The Recusant - Issue 52
Summer 2020
Editorial
Dear Reader,
Good news! We recently learned of the priestly defection from the Fake Resistance! Fr. Arturo Vargas, long-time SSPX priest, who until recently would have been numbered by us as being amongst the Fake Resistance has left the company of the Williamsonist bishops and joins Fr. Hewko, Fr. Rafael, Fr. Ruiz and the other Resistance priests who are still faithful to Tradition and to Archbishop Lefebvre. Bravo, Fr. Vargas! Oremus ad invicem! And may many more priests follow your example!
Doubtless the enemy has some further deceptions in mind to close the last remaining gap separating him from his goal of World Government and World Religion. But whatever “cunning plan” he has up his sleeve, there will always be the Church, there will be the true Faith, and there will be someone, even if only a few priests and faithful, who embody it. Whatever happens, we stand confident in the true Faith and we laugh at his childish pettiness. He cannot win and all his plans will come to naught. If, in the meantime, Our Lord allows us the honour of a little suffering then so much the better. Our Lord will Himself be given greater honour and glory for it, and so will we. Every suffering, every injustice, every trial will be just one more battle scar which your will be able to show, later on, in heaven, when you re-live your war stories along with all the other old warriors, the veterans of a thousand campaigns in the army of Mother Church in all the different eras and places across the earth wherever they have been fought.
‘New World Order’ -Watch
What of coronavirus, covid-19 or whatever we are meant to be calling it? What of the urgent need for a “lockdown” a “quarantine,” “social distancing” and “face masks” and all the rest..? What about the urgent need for tens of thousands of elderly to die of neglect in care homes (“care”..! There’s a tasteless euphemism if ever I saw one!), the urgent need for literally millions to lose their jobs and livelihoods? What of that deadly pandemic which we were repeatedly told (by experts, no less!) would be a new Spanish Flu, a new Black Death, cutting down countless millions in their prime…? (By the way, if you still pay any heed at all to what “experts” tell us, then you need your head examining! “Experts” are a modern gnostic priesthood, they are just a way for the elites to get the masses to accept something without the need to produce any actual evidence or do any actual persuading!) What has happened to the “Covid-19 epidemic”? Well you see, it was the most important and urgent thing ever to have happened - until ‘Black Lives Matter’ and the criminal rioters, er, I mean peaceful protestors, started doing their thing. Now suddenly Covid-19 doesn’t matter and nobody is talking about it. The SSPX is almost the only place where the panicky “pandemic” narrative which the media treated us to in March and April is still being kept alive. But we’ll come back to that.
If the evidence against this idiotic “pandemic” lie which we presented here last issue were not enough, even more has emerged since then. High level fraud in the form of fraudulent death certificates has continued apace. Talk of a “second wave” is just so much wishful thinking - there was never evidence for a “second wave” anyway - our media are saying that supposedly one happened in China, but supposedly they are all asymptomatic. Does that sound right to you?). There have been studies (for example, this one:
www.thegatewaypundit.com/2020/06/exclusivecoronavirus-mortality-study-continues-confirm-overall-mortality-not-much-different-bad-seasonal-flu/ from early June) showing that Coronavirus is about as deadly as the flu in a normal year, just as many had suspected all along. The Doomsday narrative came exclusively from Bill Gates and his various surrogates and fronts: the World Health Organisation, Dr. Fauci, Imperial College London… The W.H.O. should be shut down and disbanded, as should Imperial College. Anyone who was a part of their deception or who took Gates’ money should be barred from working in that field or in any kind of influential or sensitive job ever again, for their part in what is now taking place... Yes, I know - I can dream, can’t I?So it turns out to have been all nonsense. What’s new? Nothing, that’s precisely the point.
After more than three months of the bogus “pandemic,” Hong Kong, the vast megametropolis which shares a land border with China
still has had
only four deaths out of a little over approx. 1,100 cases, giving a death rate 0.35%. To put things into perspective, in the same period of time and in a similar sized population, an average of 32 people will have died of syphilis and another 17 from contact with venomous animals.
According to UK government statistics, during the same period last year (2019), 467 people died in road accidents in Great Britain. Of course, we have a larger total population than Hong Kong: scale it down to the same population size and that figure would “only” be 54 traffic deaths in those three months. What that means in real terms is that the average person in our country is “only” running 13.5 times the risk posed by covid-19 every time he leaves his front door to get into his car or walk down the street to the corner shop.
We already alluded to the
#filmyourhospital movement last Easter, which showed the various reports of “overwhelmed” hospitals “struggling to cope” to be the opposite of the truth as lies and nothing else. That did not stop them, however. Tell the lie often enough and people will believe it. On 18th May the
BBC reported that in Brazil “Hospitals in São Paolo [were] near collapse.” President Bolsonaro denied this and told people to go inside and have a look for themselves. Several members of Parliament did just that, and were denied entry. Forcing their way in, they were able to film the inside of the hospital completely empty, devoid of patients, the few staff present appeared to be doing not a lot of work. A
rather amusing video of it can be viewed online.
CNN reported the affair with its characteristic one-sidedness, including hand-wringing over the horrifying fact that these naughty men filmed and took pictures of the hospital “and patients, without authorization...” (suddenly they care about privacy?!). It’s only a pity that there weren’t really any patients in there to be filmed! Watch the video and see for yourself! So much for “hospitals near to collapse”! But getting caught like that won’t stop them from lying in the future, we can be sure of that.
Just as more evidence has continued to emerge about what a hoax this whole health scare has been, and how comparatively harmless Covid-19 really is, at the same time more and more “measures” have stealthily been put in place supposedly to “deal with” the great “crisis.” In mid April, for example,
‘Business Insider’ reported that the UK government was in talks with Tech firms to put in place facial recognition software. Where have we seen that happening already..? Oh yes, Red China. If you think that sort of thing couldn’t happen here, think again. Likewise, Angela Merkel recently announced that
Germany would be tracking its own citizens using their smartphones. Other countries are doing likewise, including the United Kingdom. Don’t worry, it’s for your own good!
A vaccine is being prepared. Our governments are hoping that we will all take it and give it to our children too. Perhaps they are ready to give it to you whether you want it or not - it seems fairly clear that with all the effort they are going to, most governments are not going to want even a sizeable minority to be left unvaccinated. If you or anyone close to you still has any doubts about vaccinations, if you have yet to make up your mind, I urge you to watch the
“Vaxxed” documentary and its successor,
“Vaxxed 2”. If only a tiny part of what they say is true, then we need to run a mile from whatever new vaccination is being planned.
In the meantime, as the months go by what continues to become clearer and more undeniable every day is the true cost of what has been done to us. It turns out that abusing the powers of government and law enforcement to physically prevent people from working isn’t good for the economy - who would have imagined such a thing!? Unemployment continues to rise, but the true cost will not be seen until furlough comes to an end and many people discover that they no longer have jobs to return to. Nor let us forget the cost in terms of unnecessary deaths due to these tyrannical measures, the cancer screenings that haven’t been taking place, the patients who haven’t been being treated, the elderly who have suffered from horrific abuse and neglect in “care homes”… at the time of writing, the “Keep Britain Free” death count stands at very slightly under 50,000 excess deaths in Great Britain so far, deaths in other words which were caused by the “lockdown” measures.
So the sceptics and prophets of gloom are, once again, being proven right. But so what, so they deceived us about Covid-19 and exaggerated the danger: in the end why should that matter? What matters is not just the fact of the deceit, but rather what is being done in its name. What matters is that the very worst tinfoil-hat-wearing prophets of gloom are still being proved right. We are still sleepwalking into a Communist Police State, and if you don’t want to end up living in a 21st Century version of the East German DDR, complete with Stasi, government blacklists which don’t officially exist and government-sanctioned media telling outrageous “official government” lies in public when in private even those who know the truth remain silent out of terror… then something has to be done! We are already 90% of the way there. And say what you will about the Stasi, they at least looked you in the eye when they interrogated you and used pencil and paper to keep records. They didn’t have at their disposal the internet, smartphones, social media and all the rest of it. Don’t think that you can escape simply by buying your five acres and a cow and settling down to be as self-sufficient
as possible, either. Once society goes that way, we all go that way, and they will know where to find you when the time comes. The most you will achieve by that approach is to buy yourself a little more time, nothing more.
The reader who desires more information on the fake “pandemic” power-grab or who needs more examples, will find a selection on pages 12 & 13 - those of you who do not require so much convincing might want to use them to help convince others. There’s plenty more where that came from and a page of links is once again also provided (p.14). Spread the information as much as possible. Most people, remember, are still completely unaware of the vast propaganda campaign to which we are being subjected and equally to the very great danger we are all in. What is happening is organised, and it has a definite goal. We will see clearly what that is only when it is too late. The enemy knows what we usually forget: information is power.
Solve et Coagula
This motto is referred to in the letter on p.19, a loose translation of which might be “divide and conquer.” It is supposed to be a Masonic motto, but does it even need to be? Is it really anything more than common sense? It is how a concealed enemy can gain and hold onto power. Encouraging black and white to be at each other’s throats is, one might have thought, calculated to benefit neither. But it might conceivably benefit a third party who does not want to be turfed out of power. Is that a “conspiracy theory” - or is it just common sense?
In early June, after more than two months of worldwide police-state “lockdown,” so-called protests began in the United States, ostensibly due to the death of a Minneapolis man in police custody, deemed a “racist killing” by the media. I do not intend here to argue the point - the footage is distressing and it does look unmistakably like the policeman killed him, whatever else may be said. Nothing was done by the authorities to deal with the riots and looting which followed, although law-abiding citizens were forced to obey a martial-law –style curfew which required them to be locked in their homes every evening. Seeing as nothing was done, not surprisingly, the rioting and looting spread across the United States and to other countries (including here in London). The usual mouthpieces of big-media, big-Hollywood and its so-called “celebrities” and big-business not only took the side of the looters but shamelessly cheered them on. These, we were told, were “largely peaceful protests” which every right thinking person should support. Never mind the fact that the very same big media had been railing against the anti-lockdown protests only a week or two earlier, characterising them as “far-right,” intimidating, irresponsible and selfish because they risked making the pandemic worse. When ‘Black Lives Matter,’ ‘Antifa’ and their fellow-travellers took to the streets to cause violence and mayhem, suddenly it was a different story. Some “experts” even went on the record saying that it was a health risk for anti-lockdown protestors to protest, but not for “Black Lives Matter” (see
here, for example, or
here); there was also a
public letter signed by more than 1,288 “health professionals” which said exactly that, and with a straight face too! So called “anti-racism protests” (which in reality often amount to little more than burning, looting, rioting and mindless violence)
good, anti-lockdown protests
bad. “Protests against systemic racism, which fosters the disproportionate burden of COVID-19 on Black [sic] communities and also perpetuates police violence, must be supported,” the letter says, but “protests against stay-home orders” on the other hand, are: “rooted in white nationalism and run contrary to respect for Black lives.” Got that? ...because: “White supremacy is a lethal public health issue that predates and contributes to COVID-19.”
Unopposed and encouraged, the violence worsened; the police either wouldn’t or couldn’t act (remember that in the end, they take their orders from the politicians or civil service anyway). Also conspicuous by their absence were the usual groups of gun-carrying “second amendment,” “defend the constitution,” “libertarian” volunteer-citizen types whom one so often sees in America. Can anyone really blame them? In all likelihood, had they tried to help protect life and property, they would only have been attacked, both physically and in the media - after all, they are supposedly “rooted in white nationalism,” aren’t they? Some of those types had shown up in support of Shelley Luther, the Texas lady hairdresser who, back in early May was eventually sentenced to jail for the hideous, unforgivable crime of opening her salon and cutting her customers hair. By the way, she was sentenced by a left-wing activist judge who was already on the record as an Obama supporter (aren’t judges meant to at least pretend to be impartial?!), who insisted on a prison sentence, despite prison being universally regarded as one of the places with the highest risk of infection and despite the fact that the very restrictions which had forced small businesses to close were only three days away from being lifted in her state. Bear in mind also that in various parts of the country, lefty politicians had already been letting serious criminals out of jail “to prevent the spread of the virus” and virtue signalling it to the whole world. So real criminality is fine but disobeying arbitrary (and often unlawful and unconstitutional) instructions from petty bureaucrats is unforgivably criminal.
That was in May; when truly violent “anti-racism protests” began in early June, no such inflexible stand was taken, so it became worse. Cities burned. People were injured and killed, the innocent victims of lawlessness and immorality, several of whom were themselves black. One such was David Dorn, a retired policeman who
was shot by looters whilst helping to guard his friend’s pawn shop. If the George Floyd footage is distressing, the death of David Dorn is, if anything, even more so. Having been shot and seriously wounded, his is left lying on the ground bleeding to death while in the meantime the looters walk past him and step over his body to carry on looting. His death might have been avoided even after he had been shot, but not one of these “largely peaceful” looters raised a finger to help him, nobody even tried to put pressure on the wound, apply a dressing or call for help, so he died.
Despite what the lying, prostitute media might claim, these latest riots and looting were not a spontaneous outcry of an oppressed people. Apart from the fact that ‘two wrongs don’t make a right,’ why does one death up in Minnesota mean that you get to
break into your local Walmart in Florida to steal a widescreen TV, or
burn down your local Wendy’s in Georgia? To anyone with any morals, obviously it doesn’t and that is not what is really going on.
Very well, what is really going on, then? One clue is the reported vast sums of money being poured into ‘Black Lives Matter’. On 10th June the website blackenterprise.com
reported that nearly $1.7 billion had already been handed over by big business, with even more pledged for the future. Never mind that they (rather amusingly) complain in the article about “the stinginess of the donations” for what they describe as “grassroots demonstrations”... “grassroots”?
Supported by big business? And the mainstream media? Many of the ordinary people taking part in these various “movements” and demonstrations” might not realise that they are being used, they may well be genuinely deceived, but even so, surely something about this ought to trouble them. Imagine thinking that you are the genuine under-dog, that you are part of a real grassroots revolution, when you are being given hundreds of millions by such “grassroots” organisations as Nike, Amazon, Walmart and Bank of America. Imagine thinking that you are somehow “oppressed” when you have the support of all the mainstream media, academia, big business Silicon Valley and almost all the politicians from both parties. Shouldn’t most people realise at that point that something is wrong, that something just doesn’t feel right? That is not what “grassroots” looks like!
Then there is the
undercover video released on 11th June by
Project Veritas which shows a lady called Tee Stern and a man by the name of Andy Zee, both leading lights in “Refuse Fascism,” the latter its national organiser, admitting on hidden camera that they had received funding from George Soros. As usual, the mainstream media treated this like it doesn’t exist, with the exception of a
report by RT. That’s not what “grassroots” looks like either! The antilockdown protests, back in May, on the other hand… but of course, I’m forgetting, those were irresponsible and selfish, “far right” and “rooted in white nationalism”..!
To see what a
genuine grassroots campaign looks like, one has only to take a look at the
campaign for judicial review in the High Court against the illegal “lockdown” in our own country. Started by the brave and enterprising Simon Dolan, one can see all of the donations on the ‘crowdjustice’ website. The entire campaign, it seems, has been funded by donations of between £5 and £20 from well-meaning individuals, normal people like you and I - Mr. Dolan reports that he has had no response at all from big business (no surprise there). He also points out that, whereas a similar High Court campaign against Brexit led by Gina Miller a few years ago received almost non-stop coverage from the BBC and other mainstream media, his campaign has not been mentioned even once: it’s as though it didn’t exist. That’s what real grassroots campaigns look like. ‘Black Lives Matter’ could hardly have less in common with it. Even their name is fraudulent: if black lives really did matter, then they would be demanding a stronger police presence in the South side of Chicago, a place infamous for its black-on-black gangland shootings, leading to hundreds of deaths every year, making it more deadly than downtown Baghdad; the same goes for the other black inner-city neighbourhoods with improbably might murder rates, Detroit, for instance, or Baltimore: if black lives really do matter, why aren’t we seeing a campaign for something to be done to restore a measure of
peace and normality in those places?; if black lives really matter, then they would be talking about the abortion clinics located in black neighbourhoods, and while we’re on the topic, how about taking a closer look at Margaret Sanger and her ilk; if black lives really did matter, somebody would be talking about the payday loan companies who take advantage of poor blacks (and poor whites), they would be talking about the so-called “Ninja mortgages” (“No Income No Job” - remember those?) flogged off on unsuspecting blacks by the banks, back before the 2008 housing crash. But they don’t, because while “Black Lives Matter” may be the name, it is not an accurate description of what they’re all about; it is no different to a hard -line Communist calling himself an “anti-fascist” - the name is designed to deceive, to draw attention away from the reality and to create sympathy where none is deserved.
We can learn even more about what is really going on by observing what else has been “spontaneously” happening at the same time. In Seattle, Washington far-left rioters took over a police precinct in the centre of town. The then declared themselves “autonomous,” in effect an independent state (“Chaz”..? “Chop”..? They seem to have difficulty deciding the name) and proceeded to build a wall (that’s right, they “built a wall”!) around the six-block perimeter which they then guarded with armed patrols! Police are not welcome and they are determined to run themselves. The laws of America don’t apply to them, you see. Though difficult to know exactly what is going on in there, because of its very nature, it seems to be composed of a mixture of ‘Black Lives Matter’ types, long-harried lefty student types (“Communism has never been properly tried, maaaan!”) and a few man-hating feminists - the usual suspects, in other words. And although generally hostile to outsiders, enough people have gone in and live-streamed video from their phones that we know of at least four shootings already, as well as muggings and other lawlessness. The most remarkable thing about it all is that the media are not hostile - once again, they are cheering it on - and the government, the police, the army, the FBI… have all done nothing. Can you try to imagine for one moment if a group of Traditional Catholics were to take over part of a city, or even a remote tract of countryside and declare themselves independent, institute Catholic laws, and all the rest..? Would we see trendy liberal politicians telling the world that they couldn’t do anything because it is the will of the people? Or might they decide that it was time their SWAT teams and riot police got some live-action training, that they helicopters, tanks and water cannon needed to be put to use? Does anyone remember a little place called Waco, Texas? Outside of Seattle, in the rest of the country, statues were being vandalised and torn down. Stonewall Jackson got his revenge on one man who stood a little too close. And it was not just Confederate Statues from the Civil War, either: Christopher Columbus, Theodore Roosevelt, Ulysses S Grant all became targets - even Abraham Lincoln has to go. The fact that many of those statues were supposed to be Federal property doesn’t seem to have bothered anyone.
Once again, one can see laws being selectively enforced: not enforced at all if one party or interest do it, but for everyone else, over-enforced to the point where you are not allowed to earn an honest living or even leave your home. By the way, monuments matter. Like street names and architecture, they are a physical testimony, set-in-stone and say a lot about the society in which you live. If it didn’t matter, the left wouldn’t continually be going after them.
We mentioned above that “Antifa” and similar violent far-left organisations (I gather the latest iteration is something called “Refuse Fascism” - different name, same concept ...and in all likelihood, same people!) usually have a name that is calculated to mislead. Communists always do this. “Anti-fascism” is a euphemism which really means “Communism,” but to call yourself a Communist might turn people away, so you turn it around and make it sound like it is anyone who opposes you who is the problem. Very rarely do Communists ever own up to what they really are or what their ultimate goal might be. In the 1980s, the Soviet-backed Communist puppet-state in East Germany was not called the “Communist Dictatorship of East Germany,” it was called the “German Democratic Republic.” Sounds good doesn’t it - can it really be that bad when it even has the word “democratic” in the name? Erich Honecker was officially the chairman of its ruling “Socialist Unity Party” - that sounds nice too, doesn’t it?
It certainly doesn’t sound like he was a ruthless dictator who terrorised his own citizens and used secret police to keep them in line. If you went there on holiday, however, you might have noticed in passing the many large statues of Marx, Lenin and others which adorned the city centres. What about the famous wall which the “German Democratic Republic” built to keep its own citizens from fleeing to the West? We might call it the “Berlin Wall” today, but its official name, the name given by the very people who built it, was the “Anti-Fascist Defensive Fortification” (“Antifaschistischer Schutzwall”). Just let that sink in. It was officially a defensive rampart against all those West Germans trying to get in! And an “anti-fascist”
defensive fortification, too? Remember that, although it might seem laughable to us today, at that time this was said with a straight face. Is it really any different to the so-called “antifascists” of our own day? I see, so it’s not you who are Communists, it’s everyone else who’s a fascist..!
To give us an idea of where this is all leading, we can look at a few instructive lessons from the past. Communism, Masonry and its various allies haven’t really changed. Elsewhere in this issue the reader will find a review of the excellent book “
Spain: The Vital Years” which gives a fairly detailed account just how truly awful the Second Spanish Republic was and why. The “why” is important, because many of the causes, motives and methods are the same today. But let us not go into that here - read the article. When the book review was written, the rioters and looters of our own day had not yet started attacking churches. As we go to press, however, it looks like that may be about to change, bringing us even closer to experiencing the Second Spanish Republic all over again. On 22nd June, the leftist agitator and professional white “black” activist Shaun King
used Twitter to direct his followers against a new target: “All murals and stained glass windows of white Jesus, and his European mother, and their white friends should also come down. They are a gross form white supremacy. Created as tools of oppression. Racist propaganda. They should all come down.” Notice the explicit reference, not only to Our Lord, but to His Blessed Mother. By the way, the same Twitter, which bans people instantly for “hate speech” if they express anything deemed “transphobic” sees nothing wrong with this obvious call to violence by a far left activist: days later the message is still visible. Plenty of buildings have already been attacked, looted and burned down recently; don’t be too surprised if Catholic churches are next.
Let us say again, as with the fake coronavirus “epidemic,” this may not be the final chessmove, it may only be a dress rehearsal, it may be nothing more than the latest step towards the end goal of a world government ruled-over by the anti-Christ. Either way, it is still leading us down the same path. Spain in the 1930s was finally saved from the Red Terror by the Nationalist uprising led by General Franco. Who is going to save us today? Alas, there is no Generalissimo that I can see. Writing in the 1950s, C.S. Lewis summed-up our situation quite well, and quite entertainingly, in a passage in one of his sci-fi novels, a book which I nevertheless feel I cannot wholeheartedly recommend (“That Hideous Strength” - mainly because of its incessant flirtation with the occult, amongst other reasons). The hero (an Englishman, named “Ransom”) is talking to Merlin who has come to the 20th century from the court of King Arthur to help defeat the baddies, after having been asleep for 1,500 years. Ransom has to explain the modern world to Merlin, who doesn’t quite understand just how much things have changed in the past 1,500 years:
Notice, by the way, that there is no question at all of appealing to the Pope who has the power to depose kings and even to make new emperors. Lewis was, after all, an obstinate Protestant to the day he died. Otherwise, he is not so far wide of the mark. I am told - or I read it somewhere, I cannot now recall - that Evelyn Waugh used to tell his children to try their best to dodge the fare if ever they travelled by train, because they were to regard Britain as an occupied country. Was he so far wide of the mark, too? Unlike Lewis, Waugh was a Catholic and as such he surely must have been aware of Our Lady of Fatima and the dire warnings which she gave us in the 20th Century. What exactly did she mean by “Russia will spread its errors”..? Was she only talking about a form of collectivist economics, or did she perhaps have something far worse in mind? If we think that Communism magically disappeared with the fall of the Berlin Wall, we are kidding ourselves. The current movement afoot is being fostered and encouraged by those who want to see us all living in a Stalinist police state, complete with NKVD and Gulag. That is what they want, and they want it everywhere. “The international Soviet shall be the human race!”
goes their song. Nothing can save us now but the Mother of God - any solution which does not involve her has failed before it has begun. Pray the rosary and do penance and all may yet be well.
Archbishop Vigano
The other “big thing” which has happened recently and which deserves our attention are the words of the former Papal Nuncio to the United States, Archbishop Carlo Maria Vigano. Many of us have long been sceptical whenever the latest supposedly “conservative” novus ordo bishop or cardinal makes the news, and rightly too. Most of them, whatever soundbite they might have trotted out remain obstinately wedded to Vatican II. Mgr. Vigano, however, has now said more than once that the Council as a whole must be done away with and has publicly disagreed with Bishop Athanasius Schneider on that very question. The approach which Schneider advocates is one of cleansing the bad bits of Vatican II and saving the good bits (when has the Church ever taken that approach in the past? Arius, Luther, Henry VIII - you name it, they all have bits of their teaching that are good, side-by-side with heresies.
When good and bad teaching are mixed like that, the good bits only serve to make the bad bits easier to swallow, like adding sugar to poison. The only Catholic response is to condemn the whole lot...). Whatever else one may say about Vigano, this does seem to be the very rot of the matter: in the end, it always ends up being a question of Vatican II and whether one accepts it or rejects it. That was set Archbishop Lefebvre apart back in the day, and it is still today what matters most. There are very few of us left who still totally reject the Council on account of its heresies, but Mgr. Vigano, it seems, now shares our position. He refers to the conciliar church as a false, Masonic religion built inside the shell of the old religion. Bravo. It
also does seem to be the case that he has nothing obvious to gain by saying these things, at least in worldly terms, which is also an encouraging sign. Furthermore, he is the first bishop (that I am aware of) since Archbishop Lefebvre who is prepared to be labelled a “conspiracy theorist” by reminding everyone in public that there really is a Masonic conspiracy going on in the world around us, something which has become immeasurably ever since “1789 inside the Church” took place a couple of generations back. So again, bravo.
Yes, one can still have reservations at this stage. For one thing, there is a faint whiff of “emotional rebound” sedevacantism (why, for instance, does he refer only to “Bergoglio” but is still happy refer to “Saint John Paul II” - as though he didn’t teach heresy too?). Yes, there is still reason to be cautious: is it all too good to be true? I think, if nothing else, we have to give Mgr. Vigano the benefit of the doubt thus far and at least take him at his word; we must assume that he means what he says. So far, his words tick all the boxes. What then of his actions? “Actions speak louder than words,” remember. Anyone can write letter after letter denouncing Vatican II (and there have been a few from him already this month), but what I he going to do about it? No matter how dark the day, there is always something which can be done, even by a layman. For an Archbishop (even one coming from the Novus Ordo) the possibilities for action are even greater. It is, in the end our deeds which get us to heaven or damn us; the Saints tell us that in the case of priests and bishops what leads to their damnation is not always they evil they did so much as the good they failed to do.
If Mgr. Vigano is unsure how to act, he need look no further than Archbishop Lefebvre. The great strength of Archbishop Lefebvre lies in the fact that he did not invent anything, he simply carried on doing what the Church has always done. “We must build up while others are tearing down,” as he put it. Whatever the current situation, the Church is always going to need new priests, new bishops, new religious; and not just in order to confect sacraments, but also to glorify God, to teach the truth, to rebuke the world for its sin and to bring Christ into the public forum. There will always need to be seminaries, rectories and monasteries, chapels and Mass centres, missions, retreats and a whole a variety of other apostolates, conversions and ongoing doctrinal formation. That is what the Holy Ghost has always provided, that is what God wants. That is what Archbishop Lefebvre gave us, for more than twenty years after the Council. Yes, he wrote several books and gave many interviews: but had he only done that, he would have bequeathed no lasting legacy, his name today would be totally forgotten and he would, in all likelihood, have lost his soul. We value Archbishop Lefebvre’s words, but it is deeds which are still affecting us today, nearly thirty years after he died. Let us hope and pray that Mgr. Vigano find the strength to act. He has shown that he can talk the talk, now let him walk the walk.