p/c Canon212.
Italian Marco Tosatti recently translated an interview granted by Archbishop Carlo Maria Viganó to Francesco Borgonovo here regarding the upcoming 2025 Papal Conclave. Once again, I find that the only bishop in the world with a supernatural outlook on the crisis in the Church is Archbishop Viganó. I also repeatedly find that none of his enemies are ever able to counter his water-tight logic, except by calling him names like “schismatic.” I will only highlight a few aspects of the above-linked spectacular interview. Below, my commentary will be in orange font.
Francesco Borgonovo: Your Excellency, the first question is perhaps the most difficult. Do you still consider yourself a member of the Catholic Church?
Archbishop Viganó: I consider myself a full member of the Catholic Church, as Bishop and Successor of the Apostles. Schismatic is anyone who does not recognize the Authority of the Roman Pontiff: I have never failed in my Profession of the Catholic Faith, much less with regard to the Petrine Primacy.
Nix: It appears Archbishop Viganó’s interviewer fails to understand the basic definitions of sins against the Faith. Heresy is the refusal to submit to rule of faith whereas schism is the refusal to submit to the Roman Pontiff. However, if a putative-Pope be an obstinate heretic, then it’s impossible that a certain bishop refusing to obey him be labeled a “schismatic.” Why? Because refusing to follow a heretic has never in 2,000 years of Catholicism been considered to be a sin, much less a canonical crime. This is true, even if the heretic in question wears a white mitre in Rome. Thus, there’s absolutely no chance Viganó could be “outside the Church” via a fake excommunication for defending the Catholic Faith as it was taught by the Apostles.
This means the only reason certain Catholics today label Viganò as “excommunicated” or “schismatic” is because they have erroneously placed a man-centered church ahead of a God-centered Church. Only the latter has maintained an objective rule of faith based in Divine Revelation. And this is why Viganò clearly states “the Counter-Church” stands in stark opposition to the real Catholic Church. The former has all the buildings (including the Vatican) but they reject the Apostolic Faith and the ancient liturgy. Thus, the leaders of the “ape of the Church” are not even Catholics anymore. That is what we might be facing in the next Conclave.
I know what some of you are thinking at this point. It goes like this: “That’s all probably true, but Viganó didn’t have the authority to declare Francis a heretic.” Mr. Matthew McCusker explains very well at LifeSite why the average Catholic can recognize a material public heretic as being outside the Catholic Church without need of a formal canonical trial, even if the person in question be a putative-member of the hierarchy. (Note here the difference between a material heretic and a formal heretic, but it doesn’t really matter when it comes to ignoring heretics.)
We are again speaking of the rule of the Faith, not just having a baptismal certificate in your past or being in good standing with what Padre Pio labeled “a false church run by satan.” In the article linked in the above paragraph, McCusker also reveals how many modern trads conflate the sin of heresy with the canonical crime of heresy. The truth of all of Catholic history as I explained here is that any serious Catholic (even without a theology degree) can recognize a material public heretic without any need for a formal canonical trial against that bishop in question (just like people had to recognize the bishop Arius as a heretic in order to save their soul.) Also, because no one can judge the First Office in the Church (a validly-named Pope) there is no such thing as “an imperfect council” to remove a valid Pope as Trad Inc. has erroneously promoted.
Viganó: I was convicted and declared guilty of the canonical crime of schism and punished by excommunication for a non-crime by an illegitimate tribunal, on the mandate of an illegitimate “pope.”
Nix: Notice that a good bishop being condemned for a non-crime by an “illegitimate pope” has as much power over a him as Snuffleupagus being mad at him. People who label Viganó “excommunicated” always come to that vicious conclusion without considering their false premises. Rather, an imposter upon the Chair of Peter has no power, and such an imposter especially lacks power to execute man-made laws over a traditional bishop. An unjust law is no law at all. Viganó continues in this same paragraph how he was also accused by many of rejecting Vatican II, but accepts this accusation…
Viganó: What I condemn of the Second Vatican Council, has been already condemned by the popes preceding the conciliar revolution. The usurpation of the Throne by Bergoglio, which I have denounced, would be considered in the same way by all of them. It is the conciliar church, today renamed synodal and Bergoglian, which rejects the perennial Magisterium of the Pontiffs and thus places itself outside the Catholic Church.
Nix: The Archbishop makes a great point here. Basically, he is saying that everything from the Gospels to St. Paul to the classic Magisterium over 2,000 years has already preemptively condemned the heresy of religious indifferentism. And the latter is found in the documents of Vatican II. This is not just my opinion and that of Viganó. Shockingly, even Pope Benedict XVI bragged that Vatican II was a counter-syllabus of errors when compared to Pope Pius IX’s actual condemnation of modern errors in the 19th century. Clearly, this was long before Vatican II had even been rolled out by (or against) the Church.
Thus, either the modernists sitting on the seat of every diocese of the world currently are wrong…or… every pre-conciliar Pope and saint was wrong. We are way past the “hermeneutic of continuity” at this point. Today, any Catholic responsible enough to avoid willful-ignorance will admit that both traditional doctrine and modernist doctrine cannot both be correct at this point. (It never was, but there was a great unveiling the last 13 years in Rome.) You see, either Christ changed his mind on literally everything regarding doctrine and liturgy at Vatican II –or– the Third Secret of Fatima was indeed apostasy from the top—down. Again, this is not my suspicion. Everyone who has read the Third Secret of Fatima alludes to the latter. If you believe Fatima, you need to believe Viganó at this point.
Tomorrow is the feast of St. Athanasius, the fourth century bishop from Egypt who took on the whole Mediterranean region who by that point had denied the Divinity of Christ. St. Athanasius defended the Blessed Trinity, despite all the names he would be called. That courageous Doctor of the Church reveals that there are times in Church history when less than 1% of the baptized Catholics side with the Truth. Therefore, God’s own truth is never determined by an opinion poll, but rather by the extremely few who hold the Apostolic Faith in a Church crisis. Thus, for those who say “Do you think Viganó is correct and all the other bishops of the world are wrong?” By answer is a whole-hearted: Yes!
Francesco Borgonovo: What do you expect from this upcoming conclave?
Archbishop Viganó: The Apostolic Constitution Universi Dominici Gregis that regulates the Conclave, confirmed by the Motu Proprio of Benedict XVI Normas Nonnullas, peremptorily establishes that the number of Cardinal electors must not exceed 120 individuals. But the Cardinal electors who make up the imminent “conclave” are 136: we are therefore faced with a very serious violation that alone would be enough to undermine the legitimacy of any supposedly valid Conclave. Furthermore, a College of Cardinals composed of 108 “cardinals” created by a Jesuit who usurped the Papacy for twelve years cannot validly elect a legitimate pope.
Nix: Due to 80% of the illegal Cardinalate electors having been named by a usurper to the Throne over the last decade, I figured this would be Viganó’s approach to the Conclave. However, I did not know that number had risen to 136, when 120 is the absolute maximum to Cardinals in a Papal Conclave.
Francesco Borgonovo: There are those who argue that Bergoglio, beyond his media statements, has not actually changed the essence or depth of Catholic doctrine. What do you think?
Archbishop Viganó: Bergoglio did not need to change doctrine: he instead managed to make it irrelevant and negligible, creating a certain liquid inclusiveness without dogmas and without ideals. He never wanted to act as Pope, but he made sure that after him no Pope could obtain from Catholics that obedience that he made hateful, because it was extorted in order to support heresies and moral deviations.
I believe this is the most fascinating and important of Archbishop Viganó’s recent statements. Based on the false-premise that Francis was “just a bad Pope,” many online traditional pundits in the United States have now come to the erroneous conclusion that the papacy is just the casque of an empty figurehead. BUT THIS IS NOT CATHOLICISM. Rather, it was the master-stroke of Satan over the last 13 years to get trads to distrust the papacy. Notice again the words of Viganó: “He never wanted to act as Pope, but he made sure that after him no Pope could obtain from Catholics that obedience that he made hateful, because it was extorted in order to support heresies and moral deviations.”
This is exactly what he accomplished. Even many American rad-trads now mock Vatican I and the papacy as superfluous (again, a totally non-Catholic notion.)
Thus, there’s only one way forward to make the next Conclave (be it in 2025 or 2030 valid.) Yes, the only “synodality” I want now is a “cadaver synod…”
