[Spanish original here: https://adelantelafe.com/respuesta-a-un-sacerdote/ ]

January 31, 2021
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Reverend and esteemed priest of Christ:

I have received the letter in which you raise with me some serious questions about the crisis of authority that the Church is going through, a crisis that has been worsening in recent years and in particular during the pandemic emergency, on the occasion of which the glory of God and the salvation of souls have been put aside for the sake of a presumed health of the body. I have decided to make public this coherent response to your letter because with it I am responding to the very many faithful and priests who write to me from all parts of the world with questions and great concerns of conscience about the serious questions mentioned.

The Sacred Scriptures address the problem of a perverted authority - that is, one that exceeds the limits that correspond to it or that on its own initiative has set itself an end contrary to that which legitimizes it - to remind us that omnis potestas a Deo (Rom. 13:1) and that qui resistit potestati, Dei ordinationi resistit (ibid. 2). And if St. Paul exhorts us to obey the civil authorities, with all the more reason we are obliged to obey the ecclesiastical ones because of the primacy that these spiritual matters have over the temporal ones.

You point out that it is not for us to judge the authority because the Son of Man will return to administer justice at the end of time. But if we have to wait until the day of judgment to punish the wicked, for what purpose would the Divine Majesty have constituted a temporal and a spiritual authority on Earth? Is it not his duty, as Vicar of Christ the King and High Priest, to rule and govern his subjects in this world by administering justice and punishing the wicked? What sense would the laws have if there were no one to enforce them and impose sanctions on those who violate them? If the arbitrary decisions of those in authority were not punished by their superiors, how could subjects, whether civil or ecclesiastical, expect to obtain justice in this world?

I fear that his objection that ecclesiastics who possess an authority derived from the office they hold can only be judged at the end of time will lead on the one hand to fatalism and resignation in the subjects, and on the other hand promote in a certain way abuses of authority in superiors.

Obedience to a perverted authority cannot be considered obligatory, nor morally good, simply because when the Son of Man returns at the end of time he will do justice. It is true that the Scriptures exhort us to be obedient, moderating our obedience with patience and a spirit of penitence, but in no way do they urge us to obey intrinsically bad orders, just because they are given by someone in authority. In fact, any authority, the very moment it is exercised against the end for which it exists, loses the legitimacy that justifies it and, even if it does not lose the office itself, it demands from its subjects an adherence that from time to time will have to be examined and judged.

The ʀɛʋօʟutιօn overturned the Christian order that recognized the constituted authority as coming from God and replaced it with a supposed democracy in the name of the secularity of the State and its separation from the Church. With the Council, this subversion of the principle of authority has found its way into the Hierarchy itself, with the result that that order due to God has not only been erased from civil society, but has also been undermined in the Church itself. It is clear that when God's work is disrupted and His authority denied, power is irremєdιαbly affected and the conditions for tyranny or anarchy are created. The Church is no exception, as we can painfully observe: power is often used to punish the good and reward the bad. Almost always, canonical sanctions serve to excommunicate those who remain faithful to the Gospel. The dicasteries and the organs of the Holy See support errors and impede the spread of the Truth. Bergoglio himself, who should represent on Earth the highest Authority, uses the power of the Holy Keys to promote the ɠƖobaƖıst plan and to promote heterodox doctrines, being well aware of the principle Prima Sedes a nemine iudicatur that allows him to act without hindrance.

This is, of course, an anomalous situation, because according to the order established by God, the representative of authority must be obeyed. But in this admirable universe Satan introduces chaos by manipulating the fragile and sinful element: man. You, dear priest, put it well in your letter: "Now, the most diabolical thing that our enemy has achieved in order to do evil is to use precisely the one who shows himself to the world invested with the authority that Jesus Christ conferred on his Church. And by doing so, on the one hand he makes some good people participate in evil, and on the other he scandalizes those good people who are aware of it". He contextualizes this situation in the present case: "The authority granted by Jesus is abused to justify and encourage a terrible operation that is presented under the false name of vaccination."

I concur with his assessment of the objective immorality of the so-called CÖVÌD-19 ναccιnє because of the use in its manufacture of material derived from aborted fetuses. I also agree that the docuмent promulgated by the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith is totally inappropriate from a scientific, philosophical and doctrinal point of view. The Prefect limits himself to docilely obeying more than questionable instructions received from his superior. The obedience of the reprobate is emblematic in this situation, because he disregards the authority of God and of the Church in the name of a servility that flatters the athoritarianism of his immєdιαte superior.

However, I would like to point out that the docuмent of the Holy See is particularly insidious because it limits itself to analyzing a remote aspect, so to speak, of the composition of the drug (leaving aside the moral licitness of an action that does not lose gravity with the passage of time); but also because it ignores the fact that to revitalize the fetal material used at the beginning it is necessary to periodically add material coming from new fetuses aborted ad hoc in the third month of gestation, and that these tissues must be extracted from creatures still alive and with a beating heart. Given the importance of the matter and the denunciations of Catholic scientists, the omission of an integral element of the production of the ναccιnє in an official pronouncement confirms, in the most generous hypothesis, a scandalous incompetence, and in the most realistic one, the deliberate will to pass off as morally acceptable ναccιnєs produced thanks to induced abortions. This kind of human sacrifice in its most blatant and bloody form is considered by a dicastery of the Holy See as something unimportant, all in the name of the new health religion that Bergoglio so ardently promotes.

I agree with you regarding the omission of assessments of the genetic manipulation caused by some ναccιnєs that act at the cellular level for purposes that pharmaceutical companies dare not confess, which has been denounced by scientists and whose long-term consequences are still unknown. But the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith scrupulously avoids pronouncing on the morality of experimenting on human beings, an experimentation admitted by the producers of the ναccιnєs themselves, who refuse to provide the data of such massive experimentation until several years from now, when it will be known whether the drug is effective and at the price of what permanent side effects. In the same way that Doctrine of Faith says nothing about the morality of shamefully speculating on a product that is presented as the only defense against a flu virus that has not yet been isolated but only barely sequenced. If the virus is not isolated, it is scientifically impossible to produce the antigens of the ναccιnє, which makes this whole CÖVÌD operation manifest, for those who are not blinded by prejudice or bad faith, in all its criminal falsehood and intrinsic immorality. Falsehood that not only confirms the almost religious enthusiasm with which the saving function of the supposed ναccιnє is presented, but also in the stubborn refusal of the international health authorities to recognize the validity, effectiveness and reduced cost of existing cures such as hyperimmune plasma of hydroxychloroquine and invermectin and the ingestion of vitamins C and D to increase defenses and cure quickly at the first symptoms. Let us not forget that if there are elderly people or people with low defenses who have died of CÖVÌD, it is because the WHO has ordered general practitioners not to treat the symptoms, indicating for patients with complications a totally inadequate and harmful hospital treatment. The Holy See is also silent on this matter, an obvious accomplice in a cօռspιʀαcʏ against God and man.

Let us return to the subject of authority. You write: "Therefore, whoever finds himself before persons invested with authority by Jesus who manifestly behave contrary to what He commanded, is in a position to ask himself whether or not he can obey his superior, since in such a terrible situation he sees that the one who exercises authority in the name of the Lord is manifestly opposed to what He commanded". The answer is given by Catholic doctrine, which sets very clear limits to the authority of prelates and the supreme authority of the Pope. In this case, I would say that it is obvious that the Holy See lacks the competence to express evaluations that by the way in which they are exposed and analyzed and the obvious omissions in which they incur exceed the limits set by the Magisterium. If we look at it carefully, the problem is logical and philosophical rather than theological or moral, because the terms of the question are incomplete and erroneous, with the result that the solution will be incomplete and erroneous.

This does not detract in any way from the seriousness of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, but at the same time, precisely because it exceeds the limits proper to ecclesiastical authority, it confirms the general principle of doctrine, and with it also the infallibility that the Lord guarantees to his Vicar when he wishes to teach a truth concerning Faith or Morals as Supreme Pastor of the Church. If there is no truth to be taught; if that truth has nothing to do with Faith and Morals; if the one who promulgates that teaching does not intend to do so with apostolic authority; if the intention to transmit that doctrine to the faithful as truth to be believed and held is not explicit, the assistance of the Paraclete is not guaranteed. In that case the promulgating authority can - and in some cases must - be disregarded. Thus, the faithful can resist the illegitimate exercise of a legitimate authority, or the illegitimate exercise of an illegitimate authority.

Therefore, I do not agree with you when you say: "If such an authority falls into infidelity, only God can intervene. Also because before an inferior authority it is more difficult to have recourse to obtain justice". The Lord can intervene positively in the course of events by prodigiously manifesting his will, or by limiting himself to shortening the days of the wicked. Now, the unfaithfulness of one who is constituted in authority, even if he cannot be judged by his subjects, is not for that reason any less culpable, nor can he demand that illegitimate or immoral orders be obeyed. The effect it has on his subjects is one thing, and the judgment on his actions is another; and the punishment it may merit is another thing as well. Thus, although it is not for subjects to put the pope to death for heresy (despite the fact that St. Thomas Aquinas considers the death penalty appropriate for the crime of corrupting the Faith), we may recognize a pontiff as a heretic, and as such deny him in specific cases the obedience that would otherwise be due to him. We do not judge him because we have no authority to do so; we recognize who he is while we wait for Providence to raise up one who can pronounce definitively and authoritatively.

Therefore, when you assert that "the subjects of the evil one have no authority to rebel and remove him," it is necessary to distinguish first of all what kind of authority is in question, and secondly what is the order given and what harm would result from eventual obedience. St. Thomas considers it morally licit in certain cases to resist the tyrant and tyrannicide, just as it is licit and obligatory to disobey the authority of prelates who abuse their authority contrary to its intrinsic end.

In his letter, he says that the rêbêllïon is marked by the stamp of communist ideology. But the ʀɛʋօʟutιօn, one of whose expressions is ƈσmmυɳιsm, aims to remove sovereigns not because they may be corrupt or tyrannical, but because they are hierarchically integrated into an essentially Catholic order, and therefore antithetical to Marxism.

If it were not allowed to confront the tyrant, the Cristeros who took up arms against the Masonic dictator who persecuted his Mexican subjects by abusing his authority would have sinned. The Vandeans and the Italian Sanfedistas and insurgents, victims of a ʀɛʋօʟutιօnary, corrupt and corrupting power, before which rêbêllïon was not only licit, but even obligatory, would also have sinned. All Catholics who throughout history have had to rebel against their prelates have also been victims of established authority: for example, the faithful in England who had to confront their bishops who had become heretics with the Anglican schism, or those in Germany who were forced to refuse obedience to prelates who had embraced the Lutheran heresy. The authority of those pastors who had been transformed into wolves was null in fact, because it was oriented to the destruction of the Faith instead of defending it, opposed to the Pope instead of in communion with him. Rightly, you add: "In that case, the poor faithful are stupefied to see their pastors shamelessly stain themselves with such crimes. How can one follow in the name of Jesus those who do what Jesus does not want?" And yet, shortly after, I read that you say: "Whoever denies the authority of his superior, in reality denies the authority that constituted him. Whoever remains subject to the authority of the ministers constituted by the authority of Jesus Christ, even if he does not become an accomplice of their errors, obeys the authority of Jesus, who constituted him." What he says is clearly erroneous, because by indissolubly linking the primary and original authority of God to the derivative and vicarious authority of the person, he establishes a kind of indefectible bond, a bond that is undone the moment the one who exercises authority in the name of God perverts that authority in practice and thereby reverses its purpose. I would add that precisely because God's authority is to be honored above all else, it cannot be flouted by obeying one who by his very nature is subject to the same divine authority. This is why St. Peter (Acts 5:29) exhorts us to obey God rather than men. Earthly authority, whether temporal or spiritual, is always subject to the authority of God. It is unthinkable that, for a reason that almost seems to have been dictated by a bureaucrat, the Lord would have wanted to leave his Church at the mercy of tyrants who put their procedural legitimacy before the object for which he commanded them to feed his flock.

It is true that the solution of disobedience seems more applicable to the prelates than to the Pope, since the former can be judged and deposed by the Supreme Pontiff, while the latter cannot be deposed by anyone in this world. But if it is humanly incredible and painful to have to recognize that a pope can be bad, one cannot deny the evidence, nor is there an obligation to resign oneself passively to the abuses of authority that he exercises in the name of God but against Him. And since no one would want to storm the sacred palaces to expel their unworthy tenant, there are nevertheless legitimate and proportionate ways of exercising genuine opposition, including pressuring him to resign from office. Precisely in order to defend the Papacy and the sacred authority that the pontiff receives from the Eternal High Priest, it is necessary to remove from office those who humiliate, undermine and abuse it. I would venture to add that also the arbitrary renunciation of the exercise of the sacred authority of the Roman Pontiff is a most serious offense to the Papacy, and for this we should consider Benedict XVI more guilty than Bergoglio.

Further on, you speak of what the prelate who tyrannically abuses his own authority should think: "A minister of God [...] must first of all deny his own authority as an apostle, as one sent by Jesus. Recognize that he does not want to follow the Lord, and abandon him. Thus, the problem would be solved". Dear priest, you pretend that the wicked person behaves like an honest and God-fearing person, when precisely because he is wicked he abuses without the least coherence and without the least scruple an authority that he knows very well has been conferred on him to demolish it. Because in the very essence of tyranny, as a perversion of the just and good authority that it is, is not only to perform in a perverse way, but also to want to discredit and reject the authority of which it is a grotesque counterfeit. The horrors committed by Bergoglio in recent years are not only a scandalous abuse of papal authority, but have as an immєdιαte consequence the scandal of the good, because it makes the Papacy itself unpopular and hateful with this parody of the Papacy, thus irreparably damaging the image and prestige that the Church enjoyed until now, already afflicted for decades of modernist ideology.

You write: "It is not lawful for anyone to obey unjust, evil or illegitimate orders, nor to do any evil under the pretext of obedience. But neither is it lawful for anyone to deny the authority of the Pope because he exercises it in an evil way and to leave the Church founded by Jesus Christ on the rock of St. Peter the Apostle". In this case, in the phrase "deny authority" a distinction would have to be made between denying that Bergoglio, in a particular order he gives to the faithful, exercises his pontifical authority, and denying that he, in a particular order he gives to the faithful, has the right to be obeyed when such an order conflicts with the authority of the Pope. No one would obey Bergoglio if he were speaking in a personal capacity or working in the land registry, but the mere fact that being the Pope he teaches heterodox doctrines or scandalizes the simple with provocative statements aggravates his guilt in the extreme, because whoever hears him believes he hears the voice of the Good Shepherd. The moral responsibility of the one who commands is immeasurably greater than that of the subject who has to decide whether to obey him or not. The Lord will call him to account with uncompromising rigor for the consequences for his subjects of the good or evil done by his superior, and also for good and bad example.

It is precisely in order to defend hierarchical communion with the Roman Pontiff that it becomes necessary to disobey him, to denounce his errors and to ask him to resign. And to ask God to take him with Him as soon as possible, if this can result in good for the Church.

The deception, the colossal deception about which I have written on several occasions, consists in forcing the good ones - let us call them so for the sake of brevity - to remain prisoners of rules and laws that the bad ones use in fɾαυdem legis . It is as if they had understood that in our weakness, that is to say that even with all our defects, we are religiously and socially oriented to respect the law, to obey authority, to keep our word and to have an honest and loyal conduct. This virtuous weakness guarantees them our obedience, submission, maximum respectful resistance and prudent disobedience. They know that we - whom they consider poor idiots - see in them the authority of Christ, and we look to it in order to obey, even if we know that such an action, morally irrelevant, points in a very concrete direction. Thus they have imposed on us the reformed Mass, thus they have accustomed us to hear the suras of the Koran recited from the pulpits of our cathedrals and to see them transformed into dining rooms or bedrooms. All the decisions taken by authority since the Council have been possible precisely because we obeyed our sacred shepherds, and although some of their decisions seemed aberrant to us, we could not believe that they were deceiving us; and perhaps they themselves, in turn, did not realize that the orders they were giving us had an iniquitous objective. Today, if we follow the thread that links the abolition of the minor orders to the invention of the acolytes and deaconesses, we understand that whoever reformed Holy Week in the time of Pius XII was already aiming at the Novus Ordo and its atrocious present-day variants. Paul VI's embrace of Patriarch Athenagoras gave us hope for true ecuмenism, because we had not understood - as some had already denounced - that this gesture was preparing the polytheism of Assisi, the indecent idol of Pachamama and, soon, the coven of Astana.

None of us want to understand that it is enough not to support this impasse for it to be broken. We must refuse to duel with an adversary who dictates the rules to which we must only submit, giving himself the freedom to break them. Let us pay no attention to him. Our obedience has nothing to do with cowardly servility or insubordination; on the contrary, it allows us to suspend all judgment on who is or is not pope and to continue to behave like good Catholics even if the pope despises, insults or excommunicates us. Because the paradox is not in the disobedience of the good to the authority of the Pope, but in the absurdity of having to disobey a person who is at the same time pope and heresiarch, Athanasius and Arius, de iure light and de facto darkness. The paradox is that in order to remain in communion with the Apostolic See we have to separate ourselves from the one who should represent it and see ourselves bureaucratically excommunicated by the one who is in an objective state of schism with himself. The evangelical precept of not judging is not to be understood in the sense of abstaining from making a moral judgment, but of condemning the person; otherwise we would be incapable of moral acts. It is true that it is not up to one to separate the wheat from the tares, but no one should call the wheat the tares or the wheat the tares. And he who has received holy orders, and even more so if he is in the fullness of the priesthood, has not only the right but the duty to point out the sowers of tares, the rapacious wolves and the false prophets. For even in such cases, in addition to participating in the priesthood of Christ, one also participates in his royal authority.

What is not remembered neither in the political and social sphere nor in the ecclesiastical one is that our initial acceptance of an alleged right of our adversary to do evil, based on an erroneous concept of freedom (moral, doctrinal and religious) is turning into a forced tolerance of the good while sin and vice become the norm. What yesterday was admitted as a gesture of tolerance today claims full legitimacy, and confines us to the margins of society as a minority on the verge of extinction. Soon, and in coherence with the anti-Christian ideology that directs this inexorable transformation of values and principles, virtue will be prohibited and those who practice it will be condemned in the name of an intolerance of the Good, who will be singled out as divisive, fundamentalist and fanatical. Our tolerance towards those who today become promoters of the demands of the nєω ωσrℓ∂ σr∂єr and its assimilation by the ecclesial body will lead irremєdιαbly to the establishment of the kingdom of the Antichrist, in which faithful Catholics will be persecuted as public enemies, just as in Christian times heretics were considered public enemies. In short, the enemy has plagiarized, disrupted and perverted the system of protection of society implemented by the Church in Catholic countries.

I believe, dear Father, that we will have to accept your observations on the crisis of authority, at least judging by the speed with which Bergoglio and his court are striking blows at the Church. For my part, I pray that the Lord will bring to light the hitherto hidden truth and allow us to recognize the Vicar of Christ on Earth not so much by his vestments as by the words he speaks and the example of his works.

Receive my blessing, as I confidently entrust myself to your prayers.

+Carlo Maria Viganò, Archbishop
31 January 2021
Dominica in Septuagésima

Brilliant from top to bottom.  I agree with Bishop Williamson that this man is a gift to us; to strengthrn us in our faith in preparation of what might await us (per his last paragraph).

If Vigano is so awake, why does he not make a complete conversion?

It’s interesting that +Vigano reveals that he is contacted by priests all over the world.

How are they getting +Viganò’s contact info???

I don’t see it anywhere on the internet (which makes sense if he is in hiding).

I’m guessing that media outlets have his contact info (or else how could they interview him?), but screen for +Vigano and only give it out to priests or other pre-approved parties.

That’s unfortunate for people like me who would like to reach out to him regarding various projects, but I guess when you fear for your life, that’s what you need to do.

If Vigano is so awake, why does he not make a complete conversion?

I thank the good Lord daily that you are not the arbiter of what constitutes a full profession of the Catholic faith.

With all due respect, Archbishop Vigano does not deserve to kiss the dust upon which Archbishop Lefebvre walked. He is frankly, and again with all due respect, a coward.

Didn’t +Vigano pray in common with heretics and Jєωs just recently? Not to discount his words but what of his actions?

Far as I know, he says the old Mass, and encourages clergy to abandon the new Mass.

Source(s)?