Part 6 and transcription: The Limits of Authority
Q: You have spoken of feeling that we are at an impasse; a dead end, both in the Church and in the world. You describe a type of alliance between the Church and the deep state, which you feel is not in keeping with traditional Christian teaching, or with traditional desire for freedom of the free peoples of the democratic West. But if you are preaching this dead end or impasse, what are you suggesting to people? Are you suggesting some type of disobedience, or some type of rêbêllïon?
+Vigano: Catholics are naturally oriented towards order; to respect for authority and the hierarchy, because this order and authority emanated from the wisdom of God, and is necessary for the government of both, public affairs as well as the Church. But precisely because the authority of man comes from God, Catholics, like all citizens in general, cannot accept the usurpation of authority by those who set goals opposed to the very reason for which that authority is constituted.
The Lord has placed at the head of the Church the successor of the Prince of the Apostles, designating him as His vicar, so that he may pastor the sheep that He has entrusted to him, not so that he may scatter them. Otherwise, He would have chosen Judas, not Simon Peter. Similarly, the authority of temporal rulers finds its legitimization in good government, not in making citizens into slaves, or forcing them to do evil, preventing them from pursuing the proximate end of an honest life, and the final end of eternal salvation. If authority fails in its duties, and if it betrays and subverts them, it is no longer entitled to demand the obedience of its subjects.
Obedience, which is a virtuous link to justice, does not consist in an uncritical submission to power, because in doing so, it degenerates into servility and complicity with those who do evil. No one can impose obedience to an intrinsically evil order, or recognize authority in those who abuse it to indulge in evil. Thus, those who resist an illegitimate order apparently disobey the one who gives it, but they obey God, whose power is exercised by vicarious authority against its purpose (that is, against God Himself).