Letter #60 2022, Wed, Mar 30: The main point

    Mary, the West, and Russia’s Errors: A Defense of Archbishop Viganò (link)

    March 29, 2022

    By Barbara J. Farrah

    In his writings on Fatima and Russia, the Venerable Archbishop Fulton Sheen pointed out that the world has “become so used to judging temporal events in terms of other events,” that it has lost sight of that “greater standard of judgment, namely, the Eternal.” Michael Warren Davis, in an article for Crisis, has recently accused another archbishop, Carlo Maria Viganò, of having fallen into precisely this error, becoming so absorbed in worldly events, so “swept away by trends in modern politics,” that he has let “the clamor of current events drown out…the voice of God,” and “blind him to the evils of the Russian government.”

    I strongly disagree. In fact, if we look at Viganò’s writings in the light of Sheen’s discussion of Fatima, we can see that just the opposite is true. Far from Viganò being the one drowning out the voice of God, it is actually the entire Western world that is guilty of drowning out not only the voice of God but even the very clear signs of His intervention in and movement through world events.

    To understand this, we must step back and address what Mary meant when she spoke of Russia’s errors. The most common interpretation is that she was referring to the errors of communism. But there are several reasons to reject this interpretation. First, she spoke of these errors in her July appearance, months before the communists took over. The February Revolution had been a “bourgeois democratic” one that ended what had previously been seen as the divinely-appointed Tsarist monarchy. If Mary meant the errors of communism, why appear before the communists took over? Why appear when those at the time would have thought she was referring to the democratic revolution?

    Further, communism was not newly spawned in Russia in 1917. By that time, it had been spreading its errors across Europe and the world for more than 70 years, and the Church had been sounding the alarm about it throughout those years. Neither it nor its spread were new to Russia. Third, if Mary meant communism, why not just say communism or communist errors? Why just errors?

    Sheen points us in a different direction—specifically, to the year 1858. He asks us to look not only at the world events of that year but at the Eternal ones as well. Rejecting the commonly held view that the Modern Age started with the rise of science, something that is not at odds with Faith, he argues that it began instead with the writing of three seminal works: Darwin’s On the Origins of Species, Mill’s On Liberty, and Marx’s A Contribution to the Critique of Political Economy. In those three works, Man summarized the errors of the Modern Age and announced his independence from God: we were not divinely created but rather evolved from mere matter; there is no higher authority than man to which we must answer, freedom is license, the only laws are those we choose to make; and Man and history are driven by economics and politics not religion and certainly not anything spiritual.

    These are not the errors of communism. They are the errors of modernism. They are errors that have to do with Modern Man’s denial of God, of Creation, of God’s Authority over Man, of any obedience due to Him. Sheen points out that what was effectively said in those works, in that year of 1858, was that all men are immaculately conceived, all born without Original Sin. For if there was no Divine Creation, then there was no Fall. No Fall, no Original Sin. If there is no Original Sin, then all men are born immaculate and free to be whatever they want to be, answerable to and in need of no higher authority.

    Those were the key human events of 1858 to which Sheen directs us. He then shifts our attention to God’s response, His Eternal judgment, that occurred that very same year: the Apparitions at Lourdes. Mary appeared from Heaven and announced: “I am the Immaculate Conception.” Sheen points out that at “the very moment the world was denying original sin, our Blessed Mother claimed the prerogative solely as her own…she alone and uniquely was immaculately conceived—everyone else was born in original sin.”

    In the Blessed Mother’s appearance at Lourdes, Sheen notes, God answered Man’s arrogant claim of independence and provided proof of his errors. Her very appearance said yes, there is more than matter; yes, there is a God; yes, there is a Heaven; yes, Man was born in Original Sin; and yes, Man owes obedience to God and reparations for the sins committed against Him. Every error contained in those three seminal works was contradicted in that one announcement: “I am the Immaculate Conception.”

    Thus, Sheen says, began the Modern Age—not with science and reason, but with the denial of Original Sin and God’s response.

    But Man did not take notice of, nor heed, that Eternal pronouncement, that Eternal judgment.

    Instead, the modernist errors continued to be spread throughout Europe, along with all the other errors that went hand in hand with them: rationalism, socialism, communism, and all the others Pope Pius IX listed in Quanta Cura and its attached Syllabus of Errors. But that was in 1864. By 1917, those errors had existed and been spreading for another 50-plus years before the Russian Revolution and Mary’s appearance at Fatima. They were unique neither to Russia nor to communism. So, what was different about Russia that Mary would single it out?

    The answer can be found in the pages of Pope Leo XIII’s Rerum Novarum. In it, he gives the Church’s answer to communism: inequality and class conflict are not aberrations to be fixed, but rather they are a part of the human condition. Mankind lives in a fallen world, a world felled by man’s disobedience to God. Only through God and with God, through His Church, will peace and harmony be possible. All the sects, organizations, societies, fraternities, all the governmental solutions that communists and socialists think able to “fix” the world are futile and delusional. No organization or State, apart from God, will ever be able to bring peace to the world. Social problems cannot be solved apart from God and His Church.

    If we look to all the writings of the Church throughout this time, what we see is increasing concern not just over the errors themselves but over the increasing belief that man could fix the human condition through the creation of a godless State, through the implementation of mere economic and political change. And that is what was new in Russia, in the February Revolution and to be completed in the Bolshevik one: the successful creation of a political body that incorporated all those errors—a secular State that, apart from any reference at all to God, claimed to be able to solve the problems inherent in the human condition; a State that said no to God, no to any authority higher than itself, no to natural law; and a State that would be powerful enough to spread those errors across the world. As Sheen put it, “Russia gave political form and social substance” to the “de-spiritualization of the Western world.”

    The danger in believing Mary was pointing specifically to communism and to Russia lay in believing the problem is Russia and the error communism, when in fact the error is believing that man is nothing more than a rational animal who can fix all his social problems through the political and economic policies enacted by a secular State.

    When Mary appeared at Fatima, her first announcement was this: “I am from Heaven.” As God responded to Mankind’s announcement of its separation from Him in 1858, so He responded in 1917 to its erection of a godless State as the new path to human happiness and freedom: Mary stepped into time and announced that Heaven exists. And if Heaven exists, then there is a higher authority. Salvation and redemption will not come from a man-made State but from God and only from God. And to prove this, to drive the message home, Mary would appear six times. And on the last one, she would bring direct proof from Heaven, a miracle that would prove the lie that man is the highest authority on earth and fully capable of fixing that earth as he alone wills it to be fixed.

    But even with a miracle witnessed by tens of thousands, Modern Man again said no and did not heed the message.

    And the Soviet State grew and did indeed spread its errors across the world. Not the errors of communism, but rather the modernist errors that man is independent and can create his own path to utopia by means of the secular State. Throughout the West, in country after country, man began to turn to the government, the State, to solve more and more of his social problems. Care of the poor shifted to the State. Mediation of class conflict shifted to the State. Alleviation of discrimination, racial conflicts, income inequality: all shifted to the State. Individual charity was replaced by State-run charity.

    Even the Church turned to the State to solve society’s problems, man’s human condition, and she shifted her focus to influencing public policy. Every social problem came to be seen as fixable through a new State policy, a new institutional or systemic change. It was only a matter of time until they were also seen as the result of poor government policy, not a wound in man’s human nature. Everything was fixable through the State, not by healing hearts and souls through grace attained through the Church God created to heal men’s souls.

    Sheen drives home the point again and again that the errors were not specific to Russia or communism. They caught fire in capitalist countries as easily as they did in communist ones. He notes that there is “a closer relation between communism and monopolistic capitalism than most minds suspect. They are agreed on the materialistic basis of civilization; they disagree only on who shall control that basis, capitalists or bureaucrats.” And further, he says: “Capitalistic economy is godless; communism makes economics God…. Capitalism denies that economics is subject to a higher moral order. Communism says that economics is morality.”

    In fact, he highlights how the Church is as opposed to monopoly capitalism as it is to communism. The errors permeate both. Both reduce man to a mere economic animal. Both use the State to rule.

    The issue isn’t Viganò being blind to the evils of the Russian government. It is the West that is blind to the evils that have permeated its own existence to its very core. It is the modernist Church that is blind to the evils of thinking it right to replace sacraments with social action, taking government money to feed bellies at the expense of feeding souls.

    Viganò looks at the WEF, the IMF, the UN, NATO, the EU, and all the other associations that have risen in the West and sees them not in terms of other worldly events but in terms of the Eternal. He sees them as Pope Leo XIII saw the secular associations of his day: efforts by man to fix the world apart from God and His Church.

    He sees, too, that what they are trying to do is create a new, even more powerful State than the Russian one Mary warned us about, a Global State with the declared goal of creating a New World Order and a new transhuman creature. Modernism stripped man of his spiritual nature. Transhumanism seeks to strip him of his most basic human nature, reducing him to a mere machine, perfected by technology and microbiology.

    Viganò has not become absorbed with politics. He has become absorbed with the Eternal, with seeing the Eternal in the affairs of the day, including both those things God seems to be moving as well as those things Satan seems to be moving. We don’t know if the Consecration occurred as Mary asked, but Viganò asks us to look at world events not just in terms of other world events, but in terms of spiritual events. What we do know is that the Soviet State collapsed in 1989. And we know that since that time, Russia has been undergoing a Re-Christianization while the entire Western world has been experiencing its De-Christianization.

    Viganò asks us to see that it isn’t really Russia, or communism, or capitalism that we are battling but rather the Principalities, the Satanic forces that seek to enslave all men to a godless Global State. He asks us to consider that God is giving Russia—re-Christianizing Russia—the chance to atone for its sins by being the very thing that prevents that Global State from being created.

    And is that so hard to imagine? Is it not just like our God? To let Russia atone for its sins and be the means of saving many souls?

    And is this not also just like Our God: To once again respond to man’s rejection by guiding us to Him and Our Blessed Mother Mary? Is it not just like Him that, on the Marian feast day of the Annunciation of God’s Incarnation, the most modernist pope in the history of the Church got down on his knees and called the entire world, East and West, to likewise fall to its knees, every bishop, all people, on our knees, and not just recognize, finally, the Immaculate Conception, but more—to consecrate ourselves, and our entire world, to her Immaculate Heart, the Immaculate Heart of the Immaculate Conception, thereby saying, at last, after all these years, after all these appearances, finally: yes, there is a God; yes, there is a Heaven; yes, we are more than mere matter; yes, we are all sinners; and yes, we must obey God and make reparations for our sins.

    In turning our eyes and our hearts to Mary, are we not finally conceding, agreeing with Pope Leo XIII, that apart from God, there will be no peace? Apart from God, no merely human institution, no godless State—no matter how big, how global—is going to save us.

    And is that not just like our God? The most modernist pope of all time—leading the world to renounce the most fundamental errors of modernism?

    Is it not a fitting way for the Eternal to announce the end of the Modern Age?

    At just that moment when man can’t even define what a woman is, God reminds us that it is to a woman that He has given the power of overcoming evil, a woman who will crush the head of the Serpent. Modern Man lost Jesus. His Mother has returned to help us find Him. She has experience in that.

    [End, essay by Barbara Farrah]

    In recent weeks, a controversy has emerged in recent days over the position of Archbishop Viganò on the war in Ukraine.

    Archbishop Viganò on March 6, three weeks ago — 10 days after the Russian (link).

    This sparked various reactions, some sharply critical, others supportive of the archbishop.

    Among the criticisms, one of the harshest was by American Catholic writer George Weigel, who said Viganò was making arguments that were silly and dangerous “absurdities.”

    Then Archbishop Viganò responded to Weigel.

    In the interest of providing readers with the two key texts of this controversy, both essays are reproduced below.

    This is what Weigel wrote on March 16 in First Things:

    Archbishop Viganò and Colonel Grace-Groundling-Marchpole (link)

    By George Weigel

    March 16, 2022

    One of the minor characters in Evelyn Waugh’s World War II trilogy, Sword of Honor, is the commander of a super-secret military intelligence unit, Colonel Grace-Groundling-Marchpole: a conspiracy theorist constantly connecting dots that no rational person would imagine connecting or even think connectable. The colonel was also possessed by a messiah complex: “Somewhere in the ultimate curlicues of his mind, there was a Plan. Given time, given enough confidential material, he would succeed in knitting the entire quarrelsome world into a single net of conspiracy in which there were no antagonists, merely millions of men working, unknown to one another, for the same end: and there would be no more war.” To Grace-Groundling-Marchpole, the Allies and the Nazis were in fact on the same side; and as soon as that was revealed, all would be well with the world.

    One of the tragedies of this Catholic moment is that its Grace-Groundling-Marchpole is Archbishop Carlo Maria Viganò, former Apostolic Nuncio to the United States.

    For years now, the archbishop has been issuing “declarations,” increasingly conspiratorial in their analysis of matters ecclesiastical, political, epidemiological, and vaccinal. Archbishop Viganò’s March 6 encyclical, a 10,000-word “Declaration on the Russia-Ukraine Crisis,” took this conspiracy-mania into Grace-Groundling-Marchpole territory. Among its manifestly false claims:

• Virtually everything you may think you know about the war in Ukraine is a “gross falsification of the mainstream media,” and anyone who does not accept the archbishop’s claims is a victim of the “brainwashing carried out by the mainstream media.”
• President Biden and the European Union are executing a “criminal plan” to “make impossible any attempt at a peaceful resolution of the Ukraine crisis, provoking the Russian Federation to trigger a conflict.” What you think you have seen of dead civilians and civilian infrastructure (including a maternity hospital), deliberately destroyed by Russian missiles, bombs, and artillery fire, is really the West’s fault.
• Anyone who cares about the truth should lament the West’s blackout of Russia Today and Sputnik.
• Ukraine’s Maidan “Revolution of Dignity” in 2013–14 was “an operation sponsored by George Soros.”
• There are “neo-Nazi military forces” in Ukraine.
• Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelensky has “for eight years now continued to persecute Russian-speaking Ukrainians with impunity.”
• Therefore “the Ukrainian people, regardless of what ethnic group they belong to, are merely the latest unwitting hostages of the supranational totalitarian regime that brought the economies of the entire world to their knees through the COVID deception, after publicly theorizing about the need to decimate the world population and transform the survivors into chronically ill patients who have irreparably compromised their immune systems.”
• Yet there is hope: The “Third Rome”—the Russian Orthodox patriarchate of Moscow—may yet lead humanity to a better future.

    Whoever is writing these absurdities seems not to care that he, she, or they are reproducing Kremlin disinformation and propaganda point-for-point. That a Western media typically tilted far to the left has suddenly become viscerally anti-Russian and bellicose is risible. That George Soros, of whom I am no admirer, sponsored the Revolution of Dignity would come as a shock to my former students who risked their lives in sub-freezing winter weather to live out on the Maidan the Catholic social doctrine we had discussed. Russia Today and Sputnik are Kremlin disinformation organs, period. How is it that much of the Ukrainian army that has fought courageously against the Russian invaders is composed of Russian speakers? How has President Zelensky persecuted Russian speakers for eight years when he has been in office for less than three years? Have the archbishop and those around him not read President Putin’s speech of February 20, which underscored that what “provoked” him was the fact of an independent, sovereign Ukraine? And Putin’s lapdog, Patriarch Kirill of the Russian Orthodox Church, is no more likely to lead a civilizational renaissance than your local tarot card reader.

    I have long doubted that Archbishop Viganò actually writes these “declarations” issued in his name, which have, tragically, become more unhinged over time. And I say “tragically” because I once counted the archbishop a friend and remain grateful for his service to the Vatican (where he was an honest man in an often-dishonest environment) and to the Church in the United States (which he served well as nuncio). This most recent declaration on the Ukraine War crossed a red line, however. By allowing lies, calumnies, and Kremlin propaganda to be issued in his name, Archbishop Carlo Maria Viganò has written the obituary for what remained of his once-considerable religious and moral authority.

    And that is beyond tragic.

    [End article by Wiegel]

    Viganò then issued a response to Weigel’s criticism. Here is perhaps the central point of his response:

    “I wish to strongly reiterate that my words must not be interpreted as a legitimization of the war, the primary victims of which are the Ukrainian people because of their government’s collusion with the deep state. My words are intended to be, as they were on the occasion of the pandemic farce, a call to the truth, a denunciation of the lies and falsifications of reality, an appeal to the use of critical judgment in front of the media narrative. (…) Weigel’s article has one merit: it reveals to us the unsuspected proximity of a certain moderate conservatism with the demands of the deep church, and at the same time the subordination of the American neo-con world with the deep state and their Democratic accomplices.”

    Here is the complete text of Vigano’s March 22 response to Weigel, one week ago, as published in The Remnant (link):

    The Uncrossable Red Line: Viganò Responds to George Weigel at First Things (link)

    By Archbishop Carlo Maria Viganò

    March 22, 2022

    I was not a little amazed by the conflation of my identity with the personality of Colonel Grace-Groundling-Marchpole made by George Weigel in his commentary published on March 16 at First Things (here). My amazement derives from the curious way this article aligns with that of Weigel’s friend Roberto De Mattei, Riflessioni sull’anno che si apre [Reflections on the Year About to Begin], which appeared at Corrispondenza Romana on December 29, 2021 (here), about the alleged refutation of my statements to the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops (here) made, coincidentally, by Professor Weigel’s daughter, Dr. Gwyneth A. Spaeder (here) [curiously not in English but only in Italian], who is a pediatrician and the wife of an executive at one of the major consulting firms for the pharmaceutical industry.

    De Mattei’s article also contains the insinuation that I can be counted among those who see conspiracies everywhere, following the established practice of delegitimizing the interlocutor by means of his psychiatrization. At least Weigel limited himself to presenting me as an eccentric conspiracy theorist, borrowing a character from Evelyn Waugh’s trilogy, Sword of Honor, while De Mattei also mentioned, in addition to the psychiatric délire d’intérpretation, the hypothesis of diabolical possession.

In the face of a series of facts agreed on both by doctors and scientists and by political scientists and experts in international strategy, De Mattei and Weigel are undertaking a joint action against me, simply deciding ex cathedra that since I do not share their positions on the pandemic or theUkrainian conflict, I must be silenced without appeal, because of an alleged duty of respect towards “their” truth.

    I wonder if seeing a certain ratio in the coordinated action of Weigel and De Mattei represents a “connecting dots that no rational person would imagine connecting or even think connectable” (quoting from the First Things article) or rather if it is not readily noticeable to anyone. It seems simplistic to dismiss everything with the accusation of “conspiracy theory” against those who denounce the plots instead of those who plot them, especially when the conspiracy is admitted by its own architects, starting with Soros’ involvement in the Euromaidan color revolution. But if we see that a member of Pravij Sektor, Serhiy Dybynyn, was immortalized during the farce of the assault on the Capitol on January 6, 2021 (here and here), the idea that something is not exactly as they tell us starts to dawn even on people less inclined to “connect the dots.”

    Of course it is very strange that, in the face of a series of facts agreed on both by doctors and scientists (with regard to criticism of the experimental serum) and by political scientists and experts in international strategy (with regard to the present Russian-Ukrainian crisis), these two friends and colleagues – De Mattei and Weigel – are undertaking a joint action against me, not because of what I say – they are careful not to refute anything I have said by debating the facts or producing clear evidence – but simply deciding ex cathedra that since I do not share their positions on the pandemic or the Ukrainian conflict, I must be silenced without appeal, because of an alleged duty of respect towards “their” truth.

    Weigel has made his ruling: Supposedly I have crossed the uncrossable “red line” which he has drawn with his own hand by his own motu proprio. In listing the alleged “lies, slander and propaganda of the Kremlin” in my statement, Weigel does not realize that his statements are disproven by the documented facts, beginning with the bombing of the Mariupol children’s hospital (which had long been evacuated and used as a military barracks), as well as with what happened with the supposed “thousands of victims” of Russian bombs that destroyed the theater in the same city, a story which has been denied by the Ukrainian local authorities.

Those who reproach me for “repeating the Kremlin propaganda point by point” should explain what in my analysis does not correspond to the reality of the facts, and why they do not consider the propaganda of the deep state to be such.

    With regard to my statement on the Russian-Ukrainian crisis, which George Weigel calls an “encyclical” with debatable irony, a list of “manifestly false claims” has been drafted, evidently assuming that the readers of First Things have not read my statement. And one wonders if Weigel himself even read it, since everything that is disputed as false has actually been documented by me in my article, with sources and references to official news. Those who reproach me for “repeating the Kremlin propaganda point by point” should explain what in my analysis does not correspond to the reality of the facts, and why they do not consider the propaganda of the deep state to be such, which thus far has proven to falsify reality in a way that borders on the grotesque, beginning with the case of American biolabs on Ukrainian territory, whose existence has been denied by the White House but affirmed by the WHO (here), which asked that the pathogens be destroyed.

    The Biden family’s involvement in Burisma and other corruption in Ukraine was even acknowledged by Joe Biden in a video, as was the media propaganda operation to cover up the evidence of collusion with the Ukrainian regime – and more – that was recovered on Hunter’s laptop (here).

    The deliberate destruction of civilian infrastructure blamed on the Russians is proving – based on multiple testimonies of Ukrainian citizens – to have been caused largely by Zelensky’s militias, including neo-Nazi paramilitary formations, which have been denounced as guilty of war crimes by the UN and Amnesty International since the Euromaidan revolution. The sending of arms to Ukraine is causing very serious cases of summary justice, settling of scores and lynchings that have no legitimacy and that put the population in serious danger. A few days ago, a load of weapons was intercepted on a plane that officially was supposed to be bringing “humanitarian aid” from the Italian government to Ukraine.

I believe that the political and ideological position of George Weigel does not give rise to doubts, considering that his name appears, along with that of Dick Cheney, Donald Rumsfeld, Paul Wolfowitz and others, among the signatories of the PNAC, the Project for the New American Century.

    The censorship in Europe of the broadcasters Russia Today and Sputnik is right in line with the unification of all the information platforms that Zelensky has ordered in recent days, and also the suppression of the eleven opposition parties (here): a strange way of implementing “Western values,” “democracy” and “freedom of the press.”

    Soros’ role in the Maidan revolution was declared by the “philanthropist” himself (here), who took credit for financing the insurgency that led to the deposing of the democratically elected pro-Russian President Yanukovych and replacing him with Poroshenko, who was approved by the US and NATO.

    The presence of neo-Nazi forces was declared by the US Congress, which in 2015 suspended the training of neo-Nazis of the Azov battalion in the US with an amendment that was later canceled due to pressure from the CIA (here).

    The violations of the Kiev agreements and the persecution of the Russian-speaking minority in Donbass has been extensively documented by international organizations and the media that today censor their own news stories (here): more than 14,000 victims of this ethnic cleansing against Russian-speaking citizens are estimated. The Zelensky government not only did not oppose this violence by neo-Nazi groups, but deliberately denied it and regularized the Azov battalion as an official military force.

The ideological continuity between the pandemic farce and the Russian-Ukrainian crisis continues to emerge, in the fact that the ultimate perpetrators of both are the same, all attributable to the globalist cabal of the World Economic Forum.

    The ideological continuity between the pandemic farce and the Russian-Ukrainian crisis continues to emerge, beyond the evidence of the events and statements of the subjects involved, in the fact that the ultimate perpetrators of both are the same, all attributable to the globalist cabal of the World Economic Forum. By way of example, Secretary of State Tony Blinken is the founder of the strategic consulting firm WestExec Advisors, connected to the Davos Forum, which has over 20 of its people in the Biden Administration (here, here and here). Many WestExec employees have been or still are in very close relationship with the World Economic Forum, starting with Michelle Flournoy and Jamie Smith, as Politico has denounced (here).

    These are not “conspiracy theories, but facts. Period!

    Finally, with regard to my reference to the “Third Rome,” I am surprised that, in the presence of an imminent danger of escalation of the conflict, Weigel criticizes me for having used in a political sense an argument of the Russian role as opposing party, with the aim of demonstrating readiness for dialogue with a view to peace. From what I have written it is clear that I had no intention of giving a doctrinal basis or legitimization to a pan-Slavic or pan-Orthodox vision that, as a Roman Catholic, is not part of my cultural and religious heritage. On the contrary, it is curious that it is precisely the proponents of ecumenical dialogue who are tearing their garments over a topic that, without any exaggeration, could open the way for a return of the schismatic parts of the Eastern Church to Catholic unity.

    This desire to interpret whatever I say in a negative sense is an indication of insincerity and a prejudice that goes against the Truth even before it goes against Charity. But when one lies about the reality that we have right in front of our eyes in order to please one’s masters, the truth is treated as an inconvenient tinsel and no longer as an attribute of God. And it is embarrassing, to say the least, to see how positions shared up until a few weeks before the conflict, are today denied and considered forms of collaboration or support for Russia.

It is not clear why NATO and the US can be considered authorized to invade foreign nations – as in the case of Kosovo – imposing by military might their concept of democracy and respect for human rights, while the Russian Federation cannot intervene in Ukraine to defend the citizens of Donbass after eight years of ethnic cleansing by neo-Nazi militias against the Russian-speaking minority.

    I wish to strongly reiterate that my words must not be interpreted as a legitimization of the war, the primary victims of which are the Ukrainian people because of their government’s collusion with the deep state. My words are intended to be, as they were on the occasion of the pandemic farce, a call to the truth, a denunciation of the lies and falsifications of reality, an appeal to the use of critical judgment in front of the media narrative. Perhaps the fact that I have no superiors to whom I must respond, makes me an inconvenient person, and my position turns out to be incomprehensible to anyone who proves not to be intellectually independent.

    Weigel’s article has one merit: it reveals to us the unsuspected proximity of a certain moderate conservatism with the demands of the deep church, and at the same time the subordination of the American neo-con world with the deep state and their Democratic accomplices.

    On the other hand, I believe that the political and ideological position of George Weigel does not give rise to doubts, considering that his name appears, along with that of Dick Cheney, Donald Rumsfeld, Paul Wolfowitz and others, among the signatories of the PNAC, the Project for the New American Century, a research institute in which members of the Republican Party and neoconservatives find themselves significantly unanimous in supporting the arms race and in fueling hotbeds of war and terrorism everywhere, beginning with the war in Iraq (here).

    The idea of American world leadership promoted by the PNAC is clearly at the basis of NATO’s eastward expansion and Ukraine’s deliberate provocation of Russia, which sees itself practically under siege right up to its borders, in violation of the 1991 agreements. I do not want to imagine what would have happened if, reversing the story, a South American nation had allied itself with Moscow and installed military bases near the borders of the United States.

    And it is not clear why NATO and the US can be considered authorized to invade foreign nations – as in the case of Kosovo – imposing by military might their concept of democracy and respect for human rights, while the Russian Federation cannot intervene in Ukraine to defend the citizens of Donbass after eight years of ethnic cleansing by neo-Nazi militias against the Russian-speaking minority, in violation of the stipulated agreements and in the presence of a report on these crimes by humanitarian associations.

    I imagine that for those who lend themselves to these propaganda operations – which I do not know to what extent are devoid of personal interests – it is embarrassing to find themselves exposed by a retired Archbishop and Nuncio, because their enslavement to the narrative is extremely eloquent. It confirms, if ever there was a need, the shadows that in the past have surrounded their positions on other more strictly Catholic issues.

    The action of these exponents of Catholic conservatism, who professed to be my friends until two years ago, writes the definitive and embarrassing obituary of what remained of their authority as Catholic thinkers and their independence as journalists – after their funeral has already taken place.

    + Carlo Maria Viganò, Archbishop, Apostolic Nuncio

    [End, response of Archbishop Viganò to George Weigel)