Catholic Truth

The end of lalaland is one great hope.

Last week these “Comments” (July 13, # 887) gave a summary of Archbishop Vigano’s June 28 long justification of his decision not to respond to a Newchurch summons to appear before one of its courts to defend himself against a charge of schism. The summary took the form of 44 lines, one line for each of the 44 paragraphs of the original text, which gave to readers at least an overview of the entire content of the Archbishop’s text, but it hardly made any comment on what he wrote, except for the final couplet –

But here is a Catholic spirit, faithful and free.

In this week’s “Comments,” let us elaborate on last week’s rhyming verdict.

The first thing to notice about the original text is its wealth of arguments, not marshalled in any clearly recognisable sequence, but all bearing on the Archbishop’s central and most valuable message – the so-called “renewal” of Vatican II (1962–1965) wrought such a sea-change in the Catholic Church, that while appearances of the pre-conciliar Church could be maintained to deceive Catholics who were not on their guard, nevertheless the substance of the Catholic Church was so altered that it was no longer the true Church but a clever false church, so radically false that it had to be given a new name for Catholics to be no longer deceived. The Archbishop himself does not call it the Newchurch, but that is what these “Comments” will call it, for brevity and clarity.

Then the Archbishop’s main reason for refusing the summons of Rome is easy to express: between the Newchurch and the true Church there is such a contradiction (13) that while the true Church has such a divine Authority that it can demand from souls obedience on pain of eternal damnation (Mk. XVI, 16), on the contrary the Newchurch has no such authority because by all its false doctrines it has given up that Catholic Truth, the defence and protection of which is the very purpose of divine Catholic Authority. From the moment that Adam and Eve fell, mankind lived in a fallen world where God’s Truth no longer needed only to be presented in order to be accepted.

But by the time that the Word became flesh some 4000 years later, mankind had become so corrupt that to save any significant number of souls, Our Lord had to institute a hierarchy to impose the saving Truth: a Pope (Peter), bishops (Apostles), and disciples (priests). Men might still choose to disobey God’s own hierarchy and Truth, but His hierarchy would still, broadly, uphold it – until Luther let the corruption loose again, culminating in Vatican II, where Our Lord’s own hierarchy, broadly, abandoned God’s Truth. That split between God’s Truth and God’s Authority caused, sure enough, an unprecedented crisis in all Church history, beyond all human repair, where God alone will be able to restore His Papacy. But He will do that, to make possible one final triumph of the Catholic Church before the descent to the Antichrist.

Here is the basic reality of our situation in Church and world today. Archbishop Lefebvre recognised it, and by not underestimating the problem he did what was still possible for men to alleviate it. Archbishop Vigano mentions his example (2), and does what he can to follow it, by refusing, for example, to appear at the summons of apostate Rome, with a wealth of arguments to justify his refusal. One may disagree with some of his arguments, for instance on the vacant See in Rome. But those are details which pale in comparison with his grasp of the overall gravity of the crisis, nullifying the hierarchs’ authority. Here is the true faith of the Church’s martyrs down all the ages. May Archbishop Vigano’s courage and teaching open many more eyes for as long as God gives him life.

Kyrie eleison.