Archbishop Viganò: Francis Church ‘no longer Church’

[Stone]

Archbishop Viganò, who is a relatively recent 'convert' to Tradition replies above in a manner very similar to Archbishop Lefebvre many years before him, outlined particularly in a study by Bishop Tissier de Mallerais and subsequently published by the Dominicans of Avrillé, entitled "Is there a Conciliar Church?"

A few poignant excerpts [all emphasis in the original]:

From the introduction by the Dominicans:

This study was first published in French in the tri-monthly review of the Dominicans of Avrillé, Le Sel de la Terre n°85 (summer 2013).

It reflects Archbishop Lefebvre’s true way of thinking concerning the mystery of a Pope presiding over the destruction of the Church: the Pope remains the Pope, but he is at the head of two churches; the Catholic Church, of which he was elected the head, and another society, the “conciliar church”, which has its dogmas, its liturgy, its new institutions, etc. The conciliar church is not the Catholic Church, but a counterfeit “church”. We must separate ourselves from it if we want to keep the Catholic Faith.

And later in the study, after showing how the Conciliar Church was developed along Masonic lines, Bishop Tissier de Mallerais notes the following:

Faced with the conciliar church, what becomes of the Catholic Church?

Archbishop Lefebvre seemed to admit the mutation of the Catholic Church into the conciliar church. What becomes of the Catholic Church? Archbishop Lefebvre responds that it is in the measure that, according to the degree which the authorities and the baptised adhere to this new kind of church, that constitutes a new church, characterised by its worldly, humanist, naturalist, socialist ecumenical and one-world goals, in such a way that this new church conceives itself as being more vast and universal than the Catholic Church. We must add the distinction between an exclusive adhesion of these sectarian leaders with these profaning goals, and the seeking of a compromise between these goals and the Catholic goals on the other hand, a compromise which was well expressed by the conciliar text Lumen Gentium (section 1);

“The Church is, in Christ, a sort of sacrament, that is to say at one and the same time the sign and the means of an intimate union with God and the unity of the human race.”

This ambivalence complicates in a singular manner the problem of the distinction between these two churches. The text of Archbishop Lefebvre has to be understood with precision; it is in the measure which the conciliars adhere exclusively to these profaning goals outlined, that they leave the Catholic Church. And of this measure we are not the judges. Despite its polemical style, with precisions, the text of Archbishop Lefebvre is irreproachable. It is with this very precision that the last sentence has to be understood: “The Church of today is only the true Church in the measure that it continues exclusively, and makes itself one exclusively with the Church of yesterday and of all time.” A church which covets at one and the same time a humanist and one-world goal along with a goal of supernatural eternal salvation of souls, is no longer catholic, it is the concrete everyday expression of the conciliar church in its attenuated viral state.

And beside this vulgar conciliar church, what remains of the Catholic Church? We respond that, even reduced to the modest number the sane faithful comprising its “healthy part”, and perhaps one only faithful bishop, as may be the case according to Father Emmanuel, of the Church at the end of time, the Catholic Church remains the catholic Church.