Will Archbishop Viganò find 'true' Tradition?
Jul 10, 2020 15:31:13 GMT
Post by Admin on Jul 10, 2020 15:31:13 GMT
Dear friends,
A lot of people are talking about Archbishop Viganò and many are curious at what path he will take as he seems to be signaling his exodus from the Conciliar Church by his writings of the last several months. He clearly calls the Conciliar Church a "parallel Church" which is very reminiscent of Archbishop Lefebvre and the old- SSPX. As The Recusant eruditely observed,
These thoughts naturally lead one to consider, if Archbishop Viganò does fully embrace Tradition, will he embrace the 'True' Tradition as Archbishop Lefebvre did or the 'False' Tradition of the False Resistance nominally headed by Bp. Williamson, which makes generous allowances for the 'new religion.'
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.
The False Resistance bishops have certainly made overtures to Archbishop Viganò in recent days [see here and here]. While they (like even the SSPX and Bishop Schneider, for example) acknowledge the crisis in the Church and "observe the lamentable blindness of so many colleagues in the episcopacy and the priesthood who do not see, or do not wish to see, the present crisis and the need to resist the modernism" they do not point directly to Archbishop Lefebvre and the good Popes as holding the key to resisting that Modernism. It's all rather open ended.
Since Bp. Williamson is, as already noted, the nominal head of the False Resistance, his words carry much weight, they represent what the False Resistance stands for as a whole. This applied to Archbishop Lefebvre and the old-SSPX as well, the words of the Archbishop were representative of the entire SSPX at that time.
Hearing Archbishop Viganò's strong denunciations of Vatican II and it's errors highlight the opposite tolerance, and indeed at times, approval of the 'new religion' by Bp. Williamson. In reading his words, let us remember that these are Bp. Williamson's public words. No one forced him to say them. And it is important to note that he has not retracted them and in some instances has rather emphatically reinforced them. As the saying goes: 'Si palam res, repititio injuria non est: To say what everybody knows is no injury.'
Towards the end of Fr. Hewko's sermon from 2018 recently published by SSPX-MC, he quotes Archbishop Lefebvres' words:
“It is, therefore, a strict duty for every priest wanting to remain Catholic to separate himself from this Conciliar Church for as long as it does not rediscover the tradition of the Church and of the Catholic Faith.” (Abp. Lefebvre, Spiritual Journey, p. 13)
When one compares these words of Archbishop Lefebvre to what Bp. Williamson has said in this regard, one is forced to notice that they do not say the same things. For example, compare that just that one sentence from Archbishop Lefebvre with the following statements from Bp. Williamson (summarized by The Recusant here):
· The new religion can build your Faith.
· Attending the New Mass can build your Faith.
· Do whatever you think you need to do to keep the Faith, which can include attending the Novus Ordo Mass.
· If you attend the Novus Ordo Mass you have to be careful, but you can find the grace of God there and sanctify your soul.
· Not everyone needs to avoid the Novus Ordo Mass.
· Attending the Novus Ordo may do more good than harm spiritually.
· Not every priest needs to leave the conciliar church or stop saying the Novus Ordo Mass.
· By distancing yourself from the conciliar church, you are putting yourself in danger and risk becoming a Pharisee who is disconnected from reality.
· Attending the New Mass can build your Faith.
· Do whatever you think you need to do to keep the Faith, which can include attending the Novus Ordo Mass.
· If you attend the Novus Ordo Mass you have to be careful, but you can find the grace of God there and sanctify your soul.
· Not everyone needs to avoid the Novus Ordo Mass.
· Attending the Novus Ordo may do more good than harm spiritually.
· Not every priest needs to leave the conciliar church or stop saying the Novus Ordo Mass.
· By distancing yourself from the conciliar church, you are putting yourself in danger and risk becoming a Pharisee who is disconnected from reality.
Clearly these two bishops do not agree with each other. Either Archbishop Lefebvre was speaking the truth or Bp. Williamson is. They both cannot be right. According to Bp. Williamson, you are putting yourself in danger and "risk becoming a Pharisee disconnected from reality!" if you distance yourself from the Conciliar Church - incredible!
But what are the fruits of this public advice from Bp. Williamson? Well, Fr. Hewko recently told us: that at least two Fake Resistance priests told some of their faithful that they could attend the Novus Ordo. This again begs the question, what exactly is the 'False' Resistance resisting? Are they resisting the new direction of the SSPX towards the Conciliar Church? No, clearly not. Bp. Fellay may be bringing many souls all at once through the front doors of the Conciliar Church but Bp. Williamson is bringing them in the back door, just in single-file.
Here are a few more words from Archbishop Lefebvre that show his thoughts never varied on the importance of "distancing yourself from the Conciliar Church" as the years progressed, that he clearly saw that Vatican II created a schismatic, counterfeit Church:
“What could be clearer? We must henceforth obey and be faithful to the Conciliar Church, no longer to the Catholic Church. Right there is our whole problem: we are suspended a divinis by the Conciliar Church, the Conciliar Church, to which we have no wish to belong! That Conciliar Church is a schismatic church because it breaks with the Catholic Church that has always been. It has its new dogmas, its new priesthood, its new institutions, its new worship… The Church that affirms such errors is at once schismatic and heretical. This Conciliar Church is, therefore, not Catholic. To whatever extent Pope, Bishops, priests, or the faithful adhere to this new church, they separate themselves from the Catholic Church.” (Archbishop Lefebvre, Reflections on his suspension a divinis, July 29, 1976)
"This Council represents, in our view and in the view of the Roman authorities, a new Church which they call the Conciliar Church." (Le Figaro, August 4, 1976)
"It is not we who are in schism but the Conciliar Church." (Homily preached at Lille, August 29, 1976)
“…since they have put us out of an official Church which is not the real Church, [but] an official Church which has been infested with Modernism; and so we believed in the duty of disobedience, if indeed it was disobedience! To obey, but to obey the immemorial Church, to obey all the popes, to obey the whole Catholic Church…” (Ordination Sermon, June 27, 1980)
“To be publicly associated with this sanction [of excommunication] which is inflicted upon the six Catholic Bishops, Defenders of the Faith in its integrity and wholeness, would be for us a mark of honor and a sign of orthodoxy before the faithful. They have indeed a strict right to know that the priests who serve them are not in communion with a counterfeit church, promoting evolution, pentecostalism and syncretism.” (Open Letter to Cardinal Gantin, July 6, 1988)
“We have never wished to belong to this system which calls itself the Conciliar Church, and defines itself with the Novus Ordo Missæ, an ecumenism which leads to indifferentism and the laicization of all society. Yes, we have no part, nullam partem habemus, with the pantheon of the religions of Assisi; our own excommunication by a decree of Your Eminence or of another Roman Congregation would only be the irrefutable proof of this. We ask for nothing better than to be declared out of communion with this adulterous spirit which has been blowing in the Church for the last 25 years; we ask for nothing better than to be declared outside of this impious communion of the ungodly.” (Open Letter to Cardinal Gantin, July 6, 1988)
“We have never wished to belong to this system which calls itself the Conciliar Church, and defines itself with the Novus Ordo Missæ, an ecumenism which leads to indifferentism and the laicization of all society. Yes, we have no part, nullam partem habemus, with the pantheon of the religions of Assisi; our own excommunication by a decree of Your Eminence or of another Roman Congregation would only be the irrefutable proof of this. We ask for nothing better than to be declared out of communion with this adulterous spirit which has been blowing in the Church for the last 25 years; we ask for nothing better than to be declared outside of this impious communion of the ungodly.” (Open Letter to Cardinal Gantin, July 6, 1988)
I realised that the desire of Rome is to impose on us their ideas and their way of seeing things. Cardinal Ratzinger always told me, “But Monsignor, there is only one Church, you mustn’t make a parallel church.” Which is this Church for him? The conciliar church, this is clear! When he said to us explicitly: “Obviously, if this Protocol [of 1988] is granted to you, you must also accept what we are doing; and thus, in the Church of Saint-Nicolas-du-Chardonnet there would have to be a New Mass as well every Sunday…” You see, he wanted to bring us back to the conciliar church! This is not possible since it is clear that they want to impose these innovations on us to bring Tradition to an end! They do not grant anything out of appreciation for the traditional Liturgy, but simply to trick those to whom they give it and to diminish our resistance; to insert a wedge in the Traditional block so as to destroy it! This is their policy, their conscious tactics! They do not make mistakes, and you know the pressures that they exert. (Priestly retreat, The Visibility of the Church, Écône, September 9, 1988)
In Bishop Tissier de Mallerais' 2013 study, Is there a Conciliar Church? published by the Dominicans of Avrille [highlighting the position of the old-SSPX - and not surprisingly this study was condemned by Bp. Fellay as the article states], the Bishop notes that Fr. Roger Calmel also clearly saw this separation since Vatican II into a counterfeit, false Conciliar Church:
In 1971, 5 years before the “conciliar church” of Bishop Benelli, the same Fr. Calmel O.P. denounced in the French review Itineraires, the “new church that Vatican II has tried to show,the new post-vaticanesque church” and explained:
The expressions “false church”, “pseudo church” are very strong. And the verb “split away” indicates a formal mutation of a part of the Church, which detaches itself from the Catholic sphere to stray formally outside it. Father Calmel was truly a prophet. It was only five years later, after having received the famous letter of Bishop Benelli and having been struck by Paul VI with a a divinis suspension, that Archbishop Lefebvre affirmed even more forcefully the existence of this “counter church”, qualifying it as “schismatic.”
“The false Church which is showing itself amongst us since the curious Vatican II is diverging tangibly year after year, from the Church founded by Jesus Christ. The false post-Conciliar Church is splitting away more and more from the holy Church which has saved souls for twenty centuries (not to mention the support and enlightenment lent to civil society). The pseudo-church in construction splits away more and more from the true Church, the only Church of Jesus Christ, by the most strange innovations in the hierarchical constitution as well as in its teachings and morals ”
Further on, Bp. de Mallerais says this as well:
The Catholic Church is the only true Church, the only Church founded by our Lord Jesus Christ. But this does not hinder the Conciliar Church from being a social reality; not only a section, but a counterfeit Church, led by a sect of directors, a sect whose ideology or system is the form of this Conciliar Church, and which manoeuvres it towards its ends, with its relays and its executors, formed of a large part of the hierarchy and faithful Catholics more or less conscious and consenting, to a diametrical overturning which it is trying to bring about. In this sense, Fr. Calmel O.P. was able to speak of the “church of Pirates”; this metaphor says it all. ... Destined for auto-destruction, the Conciliar Church does nonetheless continue to live on vigorously. What is the cause of this tenacity? It is that their hierarchy uses all the powers of the Catholic hierarchy which it occupies, detains and deviates. Since the installation of the Mass of Paul VI, she [the Conciliar Church] continues to persecute the priests faithful to the true Mass, the true catechism, the true sacramental discipline, and the religious faithful to their rule and their vows.
In conclusion, Bp. de Mallerais states:
To not belong to the Conciliar Church is a grace and a providential witness
Blessed are those who are not in this “communion of the profanes”, who are providentially excluded from it or threatened to be excluded from it! O happy relegation and dereliction! The vocation of the priestly Society of St. Pius X, since it’s erection by the Catholic Church in 1970 and the decree of praise with which it was honoured in 1971, has never been to receive the benedictions and recognitions of this Conciliar Church! It was without a doubt necessary that this priestly Society, along with all the families of Tradition, be like the lighted torch not to be put under the Conciliar bushel, but on the candlestick of the pillory, in order to enlighten all those who are in the house of God. It was certainly providential that according to the ways of Providence, this healthy part of the [true] Church having become like the Divine Master, a stumbling block and a stone rejected by the builders of the Conciliar ecclesiastical dissociety, be transformed into cornerstone and keystone of the indestructible Catholic cathedral. Our inflexible witness to the true Church of Jesus Christ, to the Priesthood and the Royalty of Christ, Priest and King, requires on the part of the Conciliar Church the exclusion and the ostracism pronounced against us and what we represent. But in the same way that Saint Joseph in his exile in Egypt carried the Infant Jesus and His divine Mother, so too does the traditional family in her exile carry the Church in her, without being exclusive in the glorious role, but having the marrow and heart of it, in integrity and incorruption.
Blessed are those who are not in this “communion of the profanes”, who are providentially excluded from it or threatened to be excluded from it! O happy relegation and dereliction! The vocation of the priestly Society of St. Pius X, since it’s erection by the Catholic Church in 1970 and the decree of praise with which it was honoured in 1971, has never been to receive the benedictions and recognitions of this Conciliar Church! It was without a doubt necessary that this priestly Society, along with all the families of Tradition, be like the lighted torch not to be put under the Conciliar bushel, but on the candlestick of the pillory, in order to enlighten all those who are in the house of God. It was certainly providential that according to the ways of Providence, this healthy part of the [true] Church having become like the Divine Master, a stumbling block and a stone rejected by the builders of the Conciliar ecclesiastical dissociety, be transformed into cornerstone and keystone of the indestructible Catholic cathedral. Our inflexible witness to the true Church of Jesus Christ, to the Priesthood and the Royalty of Christ, Priest and King, requires on the part of the Conciliar Church the exclusion and the ostracism pronounced against us and what we represent. But in the same way that Saint Joseph in his exile in Egypt carried the Infant Jesus and His divine Mother, so too does the traditional family in her exile carry the Church in her, without being exclusive in the glorious role, but having the marrow and heart of it, in integrity and incorruption.
It is clear from these words of Archbishop Lefebvre, Bp. Tissier de Mallerais, and Fr. Calmel [Frs. Hewko, Ruiz, and other True Resistance priests] that the Conciliar Church is to be avoided at all costs. It is not to be embraced or allowed for because it is false, schismatic, counterfeit, etc., that if you wish to preserve the Faith, you can have nothing to do with it. If we know and believe that the Conciliar Church is destined for "auto-destruction" then how can it build or nourish one's Faith? If the Conciliar Church is 'diametrically opposed to the True Church founded by Our Lord Jesus Christ' how are we Pharisees for not being a part of it? It is clear that a false, counterfeit, schismatic Church cannot give us true Eucharistic miracles yet this too is publicly defended by Bp. Williamson [see here and here].
With typical Modernist ambiguity, one day Bp. Williamson says something very traditional and the next he is promoting the 'new religion.'
"But let your speech be yea, yea: no, no: and that which is over and above these, is of evil." [Matthew 5:37]
Let us continue to pray much for Archbishop Viganò, that he find True Tradition!
