“Nothing so clearly distinguishes a spiritual man as his treatment of an erring brother.” — St. Augustine, Letter 98 to Boniface Regarding the Elements of Communion (link).
Letter #26, 2024, Thursday, July 25: My Position on Viganò
As I wrote before, I have received many letters and emails regarding the excommunication from the Roman Catholic Church of Italian Archbishop Carlo Maria Viganò, 83, on July 4.
People have urged me to take a “public stand” in this matter, either:
1) to distance myself now from the archbishop, since he has been officially excommunicated, or (other correspondents urge),
2) to support the archbishop all the more strongly, since, as these correspondents see it, the archbishop has for several years now, often all alone, sometimes together with a small number of other Catholic prelates, eloquently defended key doctrines the orthodox Catholic faith — doctrines many others in the Church seem to have, in part, ignored or abandoned without facing any reprimand or condemnation — only to be condemned by a Roman hierarchy which (these correspondents argue) has seemingly begun, for various reasons, to depart from traditional orthodox Catholic faith and practice.
So it has become necessary to write this letter, to explain how I see the situation, and what I think should be done… —RM
The Call of Rome
Many years ago, on May 19 in 1984 — so, more than 40 years ago — I arrived in Rome, to each day feel the very light and air and sky of the sun-soaked Eternal City to be something precious, because connected to… the Holy See, the See of Peter, and to the lives and testimonies of the early saints, and, over 20 centuries, of a multitude of souls, each seeking and some finding the “hidden God” of whom my late father had spoken to me even as a child of five or six.
That that eternal, holy, all beautiful and unutterably present and real yet also “absconditus” (“hidden” = invisible = spiritual, not material) God might yet be glimpsed, and found, in a world with many temporal, visible, material, evanescent attractions, was a proposition inculcated into me by my father’s teaching and witness, especially his chanting of old Latin hymns, like St. Thomas Aquinas’s Tantum ergo Sacramentum… Laus et jubilatio (“Therefore to so great a sacrament (mystery) may there be… praise and jubilation, link)… on solemn occasions, especially on Good Fridays, when he would sit alone in the garden for three hours, from 12 to 3, “accompanying Christ in His passion,” as my mother once whispered to me, ordering me to wait inside and to allow him to be alone… and by my five years as an altar boy in the old Latin rite, when through the early 1960s, I intoned the Latin words at the ages of 8, then 9, then 10, then 11 — so perhaps 50 times a year for four or so years, making 200 or more celebrations — attempting to do my part in what was proposed to me as another “accompanying” of Christ in His passion, which had led to the salvation of this imperfect, fallen world, and to His final conquest over death itself.
Those years of old Masses defined me. I did not choose them, they were proposed to me, and I embraced them, as so they became part of my destiny, part of me.
My identity, my self-understanding, was marked by the attempt to speak the ancient foreign words — the Latin words — correctly, and to understand them by reading, over and over, the English on the other side of the page, and to “accompany” the recited words, riding on them, transported by them, as Frodo and Sam rode on the wings of eagles out of the fiery volcanoes of Mordor, back to the early days of the Church, a time when the Christians whose names we recited — the litany of the saints, Linus, Cletus, Clement, Sixtus, Cornelius (link) — were martyred in that city named “Rome,” that imperial capital, from which came the name of our faith — for I was not “a Catholic” but “a Roman Catholic.”
And so there sprang up within me a love and loyalty, a boyish enthusiasm, which was welded into my childish heart, an enthusiasm for a series of words and gestures that carried me across the veil of time back to the very Garden of Gethsemane in Jerusalem in the spring of 30 A.D., from my little New England town of Danielson, Connecticut, on each Sunday morning in the late 1950s and early 1960s, allowing me, as it were, to breathe the air of Jerusalem — my hands touching the ancient trunk of a rough-barked, twisted, yard-thick olive tree, hiding myself in the deepening evening shadows, glimpsing Jesus a few yards away, kneeling in prayer and reflection, sweating blood, as Judas prepares to come, having been paid 30 pieces of silver, along with a noisy group of soldiers holding torches high, the flames piercing the night, to betray Him, with an embrace, with a kiss…
We did not have a television in our family. So that drama of the liturgy was etched into my mind and heart in such a way as to make it indelible.
For this reason, I longed to someday visit Rome, and to become someone who could play some small role in assisting the handing on of the ancient message and drama to the future.
As the years passed by, and my life unfolded, and my path took me to the study of history, especially Church history, Rome was always, night and day, calling to me.
“Send forth your Spirit and they shall be created”
And the very first summer in Rome — in September, actually, of 1984 — I met Joseph Ratzinger in St. Peter’s Square, and told him I had come to Rome to study some of the same subjects he had studied and written about, especially The Theology of History in St. Bonaventure, and he said, “Well, you are the only one in Rome who has read that book of mind!”
And as the years flew by, and I struggled and persevered, and puzzled over many mysteries, writing hundreds and perhaps thousands of letters, and producing a monthly magazine about the Church called Inside the Vatican, I developed a friendship with the man who would be elected Pope Benedict XVI (and wrote a book about him, link) and who would then resign the papal throne, in a way that broke my heart… because I felt I had not done enough to help him, because I felt I could have helped him more, and perhaps could have somewhat protected him from “the wolves” from whom, it seemed to me, he had ultimately fled. But of course, I did not know many of his deep reasons for his choices, and he himself said he had taken his decisions after weeks and months of prayer, seeking to know the will of the Lord for him.
“In our generation,” Pope Benedict once said, many years ago (December, 1964, link), “the Christian Faith finds itself in a much deeper crisis than at any other time in the past. (emphasis added) In this situation, it is no solution to shut our eyes in fear in the face of pressing problems, or to simply pass over them. If faith is to survive this age, then it must be lived, and above all, lived in this age. And this is possible only if a manifestation of faith is shown to have value for our present day, by growing to knowledge and fulfillment.”
That very year of Benedict’s resignation, in 2013, at the nunciature in Washington D.C., I came to know and become a friend of Archbishop Viganò. And I have accompanied him, off and on, in a wide-ranging conversation and discussion during these past 10 years, as he has taken his own difficult, lonely, courageous, ecclesial and human path as a bishop of our Church. I wrote many articles about him and published many of his essays, and I published a book about him called Finding Viganò. And in recent years I also attempted to find a way for him, perhaps, to meet with Pope Francis, discussing the matter with Cardinal Pietro Parolin, Vatican Secretary of State, in order, perhaps, I thought (it was entirely my own idea, an invention of my abiding hope to work in all cases for an overcoming of division, and “peace on earth, good will toward men”) to avoid what increasingly seemed likely to become a division, a schism — and was unable to accomplish such a meeting… which was perhaps always a vain or improper hope on my part.
Also in 2013, on more than one occasion, I met with Pope Francis, in the Domus Santa Marta where he lives.
I wrote a book about Pope Francis, as well, in the spring of 2013, called Pray for Me: The Life and Spiritual Vision of Pope Francis, First Pope from the Americas, and presented the book to him in the summer of 2013.
On that occasion, he thanked me for the “hard work” of writing a book about him, and then he said: “May I ask you for one thing?” And I said, “Certainly.” And he said: “Will you please pray for me?” And I, somewhat moved, said, “Yes.” So, in fact, I made that promise to him. This imposes an obligation.
Also, during 2012 and 2013 and 2014, I met and had lunch with, and visited in Washington at the residence where he lived, the well-known and now disgraced (then-Cardinal) Theodore McCarrick, later, in 2018, the chief subject of the Testimony of Archbishop Viganò.
This means that I had personal knowledge of the three men who played the chief roles in this key ecclesial drama of our time.
A meeting in silent prayer, and a song…
Later, on August 1, 2013, just after his return from World Youth Day in Brazil — where Francis on the return flight made his famous and problematic remark about “Who am I to judge?” — Francis was kind enough to greet my two sons.
The two boys had just completed a 2-month-long journey from China through Russia on the Trans-Siberian railroad.
They had come down through Ukraine and then across the Adriatic to Rome, where they were both born.
Upon their arrival in the Domus, where we stayed for two nights, Francis was kind enough to speak with the boys for perhaps 20 minutes, after the four of us spent 20 minutes together in prayer before the Blessed Sacrament in the Domus chapel — just the Pope, myself, and my two sons, no guards, no nuns, no gendarmes.
Outside the chapel, Francis asked the boys about their travels, and what they had seen, in Mongolia, and Russia, and Ukraine. He was delighted to hear that they had exchanged guitars with Russian soldiers getting on and off the train, through a number of days, across the vast steppes, as the soldiers had boasted to the boys that they could play the boys’ guitars better than they could.
“Yes, music seems to be a way always to bring people together,” the Pope said. “It is wonderful, boys, to hear of your travels and your stories.”
And then my older son, Christopher (who speaks fluent Russian, fluent Spanish, and fluent Italian), asked the Pope if he would like to hear one of the songs they had played on the train, and the Pope said, “Sure.”
So Christopher went up to his room, picked up his guitar, came back down, and there in the area outside of the dining room and near the chapel, stood and played a song on his guitar in Spanish for the Pope. And the Pope, smiling, seemed to enjoy and appreciate it. And I noticed various monsignors, officials of various Vatican offices who live permanently in the Domus, still seated in the dining hall, overhearing the song and the notes of the guitar, exchange glances, with puzzled expressions, as if they were astonished that the two boys were being received so freely and with such intimacy by the new Pope, just after his return from an exhausting week-long trip to Brazil.
So, I and also my sons were guests in Francis’ house, and he was a pleasant host to us.
I write all this because it explains something peculiar: that my relationship to both Archbishop Viganò and to Pope Francis is sui generis.
Unique.
It seems likely to me that no one else has had the type of relationship with these two men that I have had.
And now these two have ended up in a type of bitter personal and theological conflict, leading to a rupture of historic proportions, an excommunication of one by the other for the serious ecclesial crime of schism, an excommunication which may have repercussions for the whole Church, repercussions which possibly could have consequences for decades to come.
I have, then, personal reasons to be unwilling to speak harsh and condemning words against either man, despite calls from many to choose the first and denounce the second, or to choose the second and denounce the first.
Francis, who was kind to my sons, wears the white robes of Peter, and, as Peter, his divinely constituted task is to preside over the unity of the Church. Yet he has presided over much confusion, allowing consternation to grow without taking direct steps to respond to the perplexed and to comfort the confused.
Viganò, whom I know to be a man of deep personal integrity, kindness and friendliness, and faith, has nevertheless chosen to use an emotional and apocalyptic rhetoric to condemn the actions, and the personal choices, of Francis.
What position should I take?
The only solution I see is an appeal to the Holy Spirit, in a situation which, humanly speaking, has no apparent solution.
“And you will renew the face of the earth”
In this context, I must return to one other event, an occurrence I have described in another letter.
On December 27, 2013, I was in the chapel of the Domus Santa Marta, staying there for several days with a group of American pilgrims to Italy for Christmas week.
At about 11 in the morning, Emeritus Pope Benedict XVI came to the Domus and embraced Pope Francis in the reception area, exchanging Christmas greetings.
This was the first and only time Benedict had come to the Domus since his resignation in February, 10 months before.
The Swiss Guards asked me to go away to allow the two men privacy, so I walked back to the chapel, and sat down alone and waited.
Then the chapel door opened, and the two men entered the chapel, nodding to me as they entered (both knew me, as I have written).
Then we three were alone together for about three or four minutes in the chapel, without any Vatican gendarmes or Swiss Guards.
The two of them, standing one or two steps behind me, bowed their heads and prayed.
The Blessed Sacrament was in the tabernacle at the front of the chapel — the very presence of Our Lord.
I was touched, and felt that my entire life had brought me to that moment — to be in the Vatican guest house, the residence of Pope Francis, in the chapel, before the Blessed Sacrament, two days after Christmas, together with the “two Popes,” praying together.
At the very front of that chapel, inscribed above the altar, are the words of the prayer to the Holy Spirit, in Latin: “Veni, Sancte Spiritus, reple tuorum corda fidelium: et tui amoris in eis ignem accende.” (“Come, Holy Spirit, fill the hearts of your faithful. And kindle in them the fire of your love.”)
That prayer continues: “Send forth your Spirit and they shall be created. And you will renew the face of the earth. Lord, by the light of the Holy Spirit you have taught the hearts of your faithful. In the same Spirit help us to relish what is right and always rejoice in your consolation. We ask this through Christ our Lord. Amen.”
Years ago, when he was a young man, in the same work cited above, Pope Benedict, then a young priest in his 30s, wrote: “Becoming a Christian is not… the private booking of an entry ticket into heaven, so that we can look across at other people and say, ‘I’ve got something the others haven’t got; I’ve got salvation arranged for me that they don’t possess.’ Becoming a Christian is not at all something given to us so that we, each individual for himself (emphasis added) can pocket it and keep our distance from those others who are going off empty-handed.”
What does he mean? He is addressing Christians and saying: “You are called to live a life of service to the Gospel, to work in the vineyard of the Lord, this is what it means to be a Christian.”
This morning, reading some passages from St. Ambrose of Milan, where Viganò is from, I came across these words: “Moderation alone has propagated the Church, purchased at the price of the Lord’s blood. It is the imitation of the heavenly gift and the redemption of all people. It rules by such healthy discretion that the ears of men are able to bear it, their minds do not flee from it and their spirits are not terrified of it.”
Ambrose continues: “Whoever is striving to amend the imperfections of human weakness must bear them on his own shoulders and in some way compensate for them, not reject them. Indeed, that shepherd in the Gospel is said to have carried the exhausted sheep, not to have cast it aside.”
So what is my position? My position is that all of us should redouble our prayer for the health and salvation of the souls of both Pope Francis and of Archbishop Viganò, and of our own souls, and appeal to the Holy Spirit:
“Veni, Sancte Spiritus, reple tuorum corda fidelium: et tui amoris in eis ignem accende.” (“Come, Holy Spirit, fill the hearts of your faithful. And kindle in them the fire of your love.”)
This is what seems to me, from the journey of my life, a journey that has led me from my father’s prayer on Good Friday, to my own prayer on various occasions with Archbishop Viganò, to my prayer with my sons together with Pope Francis, to my prayer together with Pope Benedict and Pope Francis in the chapel of the Domus Santa Marta, to be the answer that God asks me to give.
So I hold them both together by prayer.—RM
***
Here are several examples among dozens of letters I have received:
***
Letter #1: “Better be careful how you navigate this one”
June 28, 2024
Hi Robert!
I know he [Archbishop Viganò] is one of your favorites and you wrote that excellent book about his life. Better be careful how you navigate this one as he is likely to be booted out as a schismatic, objectivity by your magazine would be prudent.
His generation is fading fast and what he represents is not the future of the Church, at least for the long foreseeable one, this is my private opinion.
I think he has lacked finesse, prudence, perhaps it comes at advanced age, things are said on a whim with little careful reflection before speaking out publicly. His views, like it or not, are minority ones in the greater Catholic world, that is a reality, any reversal is well beyond our lifetimes.
Don’t make this a central theme of the magazine, we do not need a day-by-day report about it. Report it when something big happens and move on, there is so much more to focus on — good and bad in the Church.
Some very important meetings on Nicaea 325-2025 coming up in Rome and elsewhere, for example, I plan to speak at one in April 2025.
Be faithful, be prudent, be prayerful.
Blessed Feast of the Apostles Peter and Paul,
Alberto
Letter #2: “The most faithful, most holy, most courageous priest in the entire Hierarchy”
July 17, 2024
Bob,
Archbishop Viganò is the most faithful, most holy, most courageous priest in the entire Hierarchy.
He is the “sole voice” of the true, authentic, genuine One Holy Catholic Apostolic Church of Jesus Christ.
He succinctly states: “counterfeit, counter” describing the current Church, Vatican and Pope.
Bergoglio is an illegitimate Pope, elected by fraudulent, dishonest schemes and machinations.
Certainly, those minions and lackies of Bergoglio have no conscience and are of the same ilk.
Millions of us who have been faithful traditional Roman Catholics, presently have no Church.
Regards,
Vic
Letter #3: “I think there needs to be a new category… of prophets”
July 19, 2024
Dear Bob,
I think there needs to be a new category of membership and the people of God, a category of prophets.
The question is how to deal with people who are fully committed to the life and mission of Jesus Christ, but whose conscience leads them to different opinions and actions from those officially approved in the Roman Catholic Church.
There are avenues to let divergent opinions be known and considered, but generally these processes take decades to centuries. Meanwhile one’s limited life energies and lights are put under the proverbial bushel basket and stifled by “excommunication” either explicit or implicit.
You know I have been very hopeful about the Synod process. In October, the bishops gathered in Rome will again be considering how to recognize and manifest the gifts of the Holy Spirit that each of us baptized persons has received. It would be useful there could be some public dialogue about how the gifts in both the progressive and conservative wings of the Church could be better utilized, and focused toward the mission of Christ, instead of being buried under bushel baskets rooted in past history.
I am hoping that you may consider some initiative to pursue this dialogue.
Bob, D.Min., Springfield, Virginia, USA
Letter #4:
July 11, 2024
Dear Bob,
The Holy See has now officially confirmed the truth of what I’ve realized since 2018: that for the past six years, Archbishop Viganò has been a schismatic — an ANTI-POPE in all but name.
His past six years of public statements about Pope Francis and the Second Vatican Council, consisting of an admixture of timeless Catholic truths and blatant falsehoods, have greatly harmed the universal Church by exacerbating pre-existing divisions and differences of opinion.
I feel very sorry for Viganò, because for many years previously he was a faithful son of the Church, and I don’t know exactly why he has chosen to abandon this fidelity and tread a different path, endangering his soul.
I also feel sorry for you, because during these same six years you have been either unable or unwilling to see the truth of this.
Instead, for reasons that I cannot understand, you have unreservedly embraced and offered a worldwide platform for all of Viganò’s divisive propaganda without any critical analysis of his controversial statements and outright lies or the questionable aspects of his mental health and personal character.
You have fallen hook, line, and sinker for a wolf in sheep’s clothing.
This is a major reason why, after many years, I finally started deleting unread your newsletters that included “Viganò” in the subject line and allowed my subscription to Inside the Vatican to expire last year.
I stopped reading Viganò’s schismatic propaganda some time ago and do not wish to read another word of it.
It is the work of Satan, pure and simple, who often disguises himself as an angel of light.
Viganò has totally discredited himself as far as I’m concerned. Catholics now have a choice between accepting the Holy See’s final decision on him and remaining faithful sons and daughters of the Church, or joining him in the grave sin of schism.
May they recognize him for what he is and accept the Church’s ruling, for in doing so, they obey Christ himself.
Prayerfully yours in Christ,
Justin
Letter 5: “So please come out, swallow hard, and tell your viewers clearly that you accept Francis as Pope and deeply regret the Archbishop’s grave mistake”
July 13, 2024
Dear Bob,
I confess to being very disappointed by your latest hour-long conversation with Fr. Murr, which was headlined for viewers as being about Archbishop Viganò’s excommunication. I viewed it on the basis of that expectation, hoping to see your take on whether the excommunication was or was not valid.
But you never even got to that crucial question. You started with a red herring — the claim that the timing of the excommunication was politically motivated by V’s recent and unsubstantiated claims of sexual misconduct on the part of Bergoglio before he became Pope. But speculations about the timing and motivation of the excommunication are totally secondary to the burning question of whether this sentence was just and valid or not. But you and Fr. M never got round to addressing that! You spent the next 40 minutes on an unnecessarily long excursus about the history of St. Athanasius, with a view to depicting Abp. Viganò as the Athanasius of our time. But that ignores the vast differences between St. A, who never challenged or called in question the true papal status of any pope, not even Liberius, and Abp. V., who explicitly and proudly denies the papal status and authority of the current occupant of Peter’s See.
You and Fr. Murr end up saying that in response to repeated viewers’ questions over the last couple of years as to whether or not V. is right in claiming Francis has never been a true Pope, your consistent position has been, “That’s not our call. It’s up to the bishops to decide.”
I find that pretty shocking, Bob, because it already assumes that the question is open and needs resolution. It assumes there is real, serious doubt about Francis’ status as Pope so that the doubt needs to be resolved by a higher authority than mere laity or lower clergy. But if that were true, then I and all the tens of thousands of priests worldwide who celebrate daily Mass could not in conscience do so, because the words “together with Francis our pope” in every Eucharistic Prayer affirm his papal status as a certain fact, not something doubtful and up for legitimate debate among Catholics! Nor could we simply omit those words on “conscience” grounds and recite the rest of the words in the missal unchanged. For the Church forbids us priests to delete anything in the Missal our own authority, and especially those crucial words which ensure and anchor our communion with the man who holds together in corporate unity the visible Body of Christ on earth.
Furthermore, your attempt to pass the buck to the Bishops as to whether Francis is truly Pope or not ignores the fact that the Bishops have already decided that he is. Every Cardinal in the College recognizes him. Not one porporato has ever denied or even questioned that Francis is Pope; and every one of them affirms his status daily in those sacred and inviolable words of the Eucharistic Prayer. So does every Catholic bishop in good standing — and even some who’ve been removed from their sees, like Strickland and Fernandez Torres from Puerto Rico.
I can appreciate that because of your long personal association and friendship with Vigano his excommunication must be emotionally very distressing to you. But you owe it to your viewers, to God and to the Church, and to the welfare of your own soul, not to give scandal by hovering on the brink of sedevacantism, thereby lending credibility to that position among your many viewers.
Indeed, in this case sedevacantism leads straight towards heresy. For if V. is correct in saying Francis not only is not Pope now, but never has been Pope because of a defective intention in assuming the office, then the papacy itself is finito! In that case none of the “cardinals” whom “Bergoglio” has appointed (now a clear majority) will be true electors at the next conclave, so the man they elect will not be a true pope. Nor will his successor — and so on and so on. But to say the papacy has been destroyed by the Enemy’s infiltration is heretical, according to Vatican I’s dogmatic definition that Blessed Peter will have “perpetual” successors — i.e., that the papacy will continue right up till the Second Coming of Christ.
So please come out, swallow hard, and tell your viewers clearly that you accept Francis as Pope and deeply regret the Archbishop’s grave mistake in rejecting his authority.
All blessings,
Fr. Brian
Letter #6: “The heresy of denying the infallibly defined dogma that Blessed Peter will have perpetual Successors”
July 15, 2024
Dear Bob,
Some further thoughts about the excommunication of Archbishop Viganò.
I know that some who accept the true papal status of all Popes prior to Francis (but not the true papal status of Francis) object to being called “sedevacantist”: they point to the fact that the term has hitherto designated those who claim the papal see has been vacant ever since at least 1963 (and for most ‘sedes’ since 1958). However, I don’t think the label is too important. For what we might call (for lack of a better term) “Francis-only sedevacantism” still has the same fatal defect I explained in my previous email: it leads logically through schism to heresy — the heresy of denying the infallibly defined dogma that Blessed Peter will have perpetual Successors.
So, yes, those commentators who, like Viganò, deny “Bergoglio” to be a true Successor of Peter, and openly profess that they are not in communion with him and all the other clerics, religious and laity who submit to his authority, have incurred latae sententiae excommunication for schism. (As you know, there’s no need for the Church to declare a latae sententiae excommunication in order for it to have been incurred.) This would be on the assumption, of course, that, like Viganò, they don’t qualify for any of the mitigating canonical circumstances that his public defender urged, and which his judges rejected as not applicable to him. Some commentators may, and others may not be, as blameworthy as Viganò was judged to be. Those who are will, like him, be “not in full Communion with the Catholic Church” — to use the Church’s preferred terminology.
If they are subjectively in good conscience before God, they are in much the same position as those Christians who, having been raised Protestant, Anglican or and Orthodox, are invincibly ignorant of the truth of certain Catholic dogmas. In that case, (according to Pius XII’s Mystici Corporis, the 1949 Holy Office Letter condemning Feenyist rigorism, and Vatican II’s Lumen Gentium) they are in a degree of unconscious, partial communion with the true Church that may be sufficient for their salvation. But if their withdrawal of submission from Francis is due to sinful pride that leads them to rashly trust their own theological judgment rather than that of the 99.9% of all the Catholic Bishops and 100% of the College of Cardinals who assure us he is indeed the Pope, then they are guilty of the mortal sin of schism as well as the canonical delict of schism, and are completely outside the Catholic Church.
Actually, they will also be falling, at last materially, into another heresy — that of denying the Catholic Church as a visibly identifiable body. When Viganó says he remains in communion with “the Catholic Church” and with “the papacy” rather than with the man who claims to be (and who he denies to be) the actual Pope, he is necessarily implying a quasi-Protestant definition of the Church as the invisible sum total of true believers scattered throughout the world and known only to God — the collectivity of all those whose hearts and minds hold to orthodox Christian belief.
But true belief is not something visible.
Nor is “the papacy,” understood as a concept or abstraction, as distinct from the publicly identifiable, living, visible manholding jurisdiction at any given time over the Church that’s based in the publicly identifiable, visible, Italian city of Rome. So Viganò’s currently held ecclesiological doctrine is not orthodox at all. The Catholic Church is a visible body, and so can’t be defined in terms of something invisible, whether that be belief in people’s hearts or an institution — the papacy — that no longer really exists because it has no incumbent, and no prospect of any future incumbent who could be clearly and universally identified as such.
Getting back to what prompted my previous email — your telling your viewers it’s “not your call” to say whether the current occupant of Domus Sanctae Marthae is truly Pope or not: If what you mean is that Francis may lack the papal office because of past and/or present heresies, but that only a future Council of worldwide Bishops or perhaps the College of Cardinals would have the authority to discern and declare that such is the case, this would be an acceptable Catholic position as far as it goes. Bellarmine and others have of course held it. But it will be acceptable and Catholic only if you add that since you and the rest of us ordinary Catholics cannot make that authoritative discernment and declaration, we have to act on the practical assumption that he is in fact the true Pope. We have to treat him as innocent of the charge of being an anti-Pope until the contrary is proven.
So would you be willing to make that clarification to the many viewers and readers who trust you as a generally reliable communicator of orthodox Catholicism? As I said before, this issue comes up every day for us priests, because in offering Mass, sitting on the fence and taking no position one way or the other, is impossible. We either do or we don’t solemnly profess to be “in unione cum Papa nostro Francisco” in the Eucharistic Prayer. There’s no middle option. (Incidentally, have you asked Fr. Murr whether he includes those words in his Masses?)
Perhaps for a layman who’s not put on the spot with that decision, an appropriate litmus test would be the following thought experiment. Ask yourself whether you would feel obliged to obey an unquestionably orthodox and reasonable command from Francis. Suppose, for instance, that he were to issue a Motu Proprio tomorrow saying that the current Eucharistic fast of only one hour before Communion is really too short, so that in order to give greater reverence to the Lord’s Body and Blood, all Catholics must, on pain of sin, abstain from food and drink for at least two hours before receiving Communion, starting from the Feast of the Assumption next month. The key question would not simply be whether you’ll do that or not. For you might do it just because you like the idea and agree with it anyway. The key question would be whether you would feel obliged in conscience to extend your Eucharist fast thus because that man in Rome had ordered it. I certainly would.
I hope these thoughts may be of some help, Bob If you decide to issue some such clarification to your viewers and readers, let me know and perhaps send me a link to that program.
God bless,
Fr. Brian
Letter #7: “Certain aspects of Viganò’s current position naturally (if not necessarily) lead to sedevacantist errors…”
July 19, 2024,
Hi Bob,
I’ve been meaning to reply and offer a few thoughts about Fr. Brian’s emails.
First off, I think Fr. Brian’s concerns about Abp. Viganò’s current position (specifically, Vigano’s rejection of Francis as an antipope) are valid. I agree with him that certain aspects of Viganò’s current position naturally (if not necessarily) lead to sedevacantist errors, which I fear His Excellency may have already embraced — for example, his assertion that “the errors and heresies to which Bergoglio adhered before, during, and after his election, along with the intention he held in his apparent acceptance of the Papacy, render his elevation to the throne null and void” (despite the fact that Cardinal Bergoglio was never found and publicly declared to be a heretic by the Church prior to the 2013 conclave), and further, that “Bergoglio himself cannot be considered a member of the Church, due to his multiple heresies and his manifest alienness and incompatibility with the role he invalidly and illicitly holds” (source).
Fr. Brian’s point about the Church’s formal visibility being at stake (one of the Church’s three attributes, which are distinct from her four marks) is also critically important. As Fr. Brian emphasized, the Church “is a visible body,” meaning she is a visible society with a visible hierarchy, including a visible head. If it were true that Francis is not the Pope, and that virtually the entire Church is following an antipope — “99.9% of all the Catholic Bishops and 100% of the College of Cardinals” (Fr. Brian), not to mention the vast majority of the laity — then the Church’s formal visibility would be jeopardized, which is not possible (like the Church’s four marks, her three attributes of visibility, infallibility, and indefectibility are immutable). Basically, we would be left with what Fr. Brian rightly calls “a quasi-Protestant definition of the Church as the invisible sum total of true believers scattered throughout the world and known only to God,” which by definition “is not something visible” (identifiable by men as a visible society).
At the same time, I agree completely with what you and Fr. Murr said during your live stream this week that not only is it legitimate to continue discussing Viganò’s case (after all, it’s a major ecclesiastical news story), it is vital to do so because the concerns Viganò has raised over the last four years — especially those concerning Vatican II, the crisis in the Church, and the heresies that Francis has propagated (whether obstinately or not is an open question) — must be addressed, as Fr. Murr said. I agree with Fr. Murr that rejecting Vatican II in toto as illegitimate, as Viganò appears to have done, is going too far (not even the SSPX holds that extreme position), but the problematic texts within the Conciliar documents must be acknowledged and corrected.
As you know, I sent some questions to Archbishop Viganò a while back. He has agreed to answer them in interview format, the first part of which was published this morning (he told me he is still working on his answers to my other questions): https://catholicfamilynews.com/blog/2024/07/19/exclusive-abp-vigano-clarifies-his-position-following-ddf-ruling-part-i
I hope you and Fr. Murr will continue covering Viganò’s case and addressing the important concerns he has raised.
I look forward to our next live stream on August 6.
God bless,
Matt
—RM
“Nothing so clearly distinguishes a spiritual man as his treatment of an erring brother.” –– St. Augustine, Letter to Boniface
