Archbishop Viganò Urges Souls to Read This Article: The hermeneutic of Cain’s envy against Abel
This great and powerful article by Professor Massimo Viglione constitutes one of the most lucid and profound comments on the ominous Motu Proprio Traditionis Custodes. In sharing this important intervention, I intend to offer it to the reading and reflection of all the faithful, Catholics and also non-Catholics, so that each one can draw from it prophetic clarity and apostolic courage in the very hard war that we are all called to face, a war whose inevitable outcome will be the triumph of the Bride of Christ over the unleashing of the infernal powers.
This article by Prof. Viglione deserves wide visibility also for showing the overall vision on the simultaneous and coherent strategy and action of the deep state and the deep church. At a time when discrimination against the unvaccinated is also adopted by the Bergoglian church, it is our duty and responsibility to resist with the utmost determination, raise our voices, denouncing what is happening and revealing what is being prepared.
+ Carlo Maria Viganò, Archbishop
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First published at Duc in altum (“Set out into the deep”)
Introduction by Aldo Maria Valli:
Dear friends of Duc in altum, Massimo Viglione has written this article after the publication of Traditionis Custodes. It is one of the most complete and lucid analyses that we have read commenting on the papal provision against the Mass of all time. In addition to a comprehensive analysis (in which the liturgical problem is joined to that of the imposition of the New World Order), I would like to draw your attention to his reflection on the question of obedience.
“They will throw you out of the synagogues” (Jn 16:2)
The hermeneutic of Cain’s envy against Abel
by Professor Massimo Viglione
There have been many comments, one after the other, in these days following the official declaration of war – made by Francis himself – of the ecclesiastical hierarchy against the Holy Mass of all time. And more than one comment has revealed the not-at-all concealed contempt and the simultaneous absolute clarity of content and form that marks the Motu Proprio Traditionis Custodes, written in a style and formality that is political more than theological or spiritual. It is in effect a declaration of war. It is noteworthy that there is a formal difference and also a difference in tone found in the various documents with which Paul VI, beginning in 1964, announced, planned, and implemented his liturgical reform, which was finally made official with the Apostolic Constitution Missale Romanum issued on 3 April 1969, by which the ancient Roman Rite was de facto replaced (this is the most appropriate term both from the point of view of intentions as well as facts) with the new vulgar Rite. In the Montinian documents we find, on several occasions, hypocritical but evident pain, regret, and remorse, and paradoxically the beauty and sacredness of the ancient Rite are celebrated.
In short, it is as if Montini had said: “Dear Rite of all time, I am sending you away, but you were so beautiful!”
In contrast, in the Bergoglian document, as many have noted, sarcasm and hatred for the ancient Rite shine through. A hatred such that it cannot be contained.
Naturally, Francis is not the initiator of this war, which was begun by the modernist liturgical movement (or, if you like, with Protestantism), but rather, on the official and operative level, it was Paul VI himself. Bergoglio has only – to use the strong and popular metaphor – “shot madly” in an effort to kill once and for all a mortally wounded thing that in the course of the post-conciliar decades not only did not die but returned to life, dragging along with it, with an exponential crescendo in the last 14 years, an incalculable number of faithful all over the world.
And this is the crux of the whole matter. The progressive and more convinced modernist clergy had to suffer Benedict XVI’s Motu Proprio, dragged by the neck, but at the same time they constantly worked against the Mass of all time through hostile resistance by the majority of the world episcopate, which has always openly disobeyed what Summorum Pontificum established, beginning right in the years of the Ratzingerian pontificate, and then all the more so after the resignation up until today.
The hostility of the bishops meant that in the end the task of putting the Motu Proprio into action very often fell to the courage of a few priests celebrating it anyway, even without the permission of the bishop (which was specifically not necessary according to the provisions of Summorum Pontificum). Now, those bishops who have been constantly and undauntedly disobedient to the Supreme Pontiff of the Catholic Church and one of his Motu Proprios, in the name of obedience to the Supreme Pontiff of the Catholic Church and one of his Motu Proprios, will be able not only to continue but even to intensify their censorship, the war that is no longer hidden but is now blatant, as is in fact already happening.
But Francis has not limited himself to “shooting” the immortal victim. He wanted to take a further step, that of a fast and furious – to say nothing of monstruous – “burying alive” of the ancient rite, affirming that the new rite is the Lex Orandi of the Catholic Church. From which it should be deduced that the Mass of all time is no longer the Lex Orandi.
It is well known that Our Friend [Bergoglio] doesn’t have a clue about theology (which is a bit like saying that a doctor doesn’t have a clue about medicine, or that a blacksmith doesn’t know how to use fire and iron). The Lex Orandi of the Church, in fact, is not a “precept” of positive law voted on by a parliament or prescribed by a sovereign, which can always be retracted, changed, replaced, improved, or worsened. The Lex Orandi of the Church, furthermore, is not a specific and determined “thing” in time and space, as much as it is the collective whole of theological and spiritual norms and liturgical and pastoral practices of the entire history of the Church, from evangelical times – and specifically from Pentecost – up to today. Although it obviously lives in the present, it is however rooted in the entire past of the Church. Therefore, we are not talking here about something human – exclusively human – that the latest boss can change at his pleasure. The Lex Orandi comprises all twenty centuries of the history of the Church, and there is no man or group of men in the world who can change this twenty-century-old deposit. There is no pope, council, or episcopate that can change the Gospel, the Depositum Fidei, or the universal Magisterium of the Church. Nor can the Liturgy of all time be changed. And if it is true that the ancient Rite had an essential apostolic core that then harmonically grew over the course of the centuries, with progressive mutations (even up to Pius XII and John XXIII), it is also true that these mutations – at times more appropriate and other times less so, and sometimes perhaps not appropriate at all – have always been however harmonically structured in a continuum of Faith, Sacredness, Tradition, and Beauty.
The Montinian reform broke all this apart, improvisedly inventing a new rite adapted to the needs of the modern world and transforming the sacred Catholic Liturgy from being theocentric to being anthropocentric. From the Holy Sacrifice of the Cross repeated in an unbloody manner through the action of the sacerdos, we transitioned to the assembly of the faithful led by its “presider.” From a salvific and even exorcistic instrument, we passed to a horizontal populist gathering, susceptible to continual autocephalous and relativistic changes and adaptations that are more or less “festive” and whose supposed “value” is based on winning mass consensus, as if it were a political instrument aimed at the audience, an audience however that is progressively completely disappearing.
It is useless to continue on this path: the very results of this liturgical subversion speak to minds and hearts and cannot lie. What it is important to clarify however is the reason for this transition from Montinian hypocrisy to Bergoglian sincerity.
What has changed? The general climate has changed. It has literally turned upside down. Montini believed that in a few years no one would remember the Mass of all time. Already John Paul II, faced with the evidence that the enemy did not die at all, was constrained – he too dragged by the neck – to grant an “indult” (as if the Sacred Catholic Liturgy of all time needed to be forgiven for something in order to continue to exist) which (no one ever says this) was even more restrictive than this latest Bergoglian document, although devoid of the hatred that characterizes the latter. But above all it was the uncontainable success among the people – and in particular among young people – that the Mass of all time found after Benedict XVI’s Motu Proprio that was the triggering factor for this hatred.
The “new Mass” has lost in the face of history and the evidence of the facts. The churches are empty, ever more empty; the religious orders – even, and perhaps above all, the most ancient and glorious ones – are disappearing; monasteries and convents are deserted, inhabited only by religious who are now very advanced in years, and upon whose death the doors will be shuttered; vocations are reduced to nothing; even the “otto per mille” [Italian church tax] has been cut in half, despite the obsessive cloying and pathetic third-worldesque publicity it receives; priestly vocations are scarce – everywhere we see pastors with three, four, or at times even five parishes to run. The mathematics of the Council and the “new Mass” is the most merciless thing that can exist.
But the failure is above all qualitative, from the theological, spiritual and moral point of view. Even the clergy that exists and resists is in large part openly heretical or in any case tolerant of heresy and error in the exact measure that it is intolerant towards the Tradition, no longer recognizing any objective value in the Magisterium of the Church (except for what pleases it), living instead on theological and dogmatic improvisation, and liturgical and pastoral improvisation as well, all based on doctrinal and moral relativism, accompanied by an immense flood of chatter and empty and inane slogans; nor have we even mentioned the devastating – when it is not monstruous – moral situation of a good part of this clergy.