VIGANO SEDEVACANTIST – II ?

In one direction mainly – the Catholic Church!

Ever since Archbishop Vigano, once Number Four in the Secretariat of State, left behind the Second Vatican Council and all its pomps and all its works, some of his observations concerning Pope Bergoglio have been so caustic that many Catholics have wondered if the Archbishop still considers him to be Pope at all. Has he not joined the ranks of the “sedevacantists,” ie. those Catholics who consider that the See of Peter has been vacant ever since that accursed Council did so much damage to the Catholic Church? How is it possible that truly Catholic Popes presided over that Council and its aftermath?

The problem is agonising, because by that Council, Catholic Authority split itself from Catholic Truth, forcing Catholics to abandon one or the other, wholly or in part, because they could no longer follow both. Catholics either clung to the Truth and more or less “disobeyed” what seemed to be Catholic Authority, or they clung to falsified “Authority” and were more or less unfaithful to the unchanging Truth. As for Archbishop Vigano, for tens of years after the Council (1962–1965) he was faithful to his colleagues and comrades in the highest ranks of Church Authority, because, on his own confession, he “could not believe that they meant to destroy the Church.” But in 2018, he met with such corruption in the United States of America where he was Papal Nuncio and also in the Vatican Curia, that he was forced to seek the proportionate cause, and he found it in the Council. From there he found it especially in the Conciliar Pope of his own time, the “Argentine Jesuit,” as he calls him, about whom he has made such scathing remarks that many observers have been driven to wonder if the Archbishop still believes that Bergoglio is Pope. Let us see what he said on December 9.

See the “Eleison Comments” of last week (#859 of December 30) for a six-paragraph summary of what he said, to which the following numbers in heavy print correspond. Better still, look up on the Internet his full original words, accessible in English at catholicfamilynews.com orlifesitenews.com

1- Over the last 10 years, the Catholic Church has been turned over to revolution and chaos.

2 – Cardinals, Bishops should be blocking this destruction, but they are too Conciliar themselves to do so.

3 – Church Authority, so paralysed, is explicable only by the “operation of error” foretold for world’s end.

4 – It makes Bergoglio a usurper on Peter’s Throne. He is a false prophet. We need not obey him.

5 – However, we have no Authority to declare officially that he is not Pope, so there is no human solution.

6 – Nor is our whole battle merely between men, and to think so is to invite still further serious trouble.

Here is the merest skeleton of the Archbishop’s rich argument – do see the original to let him speak for himself – but it is enough to indicate that he is hanging back from public “sedevacantism.” After building up his case against the one he calls “Bergoglio” for the large part of his discourse (1–4), just as he arrives at the climactic point where he will propose his own solution (5), he may well himself share the conviction of many serious Catholics that this or that Conciliar Pope, anywhere from John XXIII to Francis inclusive, has not been a true Pope, but that conviction, shared by however many of them, can never amount to an official Church declaration, and any such declaration will have to wait until Mother Church has recovered from her present deadly attack of modernism, a barely curable mental disease.

In the meantime this apparent stop of Archbishop Vigano on the road to sedevacantism is highly reasonable, because it safeguards in a Catholic mind and heart a measure of respect for Catholic Authority which might otherwise go completely by the board. Woe to Catholic Tradition, or to its “Resistance,” that would lose all respect for Catholic Authority, because that Authority is divine, and it must and will come back, in full force, one day, just like the sun after an eclipse, and before world’s end.

Kyrie eleison.