de Mattei states:
"Today, with the same inductive reasoning, Archbishop Viganò affirms that Pope Francis is moved by the desire to bring about the evil and not the good of the Church. An overall historical assessment can naturally come to the conclusion that Pope Francis’s pontificate has thus far been disastrous, but the absence in him of the “usual intention” of bringing about the good of the Church cannot simply be affirmed, it must be proved...But how can Archbishop Viganò prove that the end to which the subject, Francis, inclines through his intention is habitually that of acting “with coherence and premeditation in carrying out the exact opposite of what it expected from the Vicar of Christ and the Successor of the Prince of the Apostles”? The mistake is, as often happens, to attribute to a hypothesis the value of a thesis. But a confusion of thought can open a chasm on the level of the facts."
Response:
It is interesting to me that de Mattei is not challenging +Vigano's position at the level of doctrine (i.e., He is not claiming that +Vigano's position is theologically untenable), but at the level of fact: +Vigano cannot prove the mens rea he attributes to Francis.
For the sake of argument, let's say for the moment that de Mattei is correct. What becomes of his position should such proof become available (e.g., as +Ganswein's bio of BXVI exposed his own mens rea of toward Tradition)? Does he then retract his own conclusion in light of the facts (upon which the rationale of his entire rebuttal rests)? Or does he instead forever dispute the facts have truly emerged (at least with sufficient certitude from which to draw conclusions)?
The notion that Francis's mens rea cannot be known because at other times, Francis has in fact done things which favored the common good of the Church is not persuasive: Not even the vile serpent is 100% evil. Stalin had the trains running on time. On the othr hand, doing things seemingly good for the Church can be part of a plan to more ddeeply harm the Church (e.g., As he recently reminded the German bishops that ɧoɱosɛҳųαƖity was against the morals of the Church, meanwhile giving a nod and a wink, to a Synod he set in motion to normalize it): The seemingly good acct is still part of the mens rea.
So this argument gets de Mattei nowhere.
While I still tend toward Cajetan/John of St. Thomas/Billuart/et al. as regards the pope, neither do I think de Mattei is persuasive (and given that he publicly stated that +Vigano was not even the one writing or approving articles written under his name, thereby causing +Vigano to have to videotape his addresses, combined with his alliance to the rallied SSPX, hardly makes de Mattei an objectively trustworthy source these days).
Topic: "anarcho-vacantism"? (Read 3799 times)