Archbishop Carlo Maria Viganò: About the “Responsa ad Dubia” of Traditionis Custodes

[Stone]

About the “Responsa ad Dubia” of Traditionis Custodes
by Archbishop Carlo Maria Viganò
December 28, 2021

Video of the Archbishop on Rumble here.

Transcript below [computer translated from the Italian]

Vos estis qui justificatis vos coram hominibus:

Deus autem novit corda vestra:

quia quod hominibus altum est,

abominatio est ante Deum. Lk 16, 15

In reading the Responsa ad Dubia recently published by the Congregation for Divine Worship, one wonders at what lowest levels the Roman Curia could have descended, for having to indulge Bergoglio with such servility, in a cruel and ruthless war against the most docile and faithful part of the Church. Never, in the last decades of very serious crisis in the Church, has ecclesiastical authority shown itself so determined and severe: it has not done so with the heretical theologians who infest the pontifical universities and seminaries; he did not do it with fornicating clerics and prelates; it did not do so in exemplary punishing the scandals of bishops and cardinals. But against the faithful, priests and religious who ask only to be able to celebrate the Tridentine Mass, no mercy, no mercy, no inclusiveness. All brothers?

Never before under this "pontificate" has the abuse of power by the authorities been perceptible, not even when two thousand years of lex orandi were immolated by Paul VI on the altar of Vatican II, imposing on the Church a rite as equivocal as it is hypocritical . That imposition, which was accompanied by the prohibition of celebrating in the ancient rite and the persecution of dissenters, had at least the alibi of the illusion that a change would perhaps have revived the fortunes of Catholicism in the face of an increasingly secularized world. Today, after fifty years of huge disasters and fourteen years of Summorum Pontificum, that labile justification is not only no longer valid, but is disavowed in its inconsistency by the evidence of the facts. Everything that the Council has brought back has proved harmful, it has emptied churches, seminaries and convents, it has destroyed ecclesiastical and religious vocations, has drained all spiritual, cultural and civil impetus of Catholics, has humiliated the Church of Christ and confined it to the margins of society, making it pathetic in its clumsy attempt to please the world.

And vice versa, since Benedict XVI tried to heal that vulnus by recognizing full rights to the traditional liturgy, the communities linked to the Mass of Saint Pius V have multiplied, the seminaries of the Ecclesia Dei institutes have grown, vocations have increased, the frequency of the faithful increased, the spiritual life of many young people and many families has found an unexpected impetus. It humiliated the Church of Christ and confined it to the margins of society, making it pathetic in its clumsy attempt to please the world. 

What lesson should have been drawn from this "experience of Tradition" invoked at the time also by Msgr. Marcel Lefebvre? The most obvious and at the same time simpler: what God has given to the Church is destined for success, and what man adds to it collapses miserably. A soul not blinded by ideological fury would have admitted the mistake made, trying to repair the damage and rebuild what had in the meantime been destroyed, to restore what had been abandoned. But this requires humility, a supernatural gaze and a trust in the provident intervention of God. This also requires the awareness on the part of the Pastors that they are administrators of the Lord's goods, and not masters: they have no right either to alienate his goods, nor to hide them or replace them with their own inventions; they must limit themselves to guarding them and making them available to the faithful, sine glossa, and with the constant thought of having to answer before God for every ewe and every lamb of His flock. The Apostle warns: "Hic jam quæritur inter dispensatóres, ut fidélis quis inveniátur" (I Cor 4: 2), "what is required of administrators is that they be faithful".

The Responsa in Dubia are consistent with Traditionis custodes, and make clear the subversive nature of this "pontificate", in which the supreme power of the Church is usurped to obtain a purpose diametrically opposed to that for which Our Lord has established the Sacred as authority. Pastori and His Vicar on earth. An indocile and rebellious power to the One who instituted it and legitimizes it, a power that believes itself to be fide solutus, so to speak, according to an intrinsically revolutionary and therefore heretical principle. Let us not forget: the Revolution claims for itself a power that is justified by the mere fact of being revolutionary, subversive, conspiratorial and antithetical to the legitimate power it intends to overthrow; and that as soon as it reaches institutional roles it is exercised with tyrannical authoritarianism,

Allow me to point out a parallel between two apparently disconnected situations. As in the presence of the pandemic, effective treatments are denied, with the imposition of a useless, indeed harmful and even lethal "vaccine"; thus the Tridentine Holy Mass, true medicine of the soul in a moment of very serious moral pestilence, is culpably denied to the faithful, replacing it with the Novus Ordo. Physicians fail in their duty, even in the presence of therapies, and impose both the sick and the healthy an experimental serum, and insist on administering it despite the evidence of total ineffectiveness and adverse effects. Similarly, priests, doctors of the soul, betray their mandate, even in the presence of an infallible drug tested for over two thousand years, and they go to great lengths to prevent those who have experienced its efficacy from using it to heal from sin. In the first case, the body's immune defenses are weakened or canceled to create chronically ill patients at the mercy of the pharmaceutical companies; in the second case the immune defenses of the soul are compromised by a worldly mentality and by the cancellation of the supernatural and transcendent dimension, so as to leave the souls defenseless in the face of the attacks of the devil. And this is valid as a response to those who claim to face the religious crisis without considering the social and political crisis in parallel, because it is precisely this duplicity of attack that makes it so terrible and that reveals its only criminal mind.

In the first case, the body's immune defenses are weakened or canceled to create chronically ill patients at the mercy of the pharmaceutical companies; in the second case the immune defenses of the soul are compromised by a worldly mentality and by the cancellation of the supernatural and transcendent dimension, so as to leave the souls defenseless in the face of the attacks of the devil. And this is valid as a response to those who claim to face the religious crisis without considering the social and political crisis in parallel, because it is precisely this duplicity of attack that makes it so terrible and that reveals its only criminal mind. In the first case, the body's immune defenses are weakened or canceled to create chronically ill patients at the mercy of the pharmaceutical companies; in the second case the immune defenses of the soul are compromised by a worldly mentality and by the cancellation of the supernatural and transcendent dimension, so as to leave the souls defenseless in the face of the attacks of the devil. And this is valid as a response to those who claim to face the religious crisis without considering the social and political crisis in parallel, because it is precisely this duplicity of attack that makes it so terrible and that reveals its only criminal mind. in the second case the immune defenses of the soul are compromised by a worldly mentality and by the cancellation of the supernatural and transcendent dimension, so as to leave the souls defenseless in the face of the attacks of the devil. And this is valid as a response to those who claim to face the religious crisis without considering the social and political crisis in parallel, because it is precisely this duplicity of attack that makes it so terrible and that reveals its only criminal mind. in the second case the immune defenses of the soul are compromised by a worldly mentality and by the cancellation of the supernatural and transcendent dimension, so as to leave the souls defenseless in the face of the attacks of the devil. And this is valid as a response to those who claim to face the religious crisis without considering the social and political crisis in parallel, because it is precisely this duplicity of attack that makes it so terrible and that reveals its only criminal mind.

I do not want to enter into the merits of the delusions of the Responsa: it is enough to know the ratio legis to reject Traditionis custodes as an ideological and biased document, drawn up by vindictive and intolerant people, full of ambitions and gross canonical errors, with the intention of prohibiting a rite canonized by two thousand years of saints and popes and impose a spurious one, copied by the Lutherans and patched up by the modernists, which in fifty years has caused a huge disaster to the ecclesial body and which, precisely because of its devastating effectiveness, must not know a derogation. There is not only guilt: there is also malice and the double betrayal of the divine Legislator and the faithful.

Bishops, priests, religious and laity find themselves once again having to make a choice of field: either with the Catholic Church and its two-thousand-year-old and immutable doctrine, or with the Conciliar and Bergoglian Church, with its errors and its secularized rites. And this happens in a paradoxical situation in which the Catholic Church and its counterfeiting coincide in the same Hierarchy, to which the faithful feel they must obey as an expression of God's authority and at the same time they must disobey as a traitor and rebel.

Of course, it is not easy to disobey the tyrant: his reactions are ruthless and cruel; but far worse persecutions were those that Catholics had to suffer over the centuries who found themselves having to face Arianism, iconoclasm, Lutheran heresy, Anglican schism, Cromwell's Puritanism, the Masonic secularism of France and Mexico, Soviet communism, Spain, Cambodia, China ... How many martyred, imprisoned, exiled bishops and priests. How many religious massacred, how many churches desecrated, how many altars destroyed. And all this why? Because the Holy Ministers did not want to give up the most precious treasure that Our Lord has given us: the Holy Mass. The Mass which He taught the Apostles to celebrate, which the Apostles passed on to their Successors, which the Popes have guarded and restored and which has always been at the center of the infernal hatred of the enemies of Christ and the Church.

To think that that Holy Mass, for which the missionaries sent to Protestant lands or the priests prisoners of the gulags risked their lives, is now prohibited by the Holy See is a cause of pain and scandal, as well as an offense to the Martyrs that that Mass have defended until the last breath. But these things can only be understood by those who believe, those who love, those who hope. Only to those who live by God. as well as an offense to the martyrs that that Mass defended to the last breath. But these things can only be understood by those who believe, those who love, those who hope. Only to those who live by God. as well as an offense to the martyrs that that Mass defended to the last breath. But these things can only be understood by those who believe, those who love, those who hope. Only to those who live by God.

Those who limit themselves to expressing reservations or criticisms of Traditionis custodes and the Responsa fall into the trap of the adversary, because they recognize the legitimacy of an illegitimate and invalid law, desired and promulgated to humiliate the Church and its faithful, to spite the "traditionalists" who dare nothing less than to oppose heterodox doctrines condemned up to Vatican II, which it made its own and today become the cipher of the Bergoglian pontificate. Traditionis custodes and Responsa must simply be ignored, returned to the sender. They must be ignored because there is a clear desire to punish Catholics who have remained faithful, to disperse them, to make them disappear.

I am dismayed at the servility of so many Cardinals and Bishops, who to please Bergoglio trample on the rights of God and of the souls entrusted to them and who take credit for showing their aversion to the "pre-conciliar" Liturgy, considering themselves deserving of public commendation and Vatican approval. The Lord's words are addressed to them: "You think yourselves righteous before men, but God knows your hearts: what is exalted among men is detestable before God" (Lk 16:15).

The coherent and courageous response to a tyrannical gesture of the ecclesiastical authority must be resistance and disobedience to an inadmissible order. Resigning oneself to accepting this umpteenth oppression means adding another precedent to the long series of abuses tolerated up to now, and with one's servile obedience making oneself responsible for maintaining a power as an end in itself.

It is necessary that the Bishops, Successors of the Apostles, exercise their own sacred authority, in obedience and fidelity to the Head of the Mystical Body, to put an end to this ecclesiastical coup that took place before our eyes. This is required by the honor of the Papacy, today exposed to discredit and humiliation by the one who occupies the Throne of Peter. The good of souls requires it, whose salvation is the supreme lex of the Church. The glory of God requires it, with respect to which no compromise is tolerable.

The Polish Archbishop Msgr. Jan Paweł Lenga said that it is time for a Catholic counter-revolution if we do not want to see the Church sink under the heresies and vices of mercenaries and traitors. The promise of the Non prævalebunt does not exclude in the least, rather it asks and demands firm and courageous action not only on the part of the Bishops and priests, but also of the laity, who are treated as subjects like never before, despite the fatuous appeals to the actuosa participatio to their role in the Church. Let's take note: clericalism has reached its peak under the "pontificate" of those who hypocritically do nothing but stigmatize it.

+ Carlo Maria Viganò, Archbishop