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Vatican Press Release: Most Reverend Carlo Maria Viganò was found guilty of schism |
Posted by: Stone - 07-05-2024, 09:01 AM - Forum: Archbishop Viganò
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PRESS RELEASE OF THE DICASTERY FOR THE DOCTRINE OF THE FAITH
Vatican press | July 5, 2024
On 4 July 2024, the Congress of the Dicastery for the Doctrine of the Faith met to conclude the extrajudicial penal process referred to in canon 1720 CIC against the Most Reverend Carlo Maria Viganò, titular Archbishop of Ulpiana, accused of the reserved delict of schism (canons 751 and 1364 CIC; art. 2 SST).
His public statements manifesting his refusal to recognize and submit to the Supreme Pontiff, his rejection of communion with the members of the Church subject to him, and of the legitimacy and magisterial authority of the Second Vatican Council are well known.
At the conclusion of the penal process, the Most Reverend Carlo Maria Viganò was found guilty of the reserved delict of schism.
The Dicastery declared the latae sententiae excommunication in accordance with canon 1364 § 1 CIC.
The lifting of the censure in these cases is reserved to the Apostolic See.
This decision was communicated to the Most Reverend Viganò on 5 July 2024.
[01148-EN.01] [Original text: English]
[B0554-XX.01]
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Video exposes the disturbing creation of the fetal cell lines used by the medical industry |
Posted by: Stone - 07-05-2024, 08:56 AM - Forum: Abortion
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Video exposes the disturbing creation of the fetal cell lines used by the medical industry
The video on the disturbing creation of fetal cell lines is the third in a series of pro-life animated shorts which reveal the ugly truth behind the abortion industry. The previous two episodes described surgical abortions and IVF.
Cartoon depiction of doctors experimenting with fetal cell lines
Choice42/YouTube
Jul 3, 2024
(LifeSiteNews) — A new pro-life video follows the short lives of the babies aborted and experimented on to create the fetal cell lines used today in the medical industry.
On July 2, pro-life organization CHOICE42 released their latest animated short video titled “It’s OK,” which details the origins of five different fetal cell lines and how they were created from the victims of abortion.
“That’s me,” the video opens, with an animated picture of an aborted baby. “I’m Ellie. Don’t feel bad. It’s okay. It was a long time ago, 1962.”
“I just thought maybe you don’t know about me,” Ellie continued. “My parents didn’t want me, anyway. The doctor worked with scientists, and they took my organs out as soon as I was aborted.”
“It had to be done right away because the organs need to be fresh,” she continued.
The video is the third in a series of pro-life animated shorts which reveal the ugly truth behind the abortion industry. The previous two episodes described surgical abortions and IVF. The new video was premiered on The Steve Deace Show on The Blaze Network.
“I first became aware that fetuses were killed and harvested for fetal cell lines during COVID,” Laura Klassen, director and founder of CHOICE42 explained.
“When I began to research and explain my findings to others, they were always telling me, ‘Well, it’s ok because…’ and went on to list their justifications,” she continued. “Some said, ‘There was only one baby used in the 60s’. Others, ‘There aren’t any more babies being aborted for this today.’ Still others, ‘The doctors just used the dead tissue post-abortion.’”
“All false and none of it is ok,” she declared. “We need to stop justifying what happened to these 5 babies (and many others) and take a closer look at what is going on in the medical research world. It’s not ok that it happened in the 60s, and it’s not ok that it’s happening now.”
The video follows the short lives of Ellie, David, Johanna, Jordan, and Bo; five babies whose organs were harvested to produce fetal cell lines.
The cell lines have since been used in various medical experiments, especially in the production of vaccines. Cell lines from both Johanna and Jordan were used in the creation of the mRNA-based COVID vaccines.
Doctors and abortion advocates argue that the babies’ organs were harvested once and using cell lines from aborted babies does not lead to more babies being experimented on.
However, the video revealed that hundreds of babies are experimented on before a cell line is obtained, with 32 babies being experimented on in Ellie’s case and a total of 293 experiments being carried out to obtain Johanna’s cell line.
The most recent cell line comes from Bo, a baby killed in 2015 to replace the depleting cell line supply. Horrifically, the aborted babies’ cell lines are still for sale today.
Even more disturbing is the fact that the babies were experimented on while they were alive and were not given pain medications as it would “ruin the cells.”
Dr. Ian Donald, the pioneer of the ultrasound scanner, who witnessed the experiments carried out on Ellie, revealed, “Experiments were being performed on near-term alive aborted babies who were not even afforded the mercy of anesthetic as they writhed and cried in agony, and when their usefulness had expired, they were executed and discarded as garbage.”
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Church devastated after vandal beheads Jesus statue at Catholic Church in Queens |
Posted by: Stone - 07-03-2024, 07:08 AM - Forum: Anti-Catholic Violence
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Church devastated after vandal beheads Jesus statue with his shoe: video
The NYPD is investigating the incident as a hate crime
Fox News [slightly adapted]| July 2, 2024
New York City suspect destroys Jesus statue in early morning rampage: video [click above link for video footage]
Surveillance footage shows a suspect beheading a statue of Jesus at a Catholic church in Flushing, Queens, on June 30. The NYPD confirmed the incident to Fox News Digital. (Credit: Diocese of Brooklyn)
Catholic parishioners in New York City are devastated after an unknown vandal recently beheaded a statue of Jesus in a fit of rage.
The incident took place at Holy Family Roman Catholic Church in the Queens neighborhood of Fresh Meadows on Sunday. The New York Police Department (NYPD) told Fox News Digital that the act took place shortly before 5:30 a.m.
"[A]n unknown individual intentionally damaged a statue by hitting it repeatedly with their shoe, outside of a church located at 175-20 74 Avenue," the police spokesperson said. "No injuries were reported as a result of this incident."
The destroyed statue depicted Jesus as a child, surrounded by Mary and Joseph. Blurry footage shows a suspect repeatedly hitting the statue's head with a shoe before walking away.
The Diocese of Brooklyn estimated that the damage inflicted on the statue will cost $20,000 to fix, according to FOX 5 New York. In a Facebook post, the Holy Family Roman Catholic Church said that the statue stood outside its doors for over 42 years.
"The parishioners are devastated, and shocked over this," the post read.
The NYPD Hate Crime Task Force is currently investigating the incident as a potential hate crime, and has not arrested any suspects yet. In a statement obtained by FOX 5, the church's pastor Fr. Sean Suckiel called the incident "unsettling."
The NYPD is investigating the incident as a potential hate crime. (Diocese of Brooklyn)[/align]
"The Holy Family is the foundation of our faith community, and this statue holds special meaning to so many in our parish," the priest said. "This is a very unsettling incident, and those who attended Mass yesterday were shocked and horrified to find out this happened."
"We must pray for an increase in religious tolerance throughout our city."
Fox News Digital reached out to the Holy Family Roman Catholic Church and the Diocese of Brooklyn for comment, but has not heard back.
New York authorities are actively investigating the incident, and no additional details are available at this time.
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Analysis: The Bishop of Rome |
Posted by: Stone - 07-03-2024, 06:59 AM - Forum: Vatican II and the Fruits of Modernism
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THE BISHOP OF ROME
TIA | July 2, 2024
The Bishop of Rome is the name of a Vatican document of 146 pages issued on June 13, 2024, under the responsibility of Card. Kurt Koch, head of the original Secretariat for Christian Unity, an organ whose name changes so often that I am not keeping track of the new ones. Koch assures us that Pope Francis gave his full endorsement to the document (§10).
The goal of the document is to report and analyze the 30 responses the Vatican received to the request John Paul II made in the Encyclical Ut unum sint for other religions to give their opinions about what they believed should be changed in the Papacy so as to become palatable for them. Reporting and analyzing these responses is a pretext to present a plan for a new papacy, which follows the tenets of Progressivism and the ideals of Ecumenism.
Since Ut unum sint was published in May 1995, 29 years ago, to have only 30 answers in all this time is very little, but Koch believes that it constitutes a tremendous outcome, and writes exhaustively on the content of those answers.
Independent of those suggestions made by heretics, what counts is the degree of acceptance the progressivist Vatican gives to them, since it reveals its decision to change the Papacy. As far as I remember, this is the first time in the post-Vatican II phase of Church History that we have been presented with an encompassing official Vatican proposal to change the Papacy. 1 A fact that per se supposes the denial of the previous dogmas of Papal Infallibility, Papal Monarchy and Petrine Primacy understood as the full and supreme authority of Peter over the other Apostles.2
Denial of dogmas, let us not forget, is synonymous with apostasy.
False Presupposition
But before entering the analysis of The Bishop of Rome, let me establish a basic presupposition that I hope will help my reader to understand what is being proposed.
Before the Council, the Catholic Church would bring heretics back to the Faith by persuading them of their errors and explaining the marvel of the Catholic truth, which is the proper image and likeness of the Word of God.
Card. Kurt Koch, head of the Dicastery for Promoting Christian Unity, is responsible for this document
During Vatican II and after it, the Conciliar Church’s ecumenism no longer gives a primordial place to the Catholic Faith. Alleging Charity, it puts the Faith in the shadow and seeks unity with all the heretics by waving the banner of the final unity of all religions. Toward this end, it tries to convince Catholics to give up those dogmas of the Faith for the sake of that dreamed-of unity.
Now, this presupposition is false because Faith precedes Charity – no one can love what he does not understand. Therefore, the whole conciliar ecumenical initiative to set aside the Faith to attract heretics in reality induces all Catholics to apostatize. It is the greatest apostasy in History. I suppose it is that Great Revolt or Great Apostasy predicted by St Paul. (2 Thes 2:3)
No Heretic is Open to the Truth
Entering the analysis of the document, I found nowhere in the quoted texts – and I believe Koch quoted every significant thing written in the responses, sometimes more than once – an openness on the part of the heretics to accept any Catholic dogma on the Papacy. On the contrary, their texts are filled with thorns against those indispensable dogmas.
Their position is: “If you want to change Catholic doctrine to please us, here are some points that we suggest, but do not ask us to change anything in our heretical doctrine.”
In brief, it is precisely the opposite of what should be done: It is an ecumenism not to bring heretics to the Catholic Faith, but to bring Catholics to heresy.
The Method
Different from Francis’ habitually messy documents, Koch’s paper is well-ordered and clear in its exposition.
To avoid proposing bold things himself, Koch breaks the heretics’ suggestions into parts and presents them in a convenient way for him to reach the conclusions he wants.
To start, he presents us the demands to reform the Papacy straight from the pens of the heretics, limiting himself to offering some explanations. Then, he starts to share a little more of his own ideas; by the end he is freely and fluently explaining in his own words what should be done to achieve the desired “Reunited Church,” under the pretext of pleasing the heretics.
The Content
Sifting from this document the principles and proposals, I will list them in the order of importance. The summary below will show my reader what is ready to be put in practice to achieve the destruction of the bi-millennial Catholic Papacy. The Bishop of Rome has a Proposal as an appendix with practical suggestions to be implemented in the Papacy in the 21st century.
The dogmas defined by Pius IX & Vatican I are now considered obsolete & unneeded: Apostasy
Principles
- The Pope cannot have full power or dominion over the Church (§41); nor can he have full authority in the Church (§§140-143, 175)
- The Papacy is not de iure divino or established by Our Lord, but rather it is de iure humano, a product of man in History (§166);
- The dogmas defined by Vatican I – Papal Infallibility and the Petrine Primacy – should be re-read and re-worded in function of their historical/cultural context (§§57-65, 146, 147, 178) and under the light of Vatican II (§66, 167, Proposal §14);
- Papal authority should be understood as self-renunciation or kenosis (§42); Peter’s role in strengthening the brethren is a leadership of service grounded in the consciousness of his own weakness and sinfulness (Proposal §28);
- Recognizing a certain papal authority does not imply accepting papal jurisdiction or government (§98);
- The Bishop of Rome has authority only in a synodal/collegial context: that is, as a member and head of the College of Bishops and a servant of universal communion (§112).
Proposals
- The Papal Primacy should be a ministry of unity among all “Christian” religions and a service of love (§3);
- The Papal Primacy should be delegated to the Pope by the College of Bishops, including the bishops or leaders of other “Christian” religions (§19);
- The primacy of the Bishop of Rome should be understood as the primacy of the Church, that is, there should be an interdependence between primacy and synodality at each level of the Church (Proposal §2);
- The governance of the Church, as well as the formulation of its infallible teaching, should also be collegial (Proposal § 20);
- The Synod of Bishops should be a deliberative body (Proposal §21); there should be a permanent synodal governing structure at the government of the entire Church (Proposal §22).
- Every Bishop and the entire College of Bishops should have responsibility for the entire Roman Catholic Church (§114);
- Bishops should be vicars of Christ, and not vicars of the Pope (§1);
- The assemblies of Bishops should have the competence to appoint bishops, change the liturgy and catechesis, organize the churches etc. (§132), including having the authority to change the doctrine (§135, Proposal §19);
- What can be decided upon and done in smaller units of ecclesial life ought not to be referred to Church leaders. Decisions should be made and activities carried out with a participation as broad as possible of the people of God (§§138, 180);
- The present day relationship of the Eastern Catholic Churches with Rome – the Uniates – cannot be recognized as a model for the future communion with the “Christian” churches (§§130, 131).
Benedict XVI addressing Protestants at the Lutheran temple in Rome: the Primacy of love...
This is basically the content of The Bishop of Rome.
We see that it is the blueprint for the leadership of a Panreligion which should serve the long desired revolutionary One World Order. It no longer has anything to do with Holy Mother Church, in whose defense we are committed to fight until the last breath of our life.
1. The Encyclical Ut unum sint sketched only some general outlines regarding primacy versus collegiality inside the Church and a primacy as service toward the false religions. It left the door open for heretics to express their ideas and eventually to incorporate thos suggestions.
2. In Animus Delendi I, volume IV of my collection on the Council, there is an encompassing exposé of the progressivist plan to self-destroy the monarchical character of the Church (chap. IV) and her magisterial character (chap. V). Both chapters transcribe a large number of texts by prelates & theologians attacking the three papal dogmas mentioned above.
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The US will pay Moderna $176 million to develop an mRNA pandemic flu vaccine |
Posted by: Stone - 07-03-2024, 06:46 AM - Forum: Health
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The US will pay Moderna $176 million to develop an mRNA pandemic flu vaccine
FILE - A patient is given a flu vaccine Oct. 28, 2022, in Lynwood, Calif. On Tuesday, July 2, 2024, the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services announced plans to pay Moderna $176 million to develop a mRNA vaccine to treat bird flu in people, as cases in dairy cows continue to mount across the country. (AP Photo/Mark J. Terrill, File)
ASSOCIATED PRESS | July 2, 2024
The U.S. government will pay the vaccine maker Moderna $176 million to accelerate development of a pandemic influenza vaccine that could be used to treat bird flu in people, as concern grows about cases in dairy cows across the country, federal officials announced Tuesday.
Moderna already has a bird flu vaccine in very early-stage testing that uses the same mRNA technology that allowed rapid development and rollout of vaccines to protect against COVID-19. The new funds from the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services include continued development of the vaccine, including a late-stage trial next year if those early study results are positive.
But the project can be quicky redirected to target another form of influenza if a different threat than the H5N1 form of bird flu emerges, HHS officials stressed.
The award was made through the Biomedical Advanced Research and Development Authority, or BARDA, a program that focuses on medical treatments for potential pandemics.
The H5N1 virus was detected earlier this year in dairy cows and has spread to more than 135 herds in 12 states and infected three people to date, all with mild cases. Federal health officials stress that the risk to the wider population remains low.
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Anonymous Catholic: "Why I Decapitated the Obscenity of Linz" |
Posted by: Stone - 07-02-2024, 07:59 AM - Forum: General Commentary
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The Catacombs refuses to include an image of 'the Obscenity of Linz' but the image is widely available on the internet for those interested...
Anonymous Catholic: "Why I Decapitated the Obscenity of Linz"
gloria.tv | July 2, 2024
The anonymous "Catholic" who claims to have beheaded the obscenity in the cathedral of Linz, Austria, writes a testimony on Telegram (1 July).
He calls it not his task to prevent what Bishop Manfred Scheuer of Linz is doing: "But it is our task to prevent any defamation of God and His Most Holy Mother".
Since the Blessed Mother protects him every day, he wanted to be there for Her.
The alleged "Catholic" explains why he acted instead of seeking dialogue: "Unfortunately, emails are ignored by the Diocese of Linz, phone calls are abruptly ended, and there is no outlet for criticism".
And: "In the face of this abominable and blasphemous caricature, urgent and decisive action was required".
At first, the "Catholic" wanted to saw off the torso of the statue. But he realised that it would be too noisy and take too long. So he changed his plan on the spot and opted for the head: "Without the head and the halo, there would be no doubt that it was a caricature of the Virgin Mary".
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Opinion: Lefebvre, Viganò and the Post-Conciliar Struggle Against the Catholic Church’s Enemies |
Posted by: Stone - 07-02-2024, 07:20 AM - Forum: General Commentary
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Lefebvre, Viganò and the Post-Conciliar Struggle Against the Catholic Church’s Enemies
Robert Morrison, Remnant Columnist [Emphasis mine]| July 1, 2024
Archbishop Carlo Maria Viganò began his recent statement (responding to accusations of schism) by quoting Archbishop Marcel Lefebvre from 1979:
Quote:“‘When I think that we are in the palace of the Holy Office, which is the exceptional witness of the Tradition and of the defense of the Catholic Faith, I cannot stop myself from thinking that I am at home, and that it is me, whom you call ‘the traditionalist,’ who should judge you.’ So spoke Archbishop Marcel Lefebvre in 1979, when he was summoned to the former Holy Office, in the presence of the Prefect, Cardinal Franjo Šeper, and two other Prelates.” (June 28, 2024)
Although Archbishop Viganò chose these words in part to draw the comparison between his situation and that of Archbishop Lefebvre, they also show that the present enmity between the anti-Catholic revolutionaries in Rome and Catholicism was already apparent in the 1970s. As we know from Bishop Tissier de Mallerais’s biography of Archbishop Lefebvre, this was not the first encounter between Archbishop Lefebvre and Cardinal Seper:
Quote:“On November 18, [1978,] through an initiative of Cardinal Siri, the new Pope received the Archbishop, who said he was ready ‘to accept the Council in the light of Tradition,’ an expression used by Pope John Paul himself on November 6: ‘The Council must be understood in the light of all holy Tradition and on the basis of the constant Magisterium of the holy Church.’ The Pope said he was happy and saw the problem of celebrating the old Mass only as a disciplinary question. Then Cardinal Franjo Seper, whom the Pope had summoned, exclaimed: ‘Be careful, Holy Father, they make a banner out of this Mass!’”
Both Archbishop Lefebvre and Cardinal Seper understood that the Traditional Latin Mass and defense of the unadulterated Catholic Faith are naturally intertwined, and we can describe that relationship in various ways:
- Love for the Traditional Latin Mass generally leads souls to want to defend the unadulterated Catholic Faith from errors contrary to it.
- Wanting to disfigure or reject the Traditional Latin Mass goes hand-in-hand with wanting to disfigure or reject the unadulterated Catholic Faith
- Abolishing, or radically changing, the Traditional Latin Mass tends to drive a wedge between Catholics and the unadulterated Catholic Faith.
- Failing to defend the unadulterated Catholic Faith — by accepting errors contrary to it — will eventually lead to attacks on the Traditional Latin Mass.
As we know from the warnings of the pre-Vatican II popes, the Catholic Church has enemies who have sought to destroy the unadulterated Catholic Faith from within the Church. Archbishop Viganò referred to some of these enemies in his recent statement:
Quote:“As Romano Amerio pointed out in his seminal essay Iota Unum, this cowardly and culpable surrender began with the convocation of the Second Vatican Ecumenical Council and with the underground and highly organized action of clergymen and laity linked to the Masonic sects, aimed at slowly but surely subverting the structure of government and magisterium of the Church in order to demolish Her from within.”
Given the connection between the Traditional Latin Mass and the unadulterated Catholic Faith, it should not surprise us that these enemies have also worked to undermine the Mass. As we know, it was a Freemason, Archbishop Annibale Bugnini, who oversaw the design of the Novus Ordo Missae, which eliminated so much of the content of the Mass that offended non-Catholics that the New Mass bears almost no resemblance to the Traditional Latin Mass. Again, wanting to disfigure the Traditional Latin Mass goes hand-in-hand with wanting to disfigure the unadulterated Catholic Faith.
Knowing that the enemies of the Catholic Church want to destroy both the unadulterated Faith and the Traditional Latin Mass, we might naturally ask why they have taken so long to completely ban the Mass and introduce more overt heresy? Why has the process been gradual? The enemies who have overseen the Vatican II revolution do not mind if their innovations have caused many Catholics to lose the Faith — this was indeed desirable — but they have always needed to maintain a sufficient number of Catholics who go along with the revolution. To accomplish this, they have introduced their poisons gradually. Those who credibly identify as Catholics, and yet go along with the revolution, provide the necessary cover for our enemies seeking to gradually dismantle the Church. For this reason, the most valuable assets of the Vatican II revolutionaries have been those otherwise good Catholics who defend the Council and denounce men like Archbishop Lefebvre.
In their cynical hatred for Catholicism, the Church’s enemies have even been willing to barter access to the Traditional Latin Mass in exchange for silence about the doctrinal and disciplinary aberrations flowing from the Council. By all appearances, this strategy has been successful with some Traditional Catholics because many people have the Mass and feel no need to join the battle until it begins to harm them, and we generally do not suffer the direct consequences of anti-Catholic errors flowing freely in the Church. Thus, even though men like Archbishop Lefebvre saw the battle clearly several decades ago, many more Catholics have awakened only with Francis because his over-the-top attacks on Catholicism are inescapable, especially when he threatens the Traditional Latin Mass.
Where does Archbishop Viganò fit into this analysis? Whether or not one agrees with his fiery rhetoric about Francis, the fact remains that he generally responds to the ongoing crisis like a man who sees the big picture and has no qualms about telling the truth in a manner that is capable of alerting others to the nature and severity of the ordeal we face. Worse for the revolutionaries, he is a Successor of the Apostles who places the blame where it belongs, as we see in his recent statement:
Quote:“Since the Council, the Church has thus become the bearer of the revolutionary principles of 1789, as some of the proponents of Vatican II have admitted, and as is confirmed by the appreciation on the part of the Lodges for all the Popes of the Council and of the post-conciliar period, precisely because of the implementation of changes that the Freemasons had long called for. Change – or better still, aggiornamento – has been so much at the center of the conciliar narrative that it has been the hallmark of Vatican II and has posited this assembly as the terminus post quem that sanctions the end of the ancien régime – the regime of the ‘old religion,’ of the ‘old Mass,’ of the ‘pre-council’ – and the beginning of the ‘conciliar church,’ with its ‘new mass’ and the substantial relativization of all dogma.”
Many critics of Francis have a vested interest in protecting Vatican II, and so they cannot bring themselves to speak the entire truth on these matters. Archbishop Viganò apparently has no such vested interests, so his words ring true in a way that pose a unique threat to the revolutionaries today.
Unfortunately, many who champion Archbishop Viganò today appear to care far less about his assessment of the entire crisis than his opposition to its most prominent fruit, Francis. Many, in fact, appear to misinterpret his words to imagine that Archbishop Viganò is saying that the crisis can be solved merely by saying that Francis is an anti-pope, which is a position that Archbishop Viganò has clearly rejected:
Quote:“What we cannot do, because we do not have the authority, is to officially declare that Jorge Mario Bergoglio is not Pope. The terrible impasse in which we find ourselves makes any human solution impossible.” (Archbishop Carlo Maria Viganò, December 9, 2023 intervention)
We can also see from his recent statement that he acknowledges that Francis must be “removed from the Throne,” which would make no sense if he was not somehow occupying it:
Quote:“Before my Brothers in the Episcopate and the entire ecclesial body, I accuse Jorge Mario Bergoglio of heresy and schism, and I ask that he be judged as a heretic and schismatic and removed from the Throne which he has unworthily occupied for over eleven years.”
This statement essentially echoes the ultimate “call for action” of the “Major Statement” published by Rorate Caeli in May, in which several prominent Catholics accused Francis of numerous crimes, and called on bishops and cardinals to effectively “remove him” if he refused to resign:
Quote:“If Pope Francis refuses to resign, the duty of the bishops and cardinals is to proceed to declare that he has lost the papal office for heresy.”
As described in a previous article, these approaches resemble that which St. Robert Bellarmine presented in his defense of the Church against Protestants who argued that Catholics had no recourse against a pope who would try to destroy the Church:
Quote:“I respond: No wonder, if the Church remains without an efficacious human remedy, seeing that its safety does not rest principally upon human industry, but divine protection, since God is its king. Therefore, even if the Church could not depose a Pope, still, it may and must beg the Lord that He would apply the remedy, and it is certain that God has care for its safety, that He would either convert the Pope or abolish him from their midst before he destroys the Church. Nevertheless, it does not follow from here that it is not lawful to resist a Pope destroying the Church; for it is lawful to admonish him while preserving all reverence, and to modestly correct him, even to oppose him with force and arms if he means to destroy the Church.” (De Controversiis, On the Church: On Councils, On the Church Militant, On the Marks of the Church, p. 220)
So St. Robert Bellarmine (a) acknowledged the possibility of a pope who should be deposed, (b) recognized that the Church may not actually be able to remove such a pope, and © confirmed that the proper response in that case would be to resist his efforts to destroy the Church, even with “force of arms” if necessary. One may quibble over terminology (i.e., “pope” vs. “anti-pope,” and “remove” vs. “declare to be anti-pope”) but the fundamental realities do not change.
From St. Robert Bellarmine’s position, we can see the problems with two opposing errors found today among sincere Catholics:
- The error of those who think that individual Catholics can declare Francis to be an anti-pope and that there is no real need for the faithful bishops and cardinals to attempt to remove and replace him.
- The error that there could never be a situation in which faithful bishops and cardinals should at least consider removing a pope who was clearly attempting to destroy the Church.
Among those who sincerely hold either of these positions, the most common reason (among those who actually think about the matter) is the same: that the Church’s indefectibility would be compromised if we entertained a different view.
However, Our Lord’s promise that the Church would never fail is not a litmus test by which we need to evaluate whether Jesus was telling the truth: we know that He established the Catholic Church, and that it will not fail because He told us it would not. Moreover, He would not have had any real reason to tell us the Church would not fail if there would not be times (such as the Arian crisis and the current one) in which it might seem that the Church had defected.
In such times, our fidelity to the Church certainly demands our adherence to the unadulterated Faith and unwavering trust in God; but it also calls for our humble acknowledgment that His Providence may lead us to paths that we never would have considered in ordinary times — this indeed was a constant theme of Archbishop Lefebvre’s life from the time of the Council until his death in 1991. Now, for example, it is scarcely worthy of our Catholic Faith to assume that the realities presented by the Pachamama, Fiducia Supplicans, Traditiones Custodes, and the newly created Synodal Church are not signs that our shepherds may need to at least prayerfully consider if it is God’s will that faithful bishops and cardinals take steps to discern whether Francis should be removed and replaced.
Conversely, this consideration of God’s will in responding to the current crisis highlights why it is such a debilitating mistake to concentrate on removing Francis — or worse, simply branding him an “anti-pope” — while ignoring everything else that Archbishop Viganò has to say about the crisis. If we assume, for the sake of argument, that Archbishop Lefebvre and Archbishop Viganò correctly identified the role of Vatican II in fostering this crisis, why would God allow us to escape the crisis without repudiating the errors of the Council? It seems, rather, that He would allow the crisis to grow progressively worse until we finally overcome our blindness and lethargy to fight for Catholic truth, which truly means choosing Him over the sinful world, with which Vatican II made peace.
This is not the first time God has had to demonstrate to us the staggering evil of choosing the sinful world over Him. Just as God willed that Our Lord suffered and died on the Cross to show us the enormous evil of sin, so too it seems that He is allowing the Mystical Body of Christ to undergo such an excruciating Passion to show us the gravity of Vatican II’s abandonment of objective, immutable truth. Archbishop Viganò put it this way in his recent statement:
Quote:“This happens when the absolute is removed from the Truth and relativized by adapting it to the spirit of the world.”
If we want to cooperate with God’s grace to help resolve this crisis, then it seems clear that we must reject and counteract the Council’s sin of abandoning unadulterated Catholic Truth. Along with this, according to Archbishop Viganò’s exhortation to end his recent statement, we should fight with the spiritual weapons Our Lord has given us:
Quote:“To the Catholic faithful, who today are scandalized and disoriented by the winds of novelty and the false doctrines that are promoted and imposed by a Hierarchy rebellious against the Divine Master, I ask you to pray and offer your sacrifices and fasts pro libertate et exaltatione Sanctæ Matris Ecclesiæ, so that Holy Mother Church may find Her freedom and triumph with Christ, after this time of passion.”
God will triumph over those who today subject the Mystical Body of Christ to this tremendous Passion. And just as the Blessed Virgin Mary helped St. John stand faithfully beneath the Cross during Our Lord’s Crucifixion, Our Lady will help us remain faithful if we turn to her, even if Providence leads us to paths that we never would have considered in ordinary times. Our Lady of Sorrows, pray for us!
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