feel safer, before you lower the boom. But the boom. She is coming. […] I believe they intend to do away with Summorum Pontificuм and its individual right of priests to say the mass and force all traditional Catholic into one or a few approved sources, perhaps the FSSP and the ICKSP or some juiced up Ecclesia Dei commission, if they can’t close the deal on the SSPX. […] They will move us back to the indult era and consolidate us into a few groups (FSSP, ICKSP, etc) and some grandfathered indult locations. They will claim, and their lickspittle brethren in the mainstream Catholic media will gush, that this is not an anti-Traditional move. “The Pope hasn’t done away with one single Traditional mass, this is about governance only.” […]
So there you have it. Any approved group that resists the changes or complains too loud gets the Apostolic Visitation and is squashed for refusal to submit to the Pontiff. Any diocesan indult community that resists is squashed. And any Catholic who thinks he can go underground and just have masses said in someone’s house? Nope. Individual priests no longer have the right to say the mass. Do it and you have refused to submit to the authority of the Pope. You are a schismatic. So too any bishop. You either accept the Vatican Two boot on your neck or you are a schismatic.
Any attempt to live an authentic traditional Catholic life, whether as a religious, or just attending the mass of the ages, will make you a schismatic by default. Go SSPX, you are schismatic. Go to an underground mass. Schismatic. Form a group of faithful under a traditional rule without permission of Rome, schismatic. They will turn any and all attempts to live a traditional Catholic life into an act of disobedience.
It seems clear that, five years later, the alarm raised by Archbold’s 2018 essay has proven to be well-founded. But as many clerics, religious, and faithful rightly ask, at this point how can we resist this subversive action, if any path we undertake will lead to us being accused of schism?
We find the answer in the firm resistance of those who have preceded us: from the heroism of the Martyrs and Confessors of the Faith to the silent faithfulness of many Catholics – clergy, religious, and laity – who down the centuries have found themselves faced with the same choice: either to choose the broad and comfortable path of compromise and apostasy or the narrow and difficult way of fidelity to Christ. It is a choice that is often painful, but one for which the Lord has prepared us: “Do not think that I have come to bring peace on earth. I have not come to bring peace but a sword. For I have come to separate the son from his father, the daughter from her mother, the daughter-in-law from her mother-in-law: and one’s enemies will be those of his own household. (Mt 10:34-36).
This sword – which Saint Paul identifies with the sword of the Spirit, the Word of God (Eph 6:17) – separates Christ’s faithful from a rebellious and corrupt hierarchy, faithful religious from their heretical Superiors, and faithful priests from their modernist Bishops. And our enemies are those of our own household: our parish priests, the Bishops, and the one who usurps the Throne of Peter in order to spread error and division.
Woe to the world for scandals! Scandals must inevitably occur, but woe to the man through whose fault scandal comes (Mt 18:7). These words admonish us about the seriousness of the present scandals – doctrinal, moral, and liturgical – and about their inevitability, which is the result of the temporary triumph of the wicked before the Final Judgment. But these words also admonish us to resist them, to denounce them, to not consider them to be normal just because they have become widespread at every level of daily life.
Let’s not forget that for sixty years we have become accustomed to seeing the authority of the Pastors used against the faithful and against the Church herself, all while maintaining an appearance of formal legitimacy. The “Council” itself – the only Council that is dear to the heart of the Modernists, because it is the only one of which they are the architects and that has nothing Catholic about it – was a colossal deception against the ecclesial body, because it maintained the authority of an Ecuмenical Council while fraudulently insinuating heretical doctrines; it maintained the authority of the Council Fathers and the Roman Pontiff precisely as it was being used to demolish the Catholic edifice; it imposed blind and servile obedience to norms in contrast with the uninterrupted and immutable Magisterium. The abolition of the traditional Liturgy, intended by Paul VI using his apostolic authority, was a fraud. And the current attempt to cancel Benedict XVI’s Motu Proprio Summorum Pontificuм with an analagous Motu Proprio – apparently carrying the same canonical efficacy – is no less malicious. Its aim is not the good of the Church and the salvation of the faithful, but the ruin of both. On the other hand, even the accusation of blasphemy that the Sanhedrin brought against Our Lord had all the appearances of a formally unexceptionable action, even though it was intrinsically illegitimate and null, because it was used against the Divine and Innocent Legislator.
Authority can obtain obedience in virtue of its own authoritativeness, or it can impose itself with authoritarianism. In the first case, power is exercised for the purpose for which it has been instituted; in the second case authority becomes the end in itself. Authoritarianism subverts the divine order – both in temporal matters as well as in religious ones – because it prescinds from the sole authority of Christ and from the vicariousness of the earthly authority that represents him. In short, authoritarianism acts as if a person placed in authority – a governor, a Bishop – possesses his own legitimacy in himself, and not because he is a vicar of the authority of Christ. This makes it a subversive power, unchained from any duty to conform itself to the will of Christ in pursuing the common good, and for this reason it is inexorably destined to transform itself into hateful tyranny.
Second part (Added July 28)
Your Excellency, let us pick up where we left off in the first part. There is a clear parallel between what is happening in the Church and what is happening in the secular sphere. An expression you often use is that “everything holds together.” Can you explain this more?
The authoritarianism of democratic national and supranational institutions – yesterday with the pretextual pandemic emergency, today with the absurd environmental emergency – is not at all different from the authoritarianism of the synodal Vatican institutions, yesterday with the pretextual ecuмenical dialogue and today with the no less pretextual encouragement of sɛҳuąƖ and moral deviance. Both are also corrupt expressions of true authority, one with the deep state of the global coup, the other with the deep church of the St. Gallen Mafia coup. In both, the corruption of their members is a guarantee that they remain subservient, because it makes them easily blackmailed. For this reason, it is not possible that those who ascend to certain levels in these institutions to be honest, since honesty would remove them from the control of those who want maneuverable puppets in the key roles, puppets in the hands of a ventriloquist.
Schism is therefore Bergoglio’s ultimate goal, because it is the pharisaical way – that is, the way of a hypocritical and false formalism – with which to oust good Catholics from the Church, leaving her totally in the power of traitors and renegades, free at that point to do with her what they want.
The same thing is happening also in the civil sphere: the rulers and the entire ruling class of Western countries are totally subservient to a power that no one has elected, they obey it even against the interest of the nation and violating the fundamental rights of citizens, without there being any organ or judiciary that is willing and able to try and condemn them for high treason.
Bergoglio's ostracism towards conservatives is identical to that of the globalist elite towards the “deniers” of Covid and global warming. It does not matter that the psychopandemic and the environmental farce have no scientific basis and are disavowed by eminent scientists and irrefutable evidence: science is replaced by scientism, any scientific literature on these topics has now been removed, canceled, and censored. And here too the parallel with the Church appears in all its evidence, if we consider the blatant contradiction of the "magisterium" from Vatican II onwards with respect to the Catholic Magisterium: doctrine has been replaced by heresy, morality by the subjectivity of the individual, liturgical rituality by sacrilegious improvisation. And those who question the official narrative – for example by highlighting the sudden deaths of the vaccinated alone or the crisis of vocations of the post-conciliar period – are criminalized, because their dissent is reasoned and rational and cannot be refuted. Instead, it is delegitimized by attacking the individuals who express it.
At this point the question returns: how do we get out of it? Here at Duc in Altum for some days there has been a wide debate on the subject, with the participation of many readers. It seems clear that Bergoglio and his troops have failed to chloroform Catholic public opinion.
Some suggest that we must get out of it by means of prayer. And thus is true: asking the Almighty to take the reins of history in hand is certainly an effective tool. But at the same time, this is not enough: prayer – which is always indispensable – must also be accompanied by action, as our fathers in faith – the Apostles, the first Christians and all Catholics – have always done, they who over the course of the past two thousand years have confronted tyrants and satraps who were convinced that they could “crush the infamous thing” – écrasez l’infame, blasphemed Voltaire – while the enemies of the Church are now all dead and buried, and behold, the Church is still alive.
This action must first of all – as I said in our first interview – foresee a strategic fragmentation of traditional movements, which must be coordinated but remain independent so that it is impossible to strike them all with one blow. The fragmentation of the traditional movement is in my opinion the only possible response to the present attack: we must not institute any new pseudo-ecclesial entity, but rather maintain that minimal coordination between different forces, which sooner or later will find themselves regaining full citizenship rights in the Church, the only true and legitimate place where true Catholics must stay. Obviously, this does not mean standing by and watching what happens as passengers on a sinking ship: on the contrary, our permanence in the Church must spur us – as her children – to defend her from the attacks of those who, from within, act as the enemy's fifth column .
If on the one hand Bergoglio wants to close all our escape routes, then on the other hand it is necessary for us to open others. If his action aims to isolate us in order to intimidate us and make us desist, we must denounce embezzlement by all means at our disposal. And since sooner or later the persecution will necessarily – I repeat: necessarily – spread also to those who delude themselves that they are somehow protected from possible Vatican retaliation, it will be the case that they, too, can now begin to organize forms of resistance, strengthened by an increasingly pressing state of necessity, which will guarantee the Holy Mass and the Sacraments to the faithful.
What do you suggest to your brothers in the Episcopate in this regard?
I invite them to consider – onerata conscientia – whether it is not appropriate to think of forms of ministry in clandestinity for their conservative priests, in view of possible further maneuvers by Bergoglio or where the civil authorities undertake actions of open persecution of traditional Catholics. The FBI's investigations into groups of faithful linked to the Tridentine Mass in the United States suggest that deviant parts of the intelligence services consider Catholics a threat to their subversive plan, while they have an ally in the Bergoglian church.
Traditional religious communities – especially those of women in contemplative life – must keep in constant contact in order to give each other mutual support and help, both material and spiritual. It is important that the fringe of dissent against this cupola of heretics and perverts who occupy the highest levels of the Church is increasingly present in the media and on social networking platforms, so as to encourage those who still hesitate between resigned silence and the necessary opposition to apostasy. Let these priests speak: let us give them a voice, let us comfort them, let us make them feel welcome in our homes, in our churches, in our monasteries.
Let us not forget that the mentality that guides the globalist elite – and the Bergoglian sect that is its handmaiden – is of a mercantile matrix that is typically Protestant and usurious. The dominant idea is power and profit, obtained through the commodification of everything, that is, the transformation of every aspect of life into a commodity, into a sellable and purchasable product. And commercial strategies always follow a well-determined process to conquer the market.
Can you give us an example?
Certainly. Imagine having two companies, a foreign multinational corporation that produces a poor-quality article at low prices in the Third World and an Italian artisan company that produces the same article with high-quality raw materials produced strictly in Italy alone, with expert skill and at an honest price. In these conditions it is clear that the multinational has no hope of being able to impose itself on a new foreign market, also because under normal conditions the government provides forms of protection of its country’s own domestic entrepreneurial excellence and imposes heavy duties on imported goods. But membership in the European Union prohibits member states from giving priority to their own companies, imposes onerous taxes and duties, causes the costs of raw materials and production to rise, facilitates credit to multinationals and drastically restricts its availability to small and medium-sized enterprises. Behind these economic and fiscal policies, of course, are the lobbyists of the large financial groups. At this point our Italian company is forced to increase prices, while the multinational corporation immediately becomes competitive. The multinational therefore enters the Italian market, with an impressive media campaign, which the small competitor cannot even remotely afford; after a while the multinational acquires the small company and lets it work for a while; then it eliminates the valuable artigianal product in favor of the poor-quality manufactured one. What has the multinational gained? The cancellation of the alternative product and the general lowering of the product’s quality. The competition has been eliminated, and the manufactured product will be able to increase its price simply because it is the only one offered on the market. In this process it is essential to remove the quality product, because it is an annoying term of comparison for the product that is mass-produced in a Chinese prison or in an Indian village. So what solution is proposed to deal with foreign competition? After the lowering of raw material costs, all that remains is the cut in labor costs, with the reduction of wages and the introduction of an underpaid foreign workforce, also thanks to the pressure of the landings of illegal immigrants ferried from North Africa or entered Europe from Turkey. If we add to this coordinated assault the increases in the cost of energy – all of which are deliberately provoked – and the obligation to balance the budget for the EU member nations (or at least for some), we understand that in this case too all escape routes have been closed, except for the only one that is desired, which is then the one that will prove fatal for those who take it.
Forgive me, Archbishop, but when you express yourself in this way, some say: Archbishop Viganò speaks of things that do not concern him as a pastor.
I realize that here we are on at least “unusual” ground for a topic being addressed by a Bishop, even if in my former duties as Secretary General of the Governorate of Vatican City State I also had to deal with economic issues. If you notice, the commercial strategy I have just illustrated is also adopted in the ecclesiastical sphere. The high-quality product is represented by Catholic doctrine, morals and liturgy. Competition from the low-quality product is constituted by modernist ideological rubbish, mainly the reformed rite of the Mass. Since the “clientele” is not willing to freely give up the high-quality product it has always had in exchange for something incomparably inferior, this is when the “conciliar multinational” acquires the “small artisan company” and lets it offer its product under Summorum Pontificuм, only to then close almost all the points of sale and prevent the formation of clergy and religious according to the traditional ratio studiorum by imposing the legislation of Traditionis Custodes. And in order to prevent people from seeing that the imported product is poor, it avoids comparison with the high-quality product by simply making it disappear. But these maneuvers, however effective from an organizational point of view, cannot prevent the gulf between the two alternatives from being very evident. If the “clientele” resigns itself to buying what is imposed on them by the “large retailer,” it is only because they have been deprived of the possibility of a free choice due to to fraud and market manipulation.
I know well that in religious matters this “shopkeeper” approach is inappropriate and offensive, especially because the good of the Faith is of such an inestimable value, freely granted to us by the magnificence of God, while the alternative that is proposed to us cannot compete in the least and has as its price our eternal damnation. But I believe it does not escape any of us that the usurious cynicism of the sellers of heresies and perversions is not able to go beyond seeing the matter as commercial exchange, giving a price to everything: the thirty denarii paid by the Sanhedrin for the betrayal of Judas confirm this, and there are always High Priests ready to pay the sum, as well as renegade apostles who are willing to hand the Lord over by means of a kiss to the temple guards.
This is the mentality that moves and orients merchants – let’s not forget that the World Economic Forum is a lobby of entrepreneurs thirsty for money and power – when it has to force the adoption of new lifestyles in society: social manipulation is an integral part of marketing actions, and if the “product” to be sold is an experimental serum or an electric vehicle, the modalities of creating demand and placing it on the market will include a media campaign of pandemic or environmental social alarm thanks to the cooperation of the press, individual journalists, so-called “experts” – virologists or climatologists, for example – and politicians. All of them are in fact employed by the technocratic lobby of the WEF, because they are owned by large investment funds such as Vanguard, BlackRock and State Street or directly or indirectly sponsored by them. If a newspaper spreads certain news, it is because this or that multinational corporation controls it, because they buy advertising space and finance events. And the same applies to research institutes, universities, and foundations that are assigned the task of publishing studies that confirm the narrative. This is accompanied by interference and lobbying activities at public institutions, whose officials sign agreements with private entities that in return finance their activities or that hire them at the end of their term of office, according to the well-known practice of revolving doors.
The circle closes with the last missing piece: the cooperation of the Catholic Church – and of other religions, but in a completely secondary way – to the coup d'état of the globalist elite. The deep church has not hestitated for a moment to lend itself to this ugly alliance, because it is totally occupied by characters linked to the deep state. It did so by pandering to the psychopandemic farce, then aligning itself with the Ukrainian crisis, then embracing the green narrative in an Amazonian flavor through the worship of the Pachamama, and finally prostituting the Synod to woke ideology.
And even when this libido serviendi of the sect of Santa Marta has not been spontaneous, we know well that the blackmail of leading figures would have persuaded them to align themselves without skipping a breath: the scandals of the former Cardinal McCarrick and his minions who are still in power – Cupich, Gregory, Farrell, Tobin, McElroy . . . – are not so different from those of Joe Biden's son. The pathetic and grotesque attempts at whitewashing and cover-up may perhaps postpone the redde rationem that awaits the pedophile-satanist cupola currently in power, but they will not succeed in preventing the truth from emerging in all its terrifying gravity, and from doing justice to these perverts who are devoted to the Evil One. We must be ready, at this juncture, to open our eyes to a vast network of complicity, which will make it clear why this infernal machine has worked so well so far.
Look, I believe that the very efficient organization of the forces of the Enemy is certainly a strength, compared to our disorganization and fragmentation; but at the same time it is also the Enemy’s Achilles' heel. It will be our disorganization, our ability to move autonomously, the unpredictability of our moves that will prevent the deep church from succeeding in its quest to oust us from the Church – and, likewise, the effort of the deep state to oust us from civil society. And vice-versa, it will be precisely their soulless organization and the identifiability of their chain of command that will allow us to sabotage their plans, denounce their authors, and frustrate their actions.
So let's start looking at short-term projects and long-term projects. We must not just resist: we must become actors rather than reactors: we must take the initiative, as I believe is already happening in many quarters. Only in this way will we realize that the pusillus grex is not so small, and that the gates of hell, just like a haunted house at an amusement park, are only an impressive stage set constructed by those who have already been definitively conquered by Our Lord.
Let me conclude with an appeal to support the activity of Exsurge Domine, the Association I have founded to give assistance to priests, seminarians, and men and women religious being persecuted by the Bergoglian junta. Your help will allow us to respond to the many situations of discrimination against these good souls, who are being targeted by unscrupulous mercenaries who are without Faith and above all without Charity. You can find all the information and how to send a contribution by visiting the website www.exsurgedomine.org (http://www.exsurgedomine.org/).