Archbishop Carlo Maria Viganò Attacks Hermeneutic of Continuity

Archbishop Carlo Maria Viganò demands an admission that the attempt at a hermeneutic of continuity has failed.

(Rome) Is Archbishop Carlo Maria Viganò heading for a schism? The well-known Vaticanist Sandro Magister sees this danger. Nothing would please the papal entourage and the hard-core progressives in the Church more than such a move.

Archbishop Viganò, Vatican diplomat, out of service since 2016, had most recently served as apostolic nuncio to the United States for five years. There is no more important post in the diplomatic corps. Pope Benedict XVI had sent him to Washington. However, he achieved international fame without ever taking the step into the big spotlight under Pope Francis, when he became his most famous and radical accuser. The top diplomat was accustomed to working in the background with the precise and deliberate language of diplomacy. But at the end of August 2018, his collar burst.

The first review in 2018

When the New York Times exposed the homosexual double life of Theodore McCarrick, then a cardinal, and allegations of sexual abuse of children and adolescents, including the homosexual corruption of his own seminarians, Pope Francis reacted quickly and stripped the cardinal of his purple dignity. Such a move was unprecedented in past centuries.

At the same time, the Church leader assured the public that he had known nothing about McCarrick's vices, otherwise he would have acted immediately and much earlier. This self-exculpation had outraged Msgr. Viganò. In a dossier, he accused Francis of untruth and revealed that he had already informed the then newly elected pope in detail in June 2013 about McCarrick's double life, who was therefore sanctioned by Pope Benedict XVI, although the full extent of the life of vice was not even known at the time. Francis, on the other hand, rehabilitated McCarrick and opened him access to papal power in a way that the U.S. cardinal had never had before. McCarrick was particularly influential in the appointment of bishops in the United States. In 2018, this was to lead to the additional accusation of having supported and strengthened a homophile network.

The Viganò dossier hit like a bombshell. The secular media was momentarily irritated. The sensation appealed to them too much. However, this was opposed by the prescribed self-discipline that protects Pope Francis – in contrast to his two predecessors. The papal entourage was furious. Under a mudslide, Archbishop Viganó seemed to be buried and swept away, but the Vatican diplomat showed remarkable steadfastness. To be on the safe side, however, he began to keep his whereabouts a secret. He also defended his move to the public against those non-progressive parts of the Church who fundamentally consider criticism of the Pope to be disreputable. The facts he mentioned were confirmed. In two additions, Msgr. Viganò added further details to the evidence, also giving exact dates and names. Most notably, he exposed part of the episcopal gay network in the U.S. and the Vatican.

He was silent. The great defendant, Pope Francis, was also silent. To date, he has not commented, or only marginally, on the serious accusations of his former top diplomat. The Holy See was attentive to the fact that the left-liberal secular media, which set the tone, kept up the protective dam around Francis. Once that was secured, they could easily ignore the matter themselves.

The Warning of a New World Order

But that's not all. Archbishop Viganò, a lawyer and diplomat accustomed to precise thinking, has repeatedly spoken out over the past 22 months and has also supported some initiatives critical of the Pope. Last January, he surprisingly took part in the Acies ordinata of traditional circles in Munich to protest against the schismatizing and heretical synodal path of the German Bishops' Conference and the Central Committee of German Catholics (ZdK). In May, for the first time, he initiated an action called Veritas liberabit vos (The truth will set you free) that sharply criticized the restrictive measures taken by numerous governments in connection with the coronavirus. Above all, it warned that there are forces that want to use the virus as a pretext to achieve a political agenda for the establishment of a new world order, bypassing the current constitutional order and democratic decision-making processes.

In this case, too, there was an astonished aha moment in the major world media and once again the Viganò initiative was quickly swept under the carpet. This time, too, the diplomat had apparently presented a text that was far too "dangerous" to be made available to the public unfiltered or at all. Rarely has it been more evident in recent years how massively and perfectly the leading media exercise the control of public opinion through filters and barriers. At the same time, the appeal Veritas liberabit vos was also signed by several cardinals, which in itself is already a sensation. In the Corona crisis, no document as important as this criticism has been published beyond medical statements. No wonder it is hushed up.

In the papal environment and among convinced Bergoglians, the rumor has been spread since the late summer of 2018 that Archbishop Viganò is no longer in unity with the Pope, that he has become a schismatic. This was not just a conviction that some people really cherished. There was another reason: nothing would be more convenient. The Viganò case would be settled in one fell swoop. No progressive, nor even Rome, would have to justify himself to a schismatic. The matter could be filed without Pope Francis, for example, having to comment on the accusations put on paper two years ago. On August 26, 2018, Archbishop Viganò had demanded nothing less than the resignation of Francis in his dossier.

The statements on Benedict XVI.

In fact, Msgr. Viganò, endowed with his authority and rank, formulates a position in the Church that latently embraces considerably more circles in the clergy and among the faithful than some think, but which has hardly been articulated so openly and pointedly in recent times. 20 days ago, the archbishop also objected to a central point of the pontificate of Benedict XVI.

The German Pope, who had just spent a few days with his brother in Regensburg and had left the Vatican for the first time since his retirement to the monastery in the Vatican Gardens, attempted a course correction of the greatest magnitude during his term of office. He wanted to correct the reading of the Second Vatican Council, which had dominated everything for 50 years. He articulated this goal in 2005, at his first Christmas reception for the Roman Curia, in a great speech. It is about the liturgy, theology and the understanding of the Church itself. Ultimately, it is about the entire life of the Church beyond personal piety.

The post-conciliar period was dominated by the hermeneutic of rupture. Benedict XVI tried to counter it with a hermeneutic of continuity. By reading the conciliar documents in the light of the tradition of the Church's two-thousand-year history, the ruptures and their mentality should be overcome. It was not only the guardians of the hermeneutic of rupture and the ecclesiastical '68ers who resisted this by boycotting and sabotaging Benedict's pontificate wherever possible. On the other hand, doubts were also expressed by those close to tradition as to whether all the statements of the Council, even the most controversial ones, could actually be reconciled with tradition. This site also postulated a hermeneutic of rupture in the spirit of Archbishop Marcel Lefebvre. During the pontificate of Benedict XVI, this criticism rarely went beyond the articulation of concerns, as the fundamental agreement with the German head of the Church remained dominant. Under Francis, that consensus quickly faded. The traditional shyness of criticism of the Pope, which is characteristic of faithful Church circles and is understood as an award, developed some cracks the more unpredictable the new Church leader from Argentina showed himself and the more irritating certain statements and actions appeared.

Archbishop Viganò responded on June 9 to a statement by Auxiliary Bishop Athanasius Schneider published on LifeSiteNews, speaking of a "monstrosity" created by modernist circles through the Second Vatican Council. He also made some observations concerning the pontificate of Benedict XVI, who "betrayed" the Church with his hermeneutic of continuity. The German pope had even strengthened the modernists' thesis that the Second Vatican Council was immune to heresies. It is enough, this is the difference from the hermeneutics of the rupture, to read the Council "in perfect continuity with the true doctrine of all times," Sandro Magister concluded. Archbishop Viganò counters that there are statements in conciliar documents that are so ambiguous that they cannot be reconciled with Tradition. Therefore, the hermeneutics of continuity does not go far enough.

"Drop Dignitatis humanae in toto"

Archbishop Viganò's statements have become more accentuated over the past few months. More and more clearly, he called a spade a spade, where until now they had been hinted at at best. Most recently, this happened in a public exchange of blows with Phil Lawler, author of Lost Shepherd, a book critical of Francis' pontificate.

The criticism of controversial conciliar texts is "too timid," said Msgr. Viganò. Not everything can be corrected by correcting a few words. This is especially true of the document Dignitatis humanae on religious freedom. Magister summarizes the archbishop's demands as follows, quoting him:

"To do what needs to be done once and for all is to 'drop it in toto and forget it.'"

Consequently, according to Msgr. Viganò, those who are guilty of false theology should also be chased out of office, unless they show insight and convert.

The matter is very serious, the Apostolic Nuncio said calmly, because since the Council the nature of the Church has been distorted by striving for a new "world unity religion", whose inventor and first theoretician is "Freemasonry". The political arm of this new world religion is a "world government out of control" as sought by powerful secular forces. It is against these forces and their goals that the appeal Veritas liberabit vos and the letter of Msgr. Viganò to US President Donald Trump, whom he described as a fighter of light in the fight against the forces of darkness, are directed. Trump responded enthusiastically with a tweet that was circulated worldwide on social networks.

The latest move by the pugnacious archbishop is the accusation against Benedict XVI of having failed with his too timid attempts to make the necessary corrections to the Second Vatican Council. His thesis of a hermeneutic of continuity had turned out to be insufficiently profound, but also impracticable in some respects. This, too, is an admission that is necessary if the necessary course is to be set.

The question remains whether Magister's sensors reported a false alarm or whether his advance warning system is accurate and reacts particularly finely by trying to recognize Archbishop Viganò's path to schism in this latest criticism, which also hits Benedict XVI. The fact remains that nothing better could have happened to Santa Marta.

Text: Giuseppe Nardi
Image: Voice of the Family/MiL (Screenshot)

Trans: Tancred vekron99@hotmail.Com

AMDG