WITH ARCHBISHOP CARLO MARIA VIGANÒ12 September 2020
Feast of the Holy Name of Mary
“The Lord’s right hand is lifted high,
the Lord’s right hand has done mighty things.”
Psalm 117
Marco Tosatti: Your Excellency, you served as Apostolic Nuncio in the United States from 2011-2016, and so you know this country very well. The Democratic candidate, Joe Biden, claims to be Catholic, but he is in favor of abortion until the ninth month and “same-sex marriage.” Is it possible to be Catholic and, on an official level, that is, through political and publicly manifest choices, to oppose the teaching of the Church – not on secondary elements, but on vital issues?
His Excellency, Archbishop Carlo Maria Viganò: The question you pose, dear Tosatti, requires a well-articulated response, but first and foremost it requires serious reflection and a clear recognition of who is responsible for creating the conditions that have led to the current situation.
It was September 22, 2015, the day of Pope Francis’s arrival in Washington, D.C., on the occasion of his apostolic journey to the United States. During the dinner at the Nunciature, which was attended by several members of the papal entourage, I told Pope Francis: «I believe that in the history of the United States there has never been an Administration with so many Catholics at the top: Vice President Joe Biden, Secretary of State John Kerry, and House Speaker Nancy Peℓσѕι. All three of them ostentatiously profess to be Catholic, pro-abortion and in favor of ɧoɱosɛҳųαƖ marriage and gender ideology, in defiance of Church teaching. How do you explain this contradiction?» And I added: «A Jesuit, Father Robert Frederick Drinan, S.J., from Boston College, held the post of Democratic US Representative for the State of Massachusetts in Washington for ten years, from 1971 to 1981. Father Drinan was one of the most strenuous advocates and promoters of abortion!» Pope Francis did not react in the slightest, just as he did not react on June 23, 2013 when, answering one of his specific questions, I revealed to him who Cardinal McCarrick really was.
In 1967, two years after the close of the Second Vatican Council, another Jesuit, Father Vincent O’Keefe, S.J. (whom Bergoglio, as Provincial of the Society of Jesus, must have known, as O’Keefe was Vicar General under Father Pedro Arrupe) as President of Fordham University, together with then-Rector of the University of Notre Dame, Father Theodore M. Hesburgh, organized a meeting of all the presidents of the North American Catholic Universities in the United States, at Land O’ Lakes in Wisconsin. During the meeting, they signed a docuмent known as the Land O’ Lakes Statement, which declared the independence of their Catholic universities and colleges from all authority and all bonds of fidelity to the Magisterium of the Church. This docuмent – which I vigorously denounced in my report to Bergoglio and the competent Roman Dicasteries – had devastating consequences for the Church and civil society in the United States.
It is not surprising, then, that the formation of hundreds of thousands of young Catholics – some of whom later became political leaders – has led to this betrayal of the Gospel whose disastrous consequences we see today. It is also not surprising that Theodore McCarrick, then-president of the Catholic University of Puerto Rico, was among the signatories of that rebellious docuмent.
M.T.: Your analysis doesn’t stop, then, at an observation of the current phenomenon, but goes back to its remote causes, behind which there is a mind that has a long-term plan.
C.M.V.: What I wish to emphasize is the close connection between the rebellion of the ultra-progressive clergy – with the Jesuits in the lead – and the education of generations of Catholics, who were formed according to the modernist ideology, flowing into the Council, which served as a premise not only for ’68 revolution in the political sphere, but also for the doctrinal and moral revolution in the ecclesial sphere. Without Vatican II, we would not have had the student revolution that radically changed life in the Western world, the vision of the family, the role of women, and the very concept of authority.
In short: the responsibility for the betrayal by these self-styled Catholic politicians rests entirely on the unfaithful clergy, secular and regular, enslaved to modernist ideology, and on the hierarchy, which neither knew how to, nor wanted to intervene with the necessary firmness to prevent this incalculable damage to the entire body of society. In this sense, the deep state and deep church have clearly acted in concert, with the aim of scientifically destabilizing both the civil and ecclesiastical order. Today we have the opportunity to understand the current situation, and it is once again the task of the Authorities to do everything possible to stop this race to the abyss: the Holy See and the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops (USCCB) have the duty to call to obedience both the rebel clerics, and the laity whom they continue to deceive and even publicly support.
M.T.: Do you believe that an authoritative intervention by the Bishops is necessary to call people back to adherence to non-negotiable principles?
C.M.V.: When the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith issued very clear instructions on the exclusion from Holy Communion of Catholic politicians who do not follow the Church’s teaching, it was McCarrick himself, together with Archbishop Wilton Gregory, then-president of the USCCB, who worked to prevent their implementation in the United States. Moral corruption and doctrinal deviation are intrinsically linked and, to effectively heal these wounds in the body of the Church, it is imperative to act on both fronts. If this dutiful intervention does not take place, the Bishops and the leaders of the Church will answer to God for betraying their duty as pastors.
M.T.: Why do you see a relationship between the Second Vatican Council and the 1968 student protests?
C.M.V.: It is undeniable, even if only from a historical and sociological point of view, that there is a very close relationship between the conciliar revolution and 1968. The very protagonists of Vatican II admit it. Joseph Ratzinger stands out among them, writing:
«Adherence to a utopian anarchistic Marxism […] was supported on the front lines by university chaplains and student associations who saw in it the dawn of the realization of Christian hopes. The guiding light is to be found in the events of May 1968 in France. Dominicans and Jesuits were at the barricades. The intercommunion carried out at an ecuмenical Mass at the barricades was considered a kind of landmark in salvation history, a kind of revelation that inaugurated a new era of Christianity.»[1]
One of the periti [experts] on the Council, Fr. René Laurentin, wrote:
«The demands of the May ‘68 movement largely coincided with the Council’s grand ideas, particularly in the Council’s Constitution on the Church and the world. To a certain extent, Vatican II was already a protest against the Curia by a group of bishops who were trying to create an institutionally prefabricated Council.»[2]
And the Argentine theologian, Fr. Álvaro Calderón, affirmed:
«If there is anything that immediately stands out to those who study the Second Vatican Council, it is the change, in a liberal sense, of the concept of authority. The Pope stripped himself of his supreme authority in favour of the bishops (collegiality); the bishops stripped themselves of their authority in favour of theologians; theologians gave up their science in favour of listening to the faithful. And the voice of the faithful is nothing more than the fruit of propaganda.»[3]
This vision is also widely and proudly affirmed on the progressive front[4], which saw the same demands of the conciliar revolution realized in 1968. Bishop Jacques Noyer, Emeritus of Amiens, recalls:
«I am convinced that the spirit that inspired the preparation, celebration and implementation of the Second Vatican Council is a great opportunity for the Church and the world. It is the Gospel offered to the men of today. Deep down, May ‘68 was a spiritual movement, even a mystical one, consistent with the dream of the Council.»[5]
Without a “green light” from the Church, the world would never have accepted or taken up the student movement’s demands for rebellion. Beyond the Acts of the Council, it was precisely the spirit of Vatican II that marked the end of a hierarchically constituted society, and of the traditional values common to the Western world: until then, concepts such as authority, honor, respect for the elderly, a spirit of mortification and service, a sense of duty, the defense of the family and one’s Fatherland, were shared and, albeit in a weakened form compared to the past, still practiced.
Seeing the Catholic Church, a beacon of truth and civilization for nations, throw open its doors to the world and unhesitatingly discard her glorious heritage, going so far as to revolutionize the Liturgy and water down Morality, was an unequivocal signal to the masses, a sort of approval of the agenda that, at the time, didn’t yet dare to reveal itself completely, even though all of its distinctive signs could be grasped. It destroyed the Church and society, compromised civil and religious authority, discredited marriage and the family, ridiculed patriotism and a sense of duty or labeled them as fascism. All amid the silence of a complicit hierarchy! Those like me, who entered the seminary in the immediate post-conciliar period, can testify that even the Roman Pontifical Seminaries were immediately conquered by this tremor of protest, emancipation and dissolution of all rules and discipline.
There can be no doubt about this. If this were not the case, the substantial funding that globalist organizations, such as Soros’s Open Society, have allocated to the activities of the Society of Jesus, and presumably to other Catholic organizations, would be inexplicable.[6] All the premises that were laid down in a nutshell with Vatican II and the student revolution are now consistently proposed by Vatican leaders on the ecclesial front, and by government leaders on the globalist political front. Therefore, it should come as no surprise if the priorities of Bergoglio’s political program coincide with Joe Biden’s priorities. Migration, environmentalism, Malthusian ecologism, gender ideology, the dissolution of the family and globalism are common to the deep stateand deep church agenda. Bergoglio’s formal opposition to abortion and the LGBT indoctrination of children is disavowed in practice, both by the Bishops’ support for those who promote it politically, and for those who theorize about the use of birth control and the recognition of the rights of sodomites. The case of Father James Martin, S.J. is emblematic, because it confirms an idem sentire [being of the same mind] between the exponents of globalism and the progressive Catholic intelligentsia. The mark that unites these movements is lying and deception, division and destruction, hatred for Tradition and Christian civilization. And ultimately, the theological aversion to Christ, typical of Lucifer and his followers.
M.T.: Your Excellency, don’t you think that this correspondence between the deep state and deep church is also confirmed in relations with China?
C.M.V.: The Chinese communist dictatorship is courted by both the deep state and the deep church: Joe Biden is as subservient to the economic and political interests of Beijing as Jorge Mario Bergoglio. It doesn’t matter if human rights are systematically violated in China, if Catholics faithful to the Catholic Church are persecuted, or if a hateful dictatorship massacres millions of innocent people by planning mass abortion: the interests of the globalist agenda prevail even over the evidence of the horrors carried out by the Chinese dictatorship.
I would add: the active support carried out by the Jesuits, since the time when McCarrick went to China to prepare the famous agreement that would later be ratified by the Vatican under the Bergoglio pontificate, is significant. The agreement aroused considerable perplexity even in the secular press. The Times recently published an article, titled: «The Pope is Beijing’s unlikely admirer», in which Dominic Lawson denounced that «more and more nations have expressed their concern about the growing evidence of cσncєnтrαтισn cαмρs and even genocide in the Chinese province of Xinjiang», and pointed out that «there has been silence from the one entity that has the whole of suffering humanity at the core of its mission. I refer to the Holy See». And he adds: «The failure to condemn the genocide is unforgivable.»[7] Furthermore, during the Angelus last July 5, Francis’s omission of the reference to the events in Hong Kong so as not to annoy Xi Jinping, after having circulated the text to the press[8], caused a stir…
This subservience of the globalist movement and the Holy See to China is alarming, and is confirmed also by the meetings Father Spadaro, S.J. and other Jesuits had with representatives of the Communist Party during the lockdown, regarding the circulation of the Chinese edition of La Civiltà Cattolica.
M.T.: Beyond the current situation, in which the Catholic candidates for the Democratic Party clearly do not hold to the Magisterium of the Church, what should a true Catholic politician be like?
C.M.V.: To be Catholic, one must not only be baptized, but must live in a manner consistent with the Faith he has received at the sacred Fount. Faith goes hand in hand with good works, as Sacred Scripture teaches us: without putting into practice our having become children of God through incorporation into the Mystical Body, our words are empty and our witness is incoherent, and indeed scandalous for the faithful and those who do not believe. Father James Martin, S.J. is therefore wrong to limit himself to the purely bureaucratic aspect; his words are refuted by those of the Savior: «You are my friends if you do what I command you» (Jn 15:14). Friendship with God – which consists in the soul being in the state of Grace – depends on our obedience to Our Lord’s orders. Not suggestions or advice: orders! Again, He says: «Not everyone who says to me: ‘Lord, Lord,’ will enter the Kingdom of heaven, but he who does the will of my Father who is in heaven» (Mt 7:21).
I would add that hell is not reserved for non-Catholics: among the eternal flames there are many baptized souls, even religious, priests and bishops, who have deserved damnation because of their rebellion against the will of the Lord. Self-styled adult Catholics and their preceptors ought to think carefully, before they hear the words of Christ resound: «I never knew you; depart from me, you evildoers» (Mt 7:23).
A Catholic who supports abortion or gender ideology denies not only the Magisterium, but also the natural law, which constitutes the moral basis common to all peoples, of all times and places. The seriousness of an inconsistency between belonging to the Church and being faithful to her teaching reflects the artificial dichotomy between doctrine and pastoral care, which has crept in since Vatican II, and reached its clearest formulation in Amoris laetitia. Yet on closer inspection, the so-called “laicità dello Stato” [secular nature of the State] also poses serious problems, since it recognizes the right of civil society to deny the divine Kingship of Christ and to reject His Law, while at the same time asking the laity to give a testimony of Faith in which the primacy of Catholic Truth is lowered to the same level as error.
What is clear is that Catholics cannot vote for, much less the hierarchy approve, a “Catholic” politician who does not put the integrity of the Church’s doctrine into practice. The self-styled Catholic Joe Biden, who supports partial-birth abortion, i.e. infanticide, and who even before Obama supported gender ideology and celebrated the “marriage” of two men, is not Catholic. Period.
M.T.: Joe Biden has chosen Kamala hαɾɾιs as his vice-presidential running mate. hαɾɾιs defended Planned Parenthood, the world’s largest abortion company, in California when it was accused of trading in aborted baby parts. What is the significance of this choice?
The culture of death that underlies today’s prevailing anti-Christian ideology is consistent with itself: the murder of innocent creatures is one of the indispensable elements of those who want to erase not only Christianity, but humanity and creation, which manifests the work of the divine Creator.
As I have said many times, this process of dissolution is carried out on two levels: an ideological one, by those who deliberately want evil and want to implement their own hellish plan in forced stages; and an economic one, by those who support the ideology, not necessarily out of conviction, but for profit. Thus, the human sacrifices that have continued to be celebrated in abortion clinics, even during the Covid-19 emergency, have generated profits for Planned Parenthood and the entire chain of death that traffics in the organs of aborted babies. Let us not forget that the abortion lobby – like the LGBT movement – has is one of the main financiers of left-wing election campaigns around the world. If companies ideologically oriented toward the culture of death lavishly fund certain political parties, it’s not surprising that candidates from those parties support their sponsors with laws that favor them.
M.T.: An American bishop, Thomas Tobin of Providence, Rhode Island, said that for the first time in a while, the Democrats don’t have a Catholic on the ticket. Father James Martin, S.J. replied that Biden was baptized Catholic and therefore is one. What does this back and forth allow us to understand about the state of the Church in America?
C.M.V.: I have already noted above that “Catholic candidates” are political candidates who not only call themselves Catholic, but who live in a manner consistent with the Faith and Morals taught by the Church. If being Catholic had no concrete impact, it wouldn’t make any sense to vote for a candidate who doesn’t in fact differ from the others. Father Martin, S.J.’s response is sophism, because he pretends not to see the divide between appearing and being Catholic, between exploiting the “designation” for an electoral advantage and being a true witness to the Gospel in private, civil and political life, and in institutions. What about Father James Martin, S.J.? He was baptized, confirmed, ordained a priest, and even made solemn vows of chastity and obedience; he is S.J….. he is LGBT. Someone else, one of the Twelve, betrayed Him. Let Father Martin, who is always impeccable in his clerical dress, look into the mirror of his soul, and see whom he resembles!
M.T.: Your Excellency, why is the Church so interested in the dominant ideology, which is also clearly anti-Christian?
C.M.V.: This is a problem we have been carrying around for seventy years. Since that time, Catholic clergy, and in particular the hierarchy, have suffered from a sense of inferiority that places them below their interlocutors in the world. They feel ontologically inferior. They consider Christ’s teaching to be inadequate and clumsily try to adapt it to the secular mentality. They are afraid of appearing outdated, not in step with the times, even centuries late, as another illustrious Jesuit (r.i.p.) has said…
This terrible inferiority complex is the direct consequence of a dramatic loss of faith. Christ’s saving message is irreconcilable with the seductions of the world; it is unworthy and illegitimate to adulterate the Magisterium in order to please the world, abusing a sacred authority which is aimed instead at preaching to «all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit, teaching them to observe all that I have commanded you» (Mt 28:19-20).
As long as Church leaders persist in not being the first to behave consistently with their own role and with Christ’s teaching, it will be impossible to demand equal consistency from the laity, who look to them as an example. This is confirmed by the fact that there are self-styled “Catholic” politicians who today enjoy the support of self-styled “Catholic” clerics and bishops. It is also confirmed by the fact that those who defend life and the natural law, although they aren’t Catholic, are accused of populism, compared to the dictators of the last century[9], and told they are not Christian[10] or, as in the recent case of Father James Altman, accused by his bishop of being “divisive and causing scandal”[11].
M.T.: What is the role of Planned Parenthood in American politics? Is it an instrument of freedom and the affirmation of rights, as the “progressives” say, or…
C.M.V.: In the globalist society, Planned Parenthood mirrors and plays the opposite role of that played by charitable institutions and foundations that protect life in Christian nations. In Christian societies, children were welcomed with love, and even in situations of poverty and difficulty they were cared for, raised and educated to become good Christians and honest citizens, by putting the word of the Gospel into practice. In anti-Christian societies, Planned Parenthood is tasked with killing these innocents, putting into practice the culture of death inspired by the one who was a “murderer from the beginning” (Jn 8:44). Let us not forget that Planned Parenthood, together with the other multinational abortion companies, serve the Malthusian delirium of the globalist high command, which is planning a drastic decimation of the world population.
M.T.: George Soros and others are trying to pressure Mark Zuckerberg into limiting the pro-life presence and activity on Facebook. The choice of Joe Biden and Kamala hαɾɾιs, and these maneuvers to limit those who defend life – what kind of global scenario do they lead to?
C.M.V.: The Gospel spread throughout the world thanks to the preaching of the Apostles and the witness of the Martyrs and Confessors of the Faith. Likewise, the anti-gospel of the ѕуηαgσgυє of Satan is spreading because of the preaching of the children of darkness, the testimony of public figures, celebrities and entertainers, and self-styled philanthropists. In the end, what’s left is always a division into two camps: on one side, the good, and on the other, the wicked, in the biblical war between good and evil. And if at one time our saints destroyed idols and pagan temples, leaving no room for devil worshippers, today it is inevitable that followers of groupthink will unite to desecrate and destroy churches, tear down crosses and statues of saints, and erase all memory of faith in Christ. In days gone by, forbidden books were censored in order to protect the simple ones, whose souls would be poisoned by them; today, what is good is censored, because evil does not tolerate it.
The global scenario that emerges is manifest before our eyes: until we understand that there can be no dialogue with evildoers (Mt 7:22), that there is no compatibility between the light of Christ and the darkness of Satan, we will not be able to win the battle, because we will not even have recognized that we are at war against the powers of hell. And in a war, there are necessarily two opposing sides: those who refuse to serve under the banner of Christ inevitably end up helping the servants of the Evil One. This awareness is clear to our enemies, but it does not seem to be so clear to those who do not see the Christian life as a “battle.”
Allow me to recall the words of President Trump at the end of the recent Republican National Convention: «Our opponents say that redemption for you can only come from giving power to them.» This “redemption” consists in denying God’s sovereign rights over individuals, societies, nations, and replacing the gentle yoke of Christ with the odious tyranny of Satan. And it is, to all intents and purposes, a reversal of the Redemption – the redemption of the slave – which the Savior accomplished on the wood of the Cross. So let us not be fooled by the mellifluous words of those who usurp the biblical metaphor of the children of light and the children of darkness to establish the kingdom of Lucifer: the darkness and chaos we see in American cities are the fruit of the same ideology that approves of postnatal abortion and ɧoɱosɛҳųαƖ marriage, just as the backers of the BLM and Antifa movements are precisely the Democrats and the “philanthropic” foundations that furiously oppose Trump’s re-election.[12]
Biden’s mention, indeed, his ignominious usurpation of John Paul II’s famous exhortation «Do not be afraid!» sounds like the Serpent’s cunning trick to take of the fruit of the tree, rather than the courageous invitation that the Polish Pope launched to a world far from Christ. And it is strange that the indignation of Archbishop Wilton Gregory, who was so ready to censure the presidential couple’s visit to the Shrine of St. John Paul II, today doesn’t also blast his opponent, Joe Biden, a perverted Catholic, who is using the image of the same Pope, and of Bergoglio, to advance his electoral campaign.
Today, John Paul II’s strong and authoritative words would make the Democrats and perhaps the Bishops themselves tremble:
«Do not be afraid to welcome Christ and accept his power. Help the Pope and all those who wish to serve Christ and with Christ’s power to serve the human person and the whole of mankind. Do not be afraid. Open wide the doors for Christ. To his saving power open the boundaries of States, economic and political systems, the vast fields of culture, civilization and development. Do not be afraid. Christ knows ‘what is in man’. He alone knows it.»[13]
Today Christ’s saving power is replaced by «the voice of creation which admonishes us to return to our rightful place in the created natural order». The redeeming Passion of Our Lord is replaced by the “groan of creation”, and the scourges of divine Justice by the “wrath of Mother Earth”, of the Pachamama…
President Trump stated: «Our opponents say that redemption for you can only come from giving power to them. But in this country, we don’t turn to career politicians for salvation. In America, we don’t turn to government to restore our souls. We put our faith in almighty God.» I believe that this faith in God, which clearly must be matched by a consistency of Christian life and witness, will also confirm in the 2020 US presidential election that “the Lord’s right hand has done mighty things” as Psalm 117 reminds us.
Official translation from the original Italian by Diane Montagna.
[1] Joseph Ratzinger, Les principes de la théologie catholique, Téqui, Paris 1985, p. 433
[2] René Laurentin, Crisi della Chiesa e secondo Sinodo episcopale, Morcelliana, Brescia 1969, p. 16
[3] Álvaro Calderón, La lámpara bajo el celemín. Cuestión disputada sobre la autoridad doctrinal del magisterio eclesiástico desde el Concilio Vaticano II, Ed. Rio Reconquista, Argentina 2009
[9]https://www.adnkronos.com/fatti/cronaca/2020/09/08/papa-populismo-europa-ricorda-terribili-degenerazioni-passate_QIC4RJ8Dyn07BJD6d82JBI.html?refresh_ce
https://www.lifesitenews.com/news/watch-priest-warns-us-voters-you-cannot-be-catholic-and-be-a-democrat
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