This just in, from the Divine Office today in Universalis, for St John Fisher: "He was the only bishop to oppose Henry VIII’s actions, on the grounds that they were a repudiation of papal authority, but even so he avoided direct confrontation with the other bishops, not holding himself up as a hero or boasting of his coming martyrdom: I condemn no other man’s conscience: their conscience may save them, and mine must save me. We should remember, in all the controversies in which we engage, to treat our opponents as if they were acting in good faith, even if they seem to us to be acting out of spite or self-interest."
Well I should have been wondering why I had more (penny-ante) suffering to offer than usual but it seems that I never do wonder this. I will offer it for his repentance.
I say this partly in humor and partly in true curiosity. Do we have confirmation that Vigano is alive and is writing these things himself? Could all these writings be fraudulent from someone posing as Vigano? It is oddly convenient that he is hiding away in an undisclosed location. When was the last time he was seen in public/photographic evidence?
Back in the dark days that I was active on Twitter, I seem to remember him, a smattering of seemingly Russia-sympathetic (deliberately or by imprudent association) Catholic academics, another Catholic man whose name I have forgotten, and maybe another archbishop all seemed to participate in an intersecting, increasingly troubling dialogue. I wouldn’t put it past anyone with a deliberate agenda to use anyone else, including a cleric, to achieve it. Not to say the Archbishop isn’t cognizant of and responsible for his own positions, as he certainly seems to be committed to them, but I also wonder if he isn’t the face, wittingly or unwittingly, of a collective narrative as you seem to consider.
My friend, you need to brush up on your 'replaced by an imposter' Catholic tropes. Start with St Paul VI - a fascinating internet rabbit hole if you have a good sense of perspective and a firm grip on reality.
Ratzinger had resigned before Vigano started talking.
Also, using a Pope's pre-election name is not an insult in Italy. Probably due to so many Popes coming from Italy that everyone there knew their name before they were elected, and then the custom stuck.
Maybe in academic or highly secular circles that is true, but I’ve never heard serious Italian Catholics call Giovanni XXIII Roncali, or Paolo VI, Montini the way Vigano calls Francis Bergolio. It’s pretty easy to tell Italian popes apart with different names and numbers to keep track of them.
Papa Roncalli, Papa Montini, Papa Woytyla, etc., is a very common Italian way of speaking of the pope, not disrespectful at all. Referring to the current pontiff by his given name, Jorge Maria Bergoglio, with no honorific of any sort, is most likely Viganò’s way of "making a point."
+Vigano will undoubtedly receive the justice due to him should he be found guilty from the tribunal of the crime of Schism (and the case is heavily against him, to be clear).
But I'll only care about "justice" when the entirety of Germany is placed under interdict (as blanket solution, since the rot in Germany extends beyond bishops to even the laity in leadership roles). Until then, this is only a continuation of the injustice of the two-tiered system of ecclesial governance under +Francis' pontificate. The sun rises, the sun sets. Yawn.
Also, I wonder if a guilty verdict will conveniently be used as some further justification for the upcoming total ban/suppression/abrogation of the TLM in the expected Rome document. Never let a good tragedy go to waste: "Can't you see? We had to totally ban/suppress/abrogate the TLM! We even had to convict a bishop of Schism because of it!"
After 4 years of +Vigano being in utter dissent from the Apostolic See (and almost 10 years of him being a general pain in Rome's tush), a trial/conviction on Schism now - with an expected total suppression of the TLM on the horizon - appears like a correlation.
This is why the interdict is necessary. In Germany's case, it's not just a matter of "bad errant bishops/clergy." Germany has placed a heavy amount of influence and insitutional power in the hands of laity, like the ZDK and the Permanent Synodal Committee. You can't address the problem by only reigning in select clergy, since the power vacuum is already set up to be filled by equally-errant laity. Thus, interdict (which touches the whole population) is appropriate. And also, there is a real sense of bishops being shepherds that guard the flock when the entire sheepfold is now suffering the consequences of their errancy.
In Kerala, the laity have less insitutionalized power, but the laity are equally zealous in the actions of dissent (blocking doors, assaulting people, burning effigies, etc.) and thus an interdict is necessary because the problem is not just the clergy, but extends into the laity.
I think they're more likely to interdict India than Germany. Less money, fewer connections to Curial officials... and they helpfully say they won't do as they're told, while the Germans waffle around enough to provide plausible deniability to the Vatican. It can be very advantageous to be manipulative rather than frank.
Certainly - and I make no prediction here about the likelihood of german interdict other than “it probably won’t be tomorrow”
If there was ever a time and place in the past 125 years most fitting to impose an interdict on a ecclesial territory, it would be now in Germany and Kerala.
I Germany could be fixed by ending the the religious tax or making it voluntary rather than strictly related to your claimed religion and subject to charges of apostasy, and putting all the dioceses in Germany under the 4 bishops who don't support the Synod and one or two others.
I don't know enough about Kerala to have an opinion.
As far as I can tell, he started by being angry about the incompetence and complicity of the Vatican in dealing with child sex abusers, particularly McCarrick, which seems like a broadly unifying theme. He seems to have proceeded to tack on every other objection to the Vatican that it is possible to have. Which is a long list.
I wouldn't consider him a spokesman for TLMers. Seems to talk a lot more about politics than the Mass or Tradition, although I don't pay much attention so who knows. Perhaps the SSPX does, assuming he doesn't really think the Pope is not the Pope. Or the Benevacantists, if he does.
Does the "local interdict" still exist in Canon Law? I think it may have been removed with the new code, leaving only personal interdicts. I could be wrong.
Is 9 days between citation and appearance a typical timespan? Just saying, there are places where it is practically impossible to get a plane ticket in that time, and many others where it is prohibitively expensive. There's usually more time to get your ducks in a row for a traffic infraction.
Vigano may be unwell (if, as someone else posited, he's alive); at the very least he's become something beyond eccentric in his beliefs. Regardless, he's been off the reservation for a long time and has to be curbed.
What's frustrating to me is that there ARE legitimate complaints to be made about PF's governance, implementation of "spirit of Vatican II" etc., but men like Vigano are so far on the fringe that their conduct allows everyone with more moderate conclusions along the same lines to be painted with the same brush.
Jesuits seem to benefit from a blanket exception to church discipline. Marco Rupnik is only the most current and egregious example of Jesuits publicly holding heretical positions. Their superior general, Fr. Arturo Sosa Abascal, even denies the existence of Satan. And that's besides all of the scandal-giving antics of Fr. James Martin and the rest of the order concerning sexual morality. But despite having elevated a number of Jesuits to Cardinal, Francis has avoided disciplining his Jesuit brothers on the (always progressive) heretical fringe. A better pope would know he has to clean his own house first. But I think we know that's the whole point.
Worst of all to me, ecclesial recipients of papal displeasure share in common only that they directly and openly opposed Francis personally. Vigano and Strickland have suffered the most, and to some degree deservedly so (although Strickland seemed to have gotten less due process, and been prosecuted on weaker grounds, than Vigano). Cardinals and bishops who publicly oppose Francis are retired promptly at 75 and hustled out of any position of responsibility or honor, even, in one case, being deprived of a Vatican-provided apartment. (Contrast this with his treatment of useful men; off the top of my head, Cardinals like O'Malley and Gregory are still in high positions well past retirement, and Francis tried hard to do the same with McCarrick.)
Vigano's legacy will suffer for his many outrageous statements in his final years, but his story only seems to highlight Francis' own record, which is even poorer in comparison.
Heresy and schism are two different things. The Pope has shown he's more tolerant of heresy, because that just means that the person rejects Jesus's teachings and wants to fiddle with them to make them more palatable.
A mere bagatelle compared to the lese majeste of rejecting Pope Francis' leadership. Now that's serious </sarc>
Question: how does a trial of such grave matters in absentia comport with the Church's long-standing due process requirements? At least as far back as Gratian, this would have been seen as essential. Was that requirement dropped as part of the codification effort in the early 1900s? As Gratian pointed out, even God used an "in person" trial for Adam despite God's own omniscience making it unnecessary.
Well, the in-person invitation was used to kill a lot of heretics in the pre-Reformation days. There is a reason Martin Luther stopped showing up in Rome. I wonder if somewhere along the way someone historically minded decided it was a mercy, or at least optically necessary, to let them send a representative.
Jan Hus and his guarantee of safe conduct to and from the Council of Constance at which he was soon burned at the stake undoubtedly led to fewer men trusting such guarantees.
Totally ancillary to Vigano's crackpottery, but the Holy See might want to consider renaming "extrajudicial" to something that smacks less of troikas and death squads. Call it an "expedited trial" or something. Just a suggestion.
A good point. But a lot of these troubles are due to the translation into English or some other local language. Finding the perfect term that translates well to every language the Church ministers in is no small feat.
Sure, but in this case, "extrajudicial" derives entirely from Latin, so you can't tell me this is just some unfortunate case of English translation (like how the initials for "Doctor of Sacred Theology" is STD).
Prayers for his return to the Church.
This just in, from the Divine Office today in Universalis, for St John Fisher: "He was the only bishop to oppose Henry VIII’s actions, on the grounds that they were a repudiation of papal authority, but even so he avoided direct confrontation with the other bishops, not holding himself up as a hero or boasting of his coming martyrdom: I condemn no other man’s conscience: their conscience may save them, and mine must save me. We should remember, in all the controversies in which we engage, to treat our opponents as if they were acting in good faith, even if they seem to us to be acting out of spite or self-interest."
Two things can be true:
Several of the Popes allies have to report to law enforcement whenever they have a change of address
Vigano has clearly crossed the line saying the episcopal sees are silent and occupied by apostates.
I might question the optics of the expedited process, but the evidence does seem pretty clear!
Yes, but this is the form of 90% of such cases. It is normative rather than exceptional.
The synodal diplomatic corps… oxymoron?
This should not have been the first article I read on The Pillar this morning. My unwise and shallow sight can't see much good coming from this.
Lord have mercy on all of us, especially me.
I'm tired of paying for these traitors. Good riddance, and I hope more suffer the same fate.
Abp. Viganò has released an English version of his statement at
https://exsurgedomine.it/240620-attendite-eng/
It's sad to see him writing: "No Catholic worthy of the name can be in communion with this 'Bergoglian church'".
Providing more evidence against himself.
Appealing to Lefebvre...bold move. but it sounds like he wants to be in schism.
Well I should have been wondering why I had more (penny-ante) suffering to offer than usual but it seems that I never do wonder this. I will offer it for his repentance.
I say this partly in humor and partly in true curiosity. Do we have confirmation that Vigano is alive and is writing these things himself? Could all these writings be fraudulent from someone posing as Vigano? It is oddly convenient that he is hiding away in an undisclosed location. When was the last time he was seen in public/photographic evidence?
stay tuned. We hope to have some reporting on that soon.
That’s the type of reporting I love from The Pillar! I’m looking forward to it.
I say this mostly in humor and only slightly out of an irrational fear of SkyNet: Could Fr. Justin be posing as Vigano?
😆
Back in the dark days that I was active on Twitter, I seem to remember him, a smattering of seemingly Russia-sympathetic (deliberately or by imprudent association) Catholic academics, another Catholic man whose name I have forgotten, and maybe another archbishop all seemed to participate in an intersecting, increasingly troubling dialogue. I wouldn’t put it past anyone with a deliberate agenda to use anyone else, including a cleric, to achieve it. Not to say the Archbishop isn’t cognizant of and responsible for his own positions, as he certainly seems to be committed to them, but I also wonder if he isn’t the face, wittingly or unwittingly, of a collective narrative as you seem to consider.
Man that would be quite the plot twist.
I'm here for the car chase at the end.
that's what I've been thinking too! It will be interesting if someone appears at the Vatican who looks "like" him but not 100%.
You have to look at the ears.
Does he have really unusual ears? Or just ears in general are unique?
My friend, you need to brush up on your 'replaced by an imposter' Catholic tropes. Start with St Paul VI - a fascinating internet rabbit hole if you have a good sense of perspective and a firm grip on reality.
Wow. What a world we live in now. I had not even thought of this…but now we must make these clarifications….
This is sad that it came to this. A true shame. The badge of honor thing shows obstinacy.
And pride.
Good. About time. Now do Rupnik et al.
Haha yeah the Pillar sure has been silent on Rupnik.
I beg to differ on Rupnik. The Pillar has done lots of excellent reporting on him and how not much has changed regarding his everyday life in Rome.
I could be wrong, but I think Nick was directing this at the Apostolic See, not at us, as we cover Rupnik a pretty good amount.
I know. I was being sarcastic, which I know gets lost in text form.
Thanks Andrew. That sarcasm thing is tricky. I should have figured.
yes...I've started doing a <sarcasm> tag to things. when I remember. which isn't often.
Yes. I'm waiting for the hammer to come down on Rupnik. Why do I think it won't happen? I hope to be surprised.
Well. No hammer, not surprised. Disappointed.
He's not a schismatic, so far as we know. He's maybe a helluva lot of other unpleasant things, but just not a public schismatic.
What am I missing? “Bergolio’s” predecessor was a PERITI at Vatican II - did Vigano not have the stones to taunt him similarly?
Ratzinger had resigned before Vigano started talking.
Also, using a Pope's pre-election name is not an insult in Italy. Probably due to so many Popes coming from Italy that everyone there knew their name before they were elected, and then the custom stuck.
Maybe in academic or highly secular circles that is true, but I’ve never heard serious Italian Catholics call Giovanni XXIII Roncali, or Paolo VI, Montini the way Vigano calls Francis Bergolio. It’s pretty easy to tell Italian popes apart with different names and numbers to keep track of them.
Papa Roncalli, Papa Montini, Papa Woytyla, etc., is a very common Italian way of speaking of the pope, not disrespectful at all. Referring to the current pontiff by his given name, Jorge Maria Bergoglio, with no honorific of any sort, is most likely Viganò’s way of "making a point."
There you go. I have not encountered that phenomenon. That is still different to Vigano. No affectionate ‘Papa’
Papa just means pope.
Papà is “dad” in Italian
Viva il papa!
+Vigano will undoubtedly receive the justice due to him should he be found guilty from the tribunal of the crime of Schism (and the case is heavily against him, to be clear).
But I'll only care about "justice" when the entirety of Germany is placed under interdict (as blanket solution, since the rot in Germany extends beyond bishops to even the laity in leadership roles). Until then, this is only a continuation of the injustice of the two-tiered system of ecclesial governance under +Francis' pontificate. The sun rises, the sun sets. Yawn.
Also, I wonder if a guilty verdict will conveniently be used as some further justification for the upcoming total ban/suppression/abrogation of the TLM in the expected Rome document. Never let a good tragedy go to waste: "Can't you see? We had to totally ban/suppress/abrogate the TLM! We even had to convict a bishop of Schism because of it!"
After 4 years of +Vigano being in utter dissent from the Apostolic See (and almost 10 years of him being a general pain in Rome's tush), a trial/conviction on Schism now - with an expected total suppression of the TLM on the horizon - appears like a correlation.
This is why the interdict is necessary. In Germany's case, it's not just a matter of "bad errant bishops/clergy." Germany has placed a heavy amount of influence and insitutional power in the hands of laity, like the ZDK and the Permanent Synodal Committee. You can't address the problem by only reigning in select clergy, since the power vacuum is already set up to be filled by equally-errant laity. Thus, interdict (which touches the whole population) is appropriate. And also, there is a real sense of bishops being shepherds that guard the flock when the entire sheepfold is now suffering the consequences of their errancy.
In Kerala, the laity have less insitutionalized power, but the laity are equally zealous in the actions of dissent (blocking doors, assaulting people, burning effigies, etc.) and thus an interdict is necessary because the problem is not just the clergy, but extends into the laity.
"Germany has placed a heavy amount of influence and insitutional power in the hands of laity..."
Because the bishops, with influence and power, have done such a great job protecting the laity's children and the laity's money. <eye roll>
I think they're more likely to interdict India than Germany. Less money, fewer connections to Curial officials... and they helpfully say they won't do as they're told, while the Germans waffle around enough to provide plausible deniability to the Vatican. It can be very advantageous to be manipulative rather than frank.
Certainly - and I make no prediction here about the likelihood of german interdict other than “it probably won’t be tomorrow”
If there was ever a time and place in the past 125 years most fitting to impose an interdict on a ecclesial territory, it would be now in Germany and Kerala.
I Germany could be fixed by ending the the religious tax or making it voluntary rather than strictly related to your claimed religion and subject to charges of apostasy, and putting all the dioceses in Germany under the 4 bishops who don't support the Synod and one or two others.
I don't know enough about Kerala to have an opinion.
The Church tax should be given to ZdK. That would let the bishops have any claimed canonical right while giving the laity their proper due.
As far as traditionalists are concerned, Viganò is not a spokesman for the cause; he is at most a latecomer to it.
As far as I can tell, he started by being angry about the incompetence and complicity of the Vatican in dealing with child sex abusers, particularly McCarrick, which seems like a broadly unifying theme. He seems to have proceeded to tack on every other objection to the Vatican that it is possible to have. Which is a long list.
I wouldn't consider him a spokesman for TLMers. Seems to talk a lot more about politics than the Mass or Tradition, although I don't pay much attention so who knows. Perhaps the SSPX does, assuming he doesn't really think the Pope is not the Pope. Or the Benevacantists, if he does.
Does the "local interdict" still exist in Canon Law? I think it may have been removed with the new code, leaving only personal interdicts. I could be wrong.
Well, as we've seen with Pope Francis, "does it exist in canon law" isn't really an obstacle because one motu proprio can adjust canon law.
Is 9 days between citation and appearance a typical timespan? Just saying, there are places where it is practically impossible to get a plane ticket in that time, and many others where it is prohibitively expensive. There's usually more time to get your ducks in a row for a traffic infraction.
Praying and hoping he gets back in the fold.
Vigano may be unwell (if, as someone else posited, he's alive); at the very least he's become something beyond eccentric in his beliefs. Regardless, he's been off the reservation for a long time and has to be curbed.
What's frustrating to me is that there ARE legitimate complaints to be made about PF's governance, implementation of "spirit of Vatican II" etc., but men like Vigano are so far on the fringe that their conduct allows everyone with more moderate conclusions along the same lines to be painted with the same brush.
Jesuits seem to benefit from a blanket exception to church discipline. Marco Rupnik is only the most current and egregious example of Jesuits publicly holding heretical positions. Their superior general, Fr. Arturo Sosa Abascal, even denies the existence of Satan. And that's besides all of the scandal-giving antics of Fr. James Martin and the rest of the order concerning sexual morality. But despite having elevated a number of Jesuits to Cardinal, Francis has avoided disciplining his Jesuit brothers on the (always progressive) heretical fringe. A better pope would know he has to clean his own house first. But I think we know that's the whole point.
Worst of all to me, ecclesial recipients of papal displeasure share in common only that they directly and openly opposed Francis personally. Vigano and Strickland have suffered the most, and to some degree deservedly so (although Strickland seemed to have gotten less due process, and been prosecuted on weaker grounds, than Vigano). Cardinals and bishops who publicly oppose Francis are retired promptly at 75 and hustled out of any position of responsibility or honor, even, in one case, being deprived of a Vatican-provided apartment. (Contrast this with his treatment of useful men; off the top of my head, Cardinals like O'Malley and Gregory are still in high positions well past retirement, and Francis tried hard to do the same with McCarrick.)
Vigano's legacy will suffer for his many outrageous statements in his final years, but his story only seems to highlight Francis' own record, which is even poorer in comparison.
Heresy and schism are two different things. The Pope has shown he's more tolerant of heresy, because that just means that the person rejects Jesus's teachings and wants to fiddle with them to make them more palatable.
A mere bagatelle compared to the lese majeste of rejecting Pope Francis' leadership. Now that's serious </sarc>
Question: how does a trial of such grave matters in absentia comport with the Church's long-standing due process requirements? At least as far back as Gratian, this would have been seen as essential. Was that requirement dropped as part of the codification effort in the early 1900s? As Gratian pointed out, even God used an "in person" trial for Adam despite God's own omniscience making it unnecessary.
Well, the in-person invitation was used to kill a lot of heretics in the pre-Reformation days. There is a reason Martin Luther stopped showing up in Rome. I wonder if somewhere along the way someone historically minded decided it was a mercy, or at least optically necessary, to let them send a representative.
Jan Hus and his guarantee of safe conduct to and from the Council of Constance at which he was soon burned at the stake undoubtedly led to fewer men trusting such guarantees.
Totally ancillary to Vigano's crackpottery, but the Holy See might want to consider renaming "extrajudicial" to something that smacks less of troikas and death squads. Call it an "expedited trial" or something. Just a suggestion.
Administrative sentencing?
A good point. But a lot of these troubles are due to the translation into English or some other local language. Finding the perfect term that translates well to every language the Church ministers in is no small feat.
Sure, but in this case, "extrajudicial" derives entirely from Latin, so you can't tell me this is just some unfortunate case of English translation (like how the initials for "Doctor of Sacred Theology" is STD).