EXCLUSIVE Archbishop Viganò Interview: The SSPX, Ecumenism & The Benedict Option (Part II)
'I hope that the reason the Superior General is insisting on having a dialogue with Rome is ... to 'put on record' the unwillingness of the current Hierarchy to reconsider Vatican II.'
Editor’s note: His Excellency kindly agreed to an email interview with Kokx News earlier this month. Below is the second part of our “conversation,” which covers synodality, the SSPX, and the future of the Church. For Part I of our interview, click here. Visit the Exsurge Domine USA website here. Follow His Excellency on X/Twitter here.
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Stephen Kokx: In your opinion, why is the Church today so attentive to ecumenical dialogue with non-Catholics and at the same time so intolerant and severe towards traditional realities? Why is it so rigid towards you, but so inclusive with heretics and schismatics, and even with Islam and Judaism?
Archbishop Carlo Maria Viganò: The hierarchy of the conciliar church – and above all those who have seized control of the Vatican, usurping the See of Peter – no longer speaks with the authoritative voice of Truth, but with the timid voice of “dialogue” and compromise with the world. This has been the case since the Second Vatican Council, which marks a point of rupture and discontinuity with respect to the perennial Roman Catholic Apostolic Church.
The reason why the conciliar church recognizes other Christian churches and sects is that it no longer considers itself as the sole custodian of Revealed Truth. For this reason, it places itself on the same level as other faiths with countless ecumenical (ad intra, within Christianity) and inter-religious (ad extra, outside Christianity) meetings. The Papacy emerges disfigured, and the Bishop of Rome is reduced to a mere primus inter pares, according to the reinterpretation “in a synodal and ecumenical key” recommended by the study document “The Bishop of Rome: Primacy and Synodality in Ecumenical Dialogues and in Responses to the Encyclical Ut Unum Sint.” 1 These are the practical effects of the phrase “subsistit in” found in Lumen Gentium.
Eastern Orthodox schismatics, Protestant heretics, pagan idolaters, and the conciliar-synodal church are all united by their heterogeneity with respect to the Catholic Church; and it is precisely from the Roman Catholic Apostolic Church that all of them disdainfully distance themselves.
Let us not forget that even among the Eastern Orthodox there are communities that have introduced the diaconate for women, embracing the demands of gender equality to which the conciliar church has long been adapting with increasingly daring innovations. Protestants and Anglicans share with the conciliar-synodal church – which rejects, reinterprets, or erases Catholic Truths – ecclesiological and doctrinal errors and heresies, and together they ecumenically pursue a false unity at the price of apostasy from the Faith.
The farce of the administrative sentence imposed by the Dicastery for the Doctrine of the Faith has inflicted excommunication upon me, declaring me to be in a state of schism with the Bergoglian church for daring to question its two untouchable idols: Vatican II and the legitimacy of Jorge Mario Bergoglio as Pope. This, of course, does not make me a schismatic with respect to the Catholic Church, but rather with respect to the conciliar-synodal church, thus demonstrating that it is itself in de facto schism from the Roman Catholic Apostolic Church, no more and no less than the Eastern Orthodox or the Protestants.
Stephen Kokx: In the last few days, the Society of Saint Pius X has announced that it will consecrate new bishops on July 1st without theVatican’s approval. How do you evaluate this decision, Your Excellency?
Archbishop Viganò: I greatly appreciate the decision to ensure Apostolic Succession in order to guarantee continuity for the Society and preserve the treasure of Tradition, the Catholic Priesthood, and the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass. However, I believe that the Society of Saint Pius X still needs to face the final stage of the process of awareness that thirty-eight years ago led its Founder, Archbishop Marcel Lefebvre, to consider “modernist Rome apostate.” It is true that the state of necessity invoked to legitimize the episcopal consecrations is justified by the salvation of souls – salus animarum suprema lex. This authorizes the Society to proceed with the Consecration of new Bishops even in the absence of a Pontifical Mandate, which a Pope faithful to the Petrine Mandate would certainly grant. Nevertheless, it should be noted that in the extremely unlikely event that Leo were to consent to these Consecrations, the Society would find itself in a paradoxical situation, with two Bishops “in an irregular canonical situation” and the new ones “in communion with Rome.” This would generate a schism within the Society itself. Canonically, there seems to be no way out, and this is because the problem is of a theological and ecclesiological nature. And it is the Superior General himself, Father Davide Pagliarani, who acknowledges this very serious anomaly, objectively impossible to remedy at a time when the conditions for Rome’s return to Tradition are far more unrealistic than in the time of Archbishop Lefebvre. The desire of the Society of Saint Pius X to concretely manifest its union with the Apostolic See, cum Petro et sub Petro, is certainly understandable, but the objective gap cannot be bridged through administrative means, because they are dealing with officials who no longer profess the Catholic Faith and who aim to demolish the Holy Church.
I hope that the reason the Superior General is insisting on having a dialogue with Rome is not primarily to achieve canonical regularization, but rather to “corner them” – so to speak – so that, on the one hand, the willingness of the members of the FSSPX to recognize themselves as children of the Catholic Church and subjects of the Roman Pontiff is evident; and on the other hand, to “put on record” the unwillingness of the current Hierarchy to reconsider Vatican II and its very serious deviations, showing it for what it is, namely subversive and heretical.
The paradox of the Roman veto appears in all its shocking contradiction when we consider that the Holy See continues to give post facto ratification to the episcopal ordinations of the Chinese Patriotic Church, which is notoriously schismatic and has its own parallel hierarchy hostile to Rome. Let us not forget that the penalty of excommunication for episcopal Consecrations conferred without an Apostolic Mandate was introduced by Pius XII in 1958 precisely to sanction the state of schism of the Patriotic Association. The secret Sino-Vatican agreement stipulated by Bergoglio and Parolin contradicts the position that the Holy See had maintained until Benedict XVI and aligns the schismatic Chinese church with other nonCatholic sects with which the synodal church engages in friendly dialogue, without this posing any apparent problem.
We must acknowledge that the current crisis, precisely because of its absolute exceptionality and gravity, demands to be addressed, as they say, “outside the box.” Canonical responses are valid for times of relative normalcy, not for extraordinary, almost eschatological situations. The drift to which the conciliar-synodal church has arrived is such that the same people simultaneously appear to hold both the sacred authority of the Church and the subversive power of its counterfeit. But it is not possible to preside over the Catholic Church in orthodoxy and at the same time over the synodal church in heresy, just as it is not possible to serve two masters (Mt 6:24).
Stephen Kokx: Do you consider the prospect of a “pax liturgica” which has been put forward by certain ecclesial circles, to be well-founded and worthy of support?
Archbishop Viganò: The pax liturgica hoped for by some prelates and Catholic intellectuals is, in my opinion, a very dangerous deception, into which its proponents have fallen first, and into which those who follow them will also fall. The concept of a peaceful coexistence of two forms of the same Rite is impossible, and it is the result of a de-dogmatization of the Liturgy, which corresponds to a de-liturgization of Doctrine. The Tridentine Mass is the praying voice of the Catholic Faith, according to the adage Lex orandi lex credendi (the law of prayer is the law of belief). The Novus Ordo is an ideological expression of the errors of the Council, containing very clear, blatant omissions and manipulations intended to adulterate the Catholic Faith and progressively lead the faithful towards a Universal Religion. The faithful who attend both rites may perhaps consider the celebrations in the ancient rite more beautiful and solemn, but they will remain convinced that it is possible to make two opposing worlds coexist simply by granting freedom to both. This contradicts the principle of non-contradiction even before contradicting the Catholic Magisterium. As bishop Marian Eleganti has rightly observed, “A dirty schism is tolerated that runs through the entire Catholic Church between the so-called ‘modernist,’ ‘zeitgeist-adapted,’ ‘relativist,’ and ‘pluralist,’ ‘left-wing’ ‘reform Catholics’ and the ‘conservative,’ ‘right-wing,’ ‘traditional,’ and ‘orthodox’ Catholics. Both wings see themselves as faithful and Catholic. This is the paradox par excellence.” 2
Chris Jackson comments: “This scandalous double standard demonstrates that the conciliar church values conformity to its new humanistic creed more than fidelity to the truth of Christ.” 3 Unfortunately, among conservatives there is the completely erroneous and unfounded belief that it was not Vatican II, but a misinterpretation of it, that caused the crisis; that it was not the Novus Ordo Missæ, but abuses in its celebration, that caused the collapse of religious practice.
Stephen Kokx: What can priests and the faithful do to resist this crisis of civil and religious authority?
Archbishop Viganò: It is a foolish illusion to think that it would somehow be possible to fundamentally reform the institutions of the entire Western world, which are now in the hands of the Synagogue of Satan. Our civilization has reached the terminal stage of a cancer that is eating away at it from within: the rebellion against God inspired and perpetrated by the prince of this world and his servants.
I believe the time has come to seriously consider the formation of “intentional communities” 4 based on Rod Dreher’s Benedict Option model. “In the devastation and desolation following the fall of the Roman Empire, in a hostile world, Benedictine monks formed small communities to preserve what matters of the Christian faith and to sow the seeds of tomorrow’s civilization. According to Dreher, our situation is the same or will soon become so.” 5 What is stopping Catholics from revitalizing the many abandoned or depopulated villages, combining their skills and resources to live together according to a Christian way of life, and providing themselves with the means of independence and self-sufficiency, including economic and food independence, that would prevent or at least minimize contamination from a hostile world? A French priest writes: “During the Covid period, I celebrated clandestine Masses in barns. It seemed like we were back in the times of the Revolution. Today, power is no longer at the service of the people or of God, but at the service of globalism. It is the struggle between Christ the King and the prince of this world, the devil. It is the duty of every man to side with good and resist evil.” 6 What is stopping priests from helping the faithful in this fight against globalism, as some have already begun to do?
Catholics must reclaim their destiny, freeing themselves from the invasive and deadly dictatorship of the elite and the overwhelming power of a usurped authority. Moreover, if we find ourselves in an ecclesial state of necessity, we are also in a similar state in the civil sphere. Such a reclamation is only possible, however, when every soul lives in and by Grace. And to achieve this, the sanctifying action of the Sacraments and the Holy Mass, administered by priests faithful to Tradition, is indispensable. This will be the supernatural nourishment that will give us the strength to wield spiritual weapons in the battle that is already raging and that foreshadows the persecution of the Antichrist. For only those who live in Christ can fight the present evil and thus merit eternal reward. Mihi enim vivere Christus est, et mori lucrum. For to me, to live is Christ, and to die is gain. (Phil 1:21).
+ Carlo Maria Viganò, Archbishop
Read More:
EXCLUSIVE Interview With Archbishop Viganò: Epstein Files & The Talmudic World Order (Part I)
WATCH: What Would Bishop Williamson Think About SSPX Consecrations?
The SSPX, Sedevacantism & The Resistance: Unpacking The Consecrations
‘The Bishop of Rome.’ See: https://www.christianunity.va/content/unitacristiani/en/documenti/altri-testi/the-bishop-of-rome.html
Intentional communities are groups of people who voluntarily choose to live together (or very close to each other) to realize a common vision, a shared ideal, or a particular lifestyle. They are not simply neighbors or random roommates: the central element is intentionality, that is, a conscious and shared decision to cooperate and share resources, responsibilities, and moral principles.
« J ai célébré des messes clandestines dans des granges pendant la période Covid. On se serait crus revenus aux périodes révolutionnaires. Aujourd hui, le pouvoir n est plus au service du peuple ni de Dieu, mais au service du mondialisme. C est le combat entre le Christ Roi et le prince de ce monde — le diable. C est le rôle de tout homme de prendre position pour le bien et de résister au mal. » Cf. here.
Archbp. Vigano says that Rome is in the service of Satan. That said, one would not wish the "blessing" on the consecrations from Satan's servants.
I agree with everything Fr. Vigano has to say. Forgive me for calling him father as his episcopal consecration under the new rite of Montini is doubtful and most likely invalid . That said, he is 100% correct on what he says. Although I appreciate his support of Tradition, he failed to call out the SSPX for their heretical teaching of Recognize and Resist regarding the papacy. The fact that the Society teaches this false doctrine to the laity in the pews makes them heretical. Thus, not Catholic or members of the One Body of Our Lord Jesus! The Society’s mortal sin of Pride is their downfall. It started with Lefebvre expelling nine of his priests for upholding the perennial teaching of the Church regarding legitimate, valid popes. This makes me angry because I attended the SSPX for six years. In that time, I repeatedly asked via email for my pastor to address this issue. All I heard was crickets. I now attend the CMRI. I refused to remain within a heretical sect that was not Catholic.