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NEWS: June 24, 2020
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Bird’s Eye View of the News

Atila Sinke Guimarães
TWO QUESTIONS ADDRESSED TO ARCH. VIGANÒ - It is with joy that we Traditionalist Catholics have followed the successive public positions taken by Arch. Carlo Maria Viganò on different subjects from August 2018 to his last pronouncement on June 9, 2020. (1) The initial public denunciations were on the Vatican cover-up of homosexual Card. Theodore McCarrick made under John Paul II, Benedict XVI and particularly Pope Francis.

Then, the Archbishop-in-hiding began to address a wide gamut of topics, encompassing religious, social-political and even hygienic issues such as the Covid-19 pandemic. Recently Arch. Viganò showed that his concerns do not stop there: He sent a letter to President Donald Trump offering him orientation on what to do to win the November election.

Archbishop Vigano

Arch. Vigano multiplies his public interventions defending the Traditional Catholic Doctrine

Since Arch. Viganò seems willing to assume the spiritual leadership of the Catholic Traditionalist Movement – as well as parts of the Conservative Movement – and he presents himself as an upright man who had the honesty to convert from Progressivism to Traditionalism, I feel at ease to address some questions to him with the hope he will not refuse to answer them.

From Msgr. Viganò’s many statements, I will focus on his Letter of June 9, 2020, posted online on the Italian website Chiesa e Post-Concilio. Throughout that document he addresses the situation of the Catholic Church and, more particularly, the present day crisis that was generated by Vatican Council II. This is a topic that catches my close attention.

I believe that, as a common lay Catholic, I do not need titles to direct myself to a Prelate whose main credential to correct Popes and Cardinals is simply his condition of being a Catholic Prelate. However, I could insert that I have been studying Vatican II for the last 37 year and that 27 years ago I finished writing a Collection of 11 volumes analyzing it. This Collection, titled Eli, Eli, Lamma Sabacthani? (My God, My God, Why hast Thou abandoned me?) was published in English starting in 1997 (23 years ago). Since that time, I have continued following the steps of the progressivist take-over of the Catholic Church in other books and articles I have written.

Bishop Athanasius Schneider

Top, Bishop Schneider with Pope Francis; bottom, he hosts an ecumenical meeting at Astana, Kazakhstan

The first message I want to send to Archbishop Viganò is one of gratitude.

He shows that the pretension of Bishop Athanasius Schneider to save Vatican II by proposing that it will be corrected in the future is baseless, because “notwithstanding all the efforts of the hermeneutics of continuity miserably shipwrecked at the first confrontation with the reality of the present crisis, it is undeniable that from Vatican II onwards a parallel Church was constituted, superposed and opposed to the True Church of Christ. This parallel church has gradually obscured the divine institution founded by Our Lord in order to replace her with a spurious entity, corresponding to the desired universal religion as initially planned by Freemasonry.” (bold texts in this article are mine)

This is a statement that purifies the polluted air left by the declarations of several Prelates who have stepped into the public arena as anti-progressivists only to try to lead the Traditionalist flock back to Vatican II, which, according to them, has been poorly interpreted.

In this background of openness and sympathy for Arch. Viganò who said, “so today with equal serenity and honesty I recognize that I let myself be deceived,” I pass on to address him personally with two questions in order to better understand his position and, consequently, to see whether or not I will lend him my adhesion, as soon as he clarifies these and some previous doubts.

1. Do you consider Pope Francis to be a valid Pope?

In Your Excellency’s entire letter the tone of treatment toward Pope Francis is disdainful. You normally address him as Bergoglio. You only treat him as Pope in some instances, placing the title of Pope in expressions made by other persons: “the Prelates who sent the Dubia to Francis” or a journalist who mentioned the “solitude of Pope Francis.”

Pope Francis refuses symbols of Papacy

March 13, 2013, Francis refuses to wear the symbols of the Papacy - ‘The carnival is over!’

When Your Excellency describes what happened before Francis’ first appearance after his election, you say: “In the Room of Tears adjacent to the Sistine [Chapel], while Msgr. Guido Marini prepared the white rochetto, mozzeta and stole for the first apparition of the ‘newly-elected’ Pope, Bergoglio exclaimed: ‘The carnival is over!’ (Sono finite le carnevalate!), 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 involuntarily spoken: On that March 13, 2013, the mask fell from the conspirators (congiurati), 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.

The fact that Your Excellency puts the election of Francis between quotation marks leads the reader to wonder if you actually consider him to be a valid and legitimate Pope. Further, the affirmation that he was elected by a group of conspirators reinforces the hypothesis that you do not take him as a Pope.

The Traditionalist Movement is divided between:
  1. Those who consider the six Conciliar Popes valid, even though they all defended the heresy of universal salvation; who resist their bad teachings (here, here and here); and who try to alert Catholics that they should not follow those bad teachings;

  2. Those who consider that the See of Peter is vacant because, according to them, no heretic can be Pope and, if he becomes, he automatically ceases to be Pope.
Thus, Your Excellency’s statements on Pope Francis seem to feed the idea that the See of Peter is vacant.

So, my first question is: Do you consider Pope Francis to be a valid Pope?

2. Could you clarify your position on the five other conciliar Popes?

The conciliar Popes include John XXIII and Paul VI, who convened the Council and ruled over it, and the two following Popes – John Paul I and John Paul II – who considered the action of those first two Popes who made the Council so inspiring that they created a new papal name, John Paul, as a way to affirm indisputably that they were following in their footsteps.

To these four Popes we add Benedict XVI, who had been an active theologian at Vatican II and, then, an inspirer-mentor of John Paul II during the 24-year period in which he headed the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith.

In the letter Your Excellency at times seems to include them in your censures:
  • Dealing with the heretical Synod of Pistoia, you say against John XXIII and Paul VI: “Rereading the acts of that Synod, we are astonished at the slavish formulation of the same errors that we find later, in increased form, in the Council presided over by John XXIII and Paul VI.”

  • John XXIII and Paul VI also seem to be included in the criticism you made of the liturgical reforms and the New Mass, since Msgr. Bugnini worked under the direct orders of both Pontiffs for the approval of Sacrosanctum Concilum in 1963 and of the Novus Ordo Missae in 1969. Indeed, you wrote: “If we have a Protestantized liturgy and at times even paganized, we owe it to the revolutionary action of Msgr. Annibale Bugnini and to the post-conciliar reforms.

  • Statue of Buddha over the Tabernacle in Assisi 1986

    John Paul II allowed a statue of Buddha to be placed over the Tabernacle in Assisi - 1986

  • John Paul II is directly criticized in your letter when twice you mention the “Pantheon of Assisi,” picturing him “surrounded by shamans, bonzos (Buddhist monks), imams, rabbis, protestant pastors and other heretics,” but mainly in this general appraisal in which also Benedict XVI should be included: “And we know well that the purpose of these ecumenical and inter-religious initiatives is not to convert to Christ those who are far from the only Church, but rather to deviate and corrupt all those who still hold the Catholic Faith, leading them to believe it is desirable to have a great universal religion that brings together ‘in a single house’ the three great Abrahamic religions: This is the triumph of the Masonic plan in preparation for the kingdom of the Antichrist!

  • Benedict XVI at the UN

    In 2008, Benedict XVI at the U.N. commemorates the 60th anniversary of the Declaration of Human Rights

  • Benedict XVI is also criticized when you mention his “shipwrecked hermeneutic of continuity,” (here, here, here and here) when you attacked his “new humanism,” among other expressions easily found in Benedict XVI’s documents. Indeed, you affirmed: “Expressions like new humanism (here), universal fraternity (here), dignity of the man (here and here) are the watchwords of philanthropic humanitarianism that denies the true God, of horizontal solidarity of vague spiritualist inspiration and of ecumenical irenicism, which the Church unequivocally condemns.
Therefore, anyone can say that in this letter Your Excellency criticized the ensemble of the Conciliar Popes.

Thus, I ask Your Excellency: Could you clarify your position on the other five conciliar Popes? Do you consider them to be valid Popes? Legitimate Popes? Should Catholics resist them? Should Catholics consider the See of Peter to be vacant?

  1. As far as I could verify, these were his public statements: Letters: 1. August 25, 2018; 2. September 27, 2018; 3. October 19, 2018; 4. May 8, 2020; 5. June 7, 2020; 6. June 9, 2020. Interviews: 1. June 10, 2019 to The Washington Post; 2. September 9, 2019 to Inside the Vatican; 3. April 1, 2020 to The Remnant; 4. April 22, 2020 to Dies Irae; 5. April 29, 2020 to Stilum Curialis.
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