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So, even if there is considerable difference between their respective positions on Vatican II - they both basically agree that its texts have been instrumentalized by those who
believe the Council did establish a 'new church' - not a few of the 'conservative' Catholic names I usually turn to for informative, if not insightful, commentary on the Church,
have been joined by several more to sign an open letter in support of both Mons. Vigano and Mons. Schneider for, in effect, opening up the discussion on
Vatican II afresh, even if, like them and everyone else who abominates the perversion of Vatican II and its consequences for the Church, neither Vigano nor Schneider can
propose any concrete way for anyone to do anything about it, given that the perversions have taken hold of what was once the 'one, holy, catholic and apostolic Church'
up to and including its elected nominal head.
Open Letter to Archbishop Carlo Maria Viganò
and Bishop Athanasius Schneider
July 9, 2020
Your Excellencies:
We the undersigned wish to express our sincere gratitude for your fortitude and care for souls during the ongoing crisis of Faith in the Catholic Church. Your public statements calling for an honest and open discussion of the Second Vatican Council and the dramatic changes in Catholic belief and practice that followed it have been a source of hope and consolation to many faithful Catholics.
The event of the Second Vatican Council appears now more than fifty years after its completion to be unique in the history of the Church. Never before our time has an ecumenical council been followed by such a prolonged period of confusion, corruption, loss of faith, and humiliation for the Church of Christ.
Catholicism has distinguished itself from some false religions by its insistence that Man is a rational creature and that religious belief encourages rather than suppresses critical reflection by Catholics.
Many, including the current Holy Father, appear to place the Second Vatican Council — and its texts, acts, and implementation — beyond the reach of critical analysis and debate. To concerns and objections raised by Catholics of good will, the Council has been held up by some as a “super-council,” (1) the invocation of which ends rather than fosters debate.
Your call to trace the current crisis in the Church to its roots and to call for action to correct any turn taken at Vatican II that is now seen to have been a mistake exemplify the fulfillment of the episcopal office to hand on the Faith as the Church has received it.
We are grateful for your calls for an open and honest debate about the truth of what happened at Vatican II and whether the Council and its implementation contain errors or aspects that favor errors or harm the Faith.
Such a debate cannot start from a conclusion that the Second Vatican Council as a whole and in its parts is per se in continuity with Tradition. Such a pre-condition to a debate prevents critical analysis and argument and only permits the presentation of evidence that supports the conclusion already announced.
Whether or not Vatican II can be reconciled with Tradition is the question to be debated, not a posited premise blindly to be followed even if it turns out to be contrary to reason. The continuity of Vatican II with Tradition is a hypothesis to be tested and debated, not an incontrovertible fact. For too many decades the Church has seen too few shepherds permit, let alone encourage, such a debate.
Eleven years ago, Msgr. Brunero Gherardini had already made a filial request to Pope Benedict XVI: “The idea (which I dare now to submit to Your Holiness) has been in my mind for a long time. It is that a grandiose and if possible final clarification of the last council be given concerning each of its aspects and contents. Indeed, it would seem logical, and it seems urgent to me, that these aspects and contents be studied in themselves and in the context of all the others, with a close examination of all the sources, and from the specific viewpoint of continuity with the preceding Church’s Magisterium, both solemn and ordinary. On the basis of a scientific and critical work—as vast and irreproachable as possible—in comparison with the traditional Magisterium of the Church, it will then be possible to draw matter for a sure and objective evaluation of Vatican II.” (2)
We also are grateful for your initiative in identifying some of the most important doctrinal topics that must be addressed in such a critical examination and for providing a model for frank, yet courteous, debate that can involve disagreement. We have collected from your recent interventions some examples of the topics you have indicated must be addressed and, if found lacking, corrected.
This collection we hope will serve as a basis for further detailed discussion and debate. We do not claim this list to be exclusive, perfect, or complete. We also do not all necessarily agree with the precise nature of each of the critiques quoted below nor on the answer to the questions you raise, yet we are united in the belief that your questions deserve honest answers and not mere dismissals with ad hominem claims of disobedience or breaking with communion. If what each of you claims is untrue, let interlocutors prove it; if not, the hierarchy should give credence to your claims.
Religious Liberty for All Religions
as a Natural Right Willed by God
Bishop Schneider:
1) “Examples include certain expressions of the Council on the topic of religious freedom (understood as a natural right, and therefore positively willed by God, to practice and spread a false religion, which may also include idolatry or even worse)....” (3)
2) “Unfortunately, just a few sentences later, the Council [in Dignitatis Humanae] undermines this truth by setting forth a theory never before taught by the constant Magisterium of the Church, i.e., that man has the right founded in his own nature, ‘not to be prevented from acting in religious matters according to his own conscience, whether privately or publicly, whether alone or in association with others, within due limits’ (ut in re religiosa neque impediatur, quominus iuxta suam conscientiam agat privatim et publice, vel solus vel aliis consociatus, intra debitos limites, n. 2). According to this statement, man would have the right, based on nature itself (and therefore positively willed by God) not to be prevented from choosing, practicing and spreading, also collectively, the worship of an idol, and even the worship of Satan, since there are religions that worship Satan, for instance, the ‘church of Satan.’ Indeed, in some countries, the ‘church of Satan’ is recognized with the same legal value as all other religions.” (4)
The Identity of the Church of Christ
with the Catholic Church and the New Ecumenism
Bishop Schneider:
1) “[Its [the Council’s] distinction between the Church of Christ and the Catholic Church (the problem of “subsistit in” gives the impression that two realities exist: the one side, the Church of Christ, and on the other, the Catholic Church); and its stance towards non-Christian religions and the contemporary world.” (5)
2) “To state that Muslims adore together with us the one God (“nobiscum Deum adorant”), as the II Vatican Council did in Lumen Gentium n. 16, is theologically a highly ambiguous affirmation. That we Catholics adore with the Muslims the one God is not true. We do not adore with them. In the act of adoration, we always adore the Holy Trinity, we do not simply adore “the one God” but, rather, the Holy Trinity consciously — Father, Son, and Holy Ghost.
Islam rejects the Holy Trinity. When the Muslims adore, they do not adore on the supernatural level of faith. Even our act of adoration is radically different. It is essentially different. Precisely because we turn to God and adore Him as children who are constituted within the ineffable dignity of divine filial adoption, and we do this with supernatural faith. However, the Muslims do not have supernatural faith.” (6)
Archbishop Viganò:
“We know well that, invoking the saying in Scripture Littera enim occidit, spiritus autem vivificat [The letter brings death, but the spirit gives life (2 Cor 3:6)], the progressives and modernists astutely knew how to hide equivocal expressions in the conciliar texts, which at the time appeared harmless to most but that today are revealed in their subversive value.
It is the method employed in the use of the phrase subsistit in: saying a half-truth not so much as not to offend the interlocutor (assuming that it is licit to silence the truth of God out of respect for His creature), but with the intention of being able to use the half-error that would be instantly dispelled if the entire truth were proclaimed. Thus, “Ecclesia Christi subsistit in Ecclesia Catholica” does not specify the identity of the two, but the subsistence of one in the other and, for consistency, also in other churches: here is the opening to interconfessional celebrations, ecumenical prayers, and the inevitable end of any need for the Church in the order of salvation, in her unicity, and in her missionary nature.” (7)
Papal Primacy and the New Collegiality
Bishop Schneider:
“For example, the very fact that a ‘nota explicativa praevia’ to the document Lumen Gentium was needed shows that the text of Lumen Gentium, in n. 22, is ambiguous with regard to the topic of the relationship between papal primacy and episcopal collegiality. Documents clarifying the Magisterium in post-conciliar times, such as the encyclicals Mysterium Fidei, Humanae Vitae, and Pope Paul VI’s Creed of the People of God, were of great value and help, but they did not clarify the aforementioned ambiguous statements of the Second Vatican Council.” (8)
The Council and Its Texts are the Cause
of Many Current Scandals and Errors
Archbishop Viganò:
1) “If the pachamama could be adored in a church, we owe it to Dignitatis Humanae. If we have a liturgy that is Protestantized and at times even paganized, we owe it to the revolutionary action of Msgr. Annibale Bugnini and to the post-conciliar reforms. If the Abu Dhabi Declaration was signed, we owe it to Nostra Aetate. If we have come to the point of delegating decisions to the Bishops’ Conferences – even in grave violation of the Concordat, as happened in Italy – we owe it to collegiality, and to its updated version, synodality.
Thanks to synodality, we found ourselves with Amoris Laetitia having to look for a way to prevent what was obvious to everyone from appearing: that this document, prepared by an impressive organizational machine, intended to legitimize Communion for the divorced and cohabiting, just as Querida Amazonia will be used to legitimize women priests (as in the recent case of an ‘episcopal vicaress’ in Freiburg) and the abolition of Sacred Celibacy.” (9)
2) “But if at the time it could be difficult to think that a religious liberty condemned by Pius XI (Mortalium Animos) could be affirmed by Dignitatis Humanae, or that the Roman Pontiff could see his authority usurped by a phantom episcopal college, today we understand that what was cleverly concealed in Vatican II is today affirmed ore rotundo in papal documents precisely in the name of the coherent application of the Council.” (10)
3) “We can thus affirm that the spirit of the Council is the Council itself, that the errors of the post-conciliar period were contained in nuce in the Conciliar Acts, just as it is rightly said that the Novus Ordo is the Mass of the Council, even if in the presence of the Council Fathers the Mass was celebrated that the progressives significantly call pre-conciliar.” (11)
Bishop Schneider:
“For anyone who is intellectually honest, and is not seeking to square the circle, it is clear that the assertion made in Dignitatis Humanae, according to which every man has the right based on his own nature (and therefore positively willed by God) to practice and spread a religion according to his own conscience, does not differ substantially from the statement in the Abu Dhabi Declaration, which says: ‘The pluralism and the diversity of religions, color, sex, race and language are willed by God in His wisdom, through which He created human beings. This divine wisdom is the source from which the right to freedom of belief and the freedom to be different derives.’” (12)
We have taken note of the differences you have highlighted between the solutions each of you has proposed for responding to the crisis precipitated at and following the Second Vatican Council.
For example, Archbishop Viganò has argued it would be better to altogether “forget” the Council, while Bishop Schneider, disagreeing with him on this specific point, proposes officially to correct only those parts of the Council documents that contain errors or that are ambiguous. Your courteous and respectful exchange of opinions should serve as a model for the more robust debate that you and we desire.
Too often these past fifty years disagreements about Vatican II have
been challenged by mere ad hominem attacks rather than calm argumentation. We urge all who will join this debate to follow your example.
We pray that Our Blessed Mother, St. Peter the Prince of the Apostles, St. Athanasius, and St. Thomas Aquinas protect and preserve your Excellencies. May they reward you for your faithfulness to the Church and confirm you in your defense of the Faith and of the Church.
In Christo Rege, (signed)
Donna F. Bethell, J.D.
Prof. Dr Brian McCall
Paul A. Byrne, M.D.
Edgardo J. Cruz-Ramos, President Una Voce Puerto Rico
Dr Massimo de Leonardis, Professor (ret.) of History of International Relations
Prof. Roberto de Mattei, President of the Lepanto Foundation
Fr Jerome W. Fasano
Mauro Faverzani, journalist
Timothy S. Flanders, author and founder of a lay apostolate
Matt Gaspers, Managing Editor, Catholic Family News
Corrado Gnerre, leader of the Italian movement “Il Cammino dei Tre Sentieri”
M. Virginia O. de Gristelli, Director of C. F. S.Bernardo de Claraval, Argentina
Jorge Esteban Gristelli, editor, Argentina
Dr Maria Guarini STB, editor of the website Chiesa e postconcilio
Kennedy Hall, book author
Prof. Dr em. Robert D. Hickson
Prof. Dr.rer.nat. Dr.rer.pol. Rudolf Hilfer, Stuttgart, Germany
Rev. John Hunwicke, Senior Research Fellow Emeritus, Pusey House, Oxford
Prof. Dr Peter Kwasniewski
Leila M. Lawler, writer
Pedro L. Llera Vázquez, school headmaster and author at InfoCatólica
James P. Lucier PhD
Massimo Magliaro, journalist, Editor of "Nova Historica"
Antonio Marcantonio, MA
Dr Taylor Marshall, author of Infiltration: The Plot to Destroy the Church from Within
The Reverend Deacon, Eugene G. McGuirk
Fr Michael McMahon Prior St. Dennis Calgary
Fr Cor Mennen
Fr Michael Menner
Dr Stéphane Mercier, Ph.D., S.T.B.
Hon. Andrew P. Napolitano, Senior Judicial Analyst, Fox News; Visiting Professor of Law, Hofstra University
Fr Dave Nix, Diocesan Hermit
Prof. Paolo Pasqualucci
Fr Dean Perri
Dr Carlo Regazzoni, Philosopher of Culture, Therwill, Switzerland
Fr Luis Eduardo Rodríguez Rodríguez
Don Tullio Rotondo
John F. Salza, Esq., Catholic Attorney and Apologist
Wolfram Schrems, Wien, Mag. theol., Mag. Phil., catechist
Henry Sire, historian and book author
Robert Siscoe, author
Jeanne Smits, journalist
Dr. sc. Zlatko Šram, Croatian Center for Applied Social Research
Fr Glen Tattersall, Parish Priest, Parish of St John Henry Newman (Melbourne, Australia)
Marco Tosatti, journalist
Giovanni Turco, Adjunct Professor of Philosophy of Public Law at the University of Udine (Italy)
Jose Antonio Ureta
Aldo Maria Valli, journalist
Dr Thomas Ward, President of the National Association of Catholic Families
John-Henry Westen, co-founder and editor-in-chief LifeSiteNews.com
Willy Wimmer, Secretary of State, Ministry of Defense (ret.)
With all due respect, I am not aware that any opinions about Vatican II published or pronounced by any of the signatories to the letter were ever suppressed or not allowed to be made public.
Books have been written against Vatican II, in toto or the erroneous parts of it, and were never suppressed or censored. In fact, free discussion of Vatican II has been taking place all along since the Council ended, except that the objectors have almost always failed to keep up their campaign other than intermittent spurts of 'activism' such as that we are currently experiencing.
It is disingenuous, if not dishonest, for all these earnest good-faith-in-every-sense Catholics to now claim as they do in their open letter that "Too often these past fifty years disagreements about Vatican II have been challenged by mere ad hominem attacks rather than calm argumentation. We urge all who will join this debate to follow your example."
What they fail to point out is that in addition to any ad hominem attacks that may have been made in response to expressed criticism, anti-'spirit of Vatican II' books and articles have been largely ignored by the other side rather than answered - the very modus operandi of the arch maximum exponent of Vatican-II perversions, Jorge Bergoglio, in ignoring the DUBIA altogether and the miscellaneous open letters and petitions addressed to him online (and by snail mail, as well, I am sure) and signed by most of the signatories of this new letter, to mend his anti-Church, even anti-Christian ways and start being truly Catholic, instead.
The second statement I respectully wish to dispute in the open letter is what it says about "the solutions each of you has proposed for responding to the crisis precipitated at and following the Second Vatican Council." Excuse me? What solutions, exactly? Viganò's proposal to simply 'forget' the Council is obviously impossible because it has already left a tsunami of Church wreckage in its wake, else no one would even bother debating the Council at all! And Schneider's stabs at 'corrections' are clearly impracticable, else many good men in the Church would have undertaken them already.
And what is it, if any, that signatories of the letter and preceding petitions against the heresies of Bergoglianism - like De Mattei (who has written a whole book and countless articles in the past two decades against Vatican II, which he does with some regularity, unlike all the others, including Schneider, and certainly unlike Carlo-come-lately-to-the-debate, who admits that until recently, he was like most Catholics who simply swallowed Vatican II hook, line and sinker) - have managed to propose as solutions?
Really nothing, unless to agree tacitly that there is currently no entity, individual or group of individuals in any position to actually do something to correct Vatican-II errors! If the elected nominal head of 'the church' sees nothing but good-better-best in the effects of the Vatican II perversions on 'the church'- and probably the majority of bishops and priests today are with him on this - what use could there be for whatever an 'imperfect council', such as advocated by some of the Vigano-Schneider supporters, could declare? Perhaps the reason no one has even begun to recruit participants for such a council is the very idea that it would be nothing more than token and 'for the record only', so why bother? Quixote battling windmills long after they had wrought their havoc!
The only thing that sincere denouncers of the Vatican II perversions can do is to work, brick by brick as Fr Z likes to say, so that as many cardinals, bishops, priests, deacons, and laymen who feel strongly about it, do their part - unrelentingly, prayerfully and with God's guidance - to obey and carry out, uphold and promote what the Church has always taught.
If this strategy/tactic has worked with Summorum Pontificum, why not with the rest of the Vatican II errors, one by one? At least, until another pope and/or ecumenical Council formally (by canon law) correct the most glaring and anti-Catholic of its specific errors?
I give the current spurt of anti-Vatican II animus a shelf life of another 4 weeks at the most, if that. Then we will have another hiatus until the next spurt.
The Open Letter gambit has sort of elbowed Sandro Magister out of the current Vatican-II brouhaha, since he was the single voice who disputed Viganò's tract, going so far as to say his tract placed him 'on the verge of schism'. In a blogpost the day 2 days before the new Open Letter was published, he also had Mons. Schneider in his sights. Unfortunately, he misuses the overworked phrase 'fake news' to describe some of the questionable premises and/or downright erroneous historical data ('fake premises' and 'fake history' are perhaps more accurate to say) that Vigano and Schneider use in their statements about Vatican II.
Cardinal Brandmueller corrects historical 'facts'
presented by Mons. Schneider about past councils
by Sandro Magiter
July 13, 2020
On the serious case of Archbishop Carlo Maria Viganò the Holy See is keeping quiet. Not a word from the congregation appointed to watch over the "doctrine of the faith.” Not a word from Pope Francis, whose original mandate, as the successor of Peter, is to strengthen his brothers in the faith.
The calculation underlying this silence is plausibly that of letting Viganò go adrift, alone or nearly so.
In effect, since he has lashed out against Vatican II as a hotbed of heresies, maintaining that it would be best to "drop it 'in toto' and forget it,” the buffer of support around the former apostolic nuncio to the United States has been shrinking. [I think Viganò lost much more sympathy because of his Open Letter to President Trump - being an overt politically partisan move - than he did with his tract on Vatican II.]
Viganò reached the apogee of his media success on June 6 with his open letter to Donald Trump, "son of light" against the power of darkness, and with the enthusiastic response of the American president in a tweet that went viral.
But back then the themes were different, more political than doctrinal. They were the ones presented in the previous appeal launched by Viganò on May 8 against - according to him - the "New World Order" of Masonic stamp pursued by those "nameless and faceless" powers that are bending to their own interests even the coronavirus pandemic.
After that of Viganò, three cardinals and eight bishops added their signatures to that appeal. But if today he were to launch another appeal for banning the whole of Vatican Council II, perhaps even among those eleven no one would be found willing to sign it. [Well, others did line up in support of Vigano's contribution to the nth 're-opening' of the Vatican-II wars.]
Among the members of the Church hierarchy the one closest to Viganò’s positions appears to be Athanasius Schneider, auxiliary bishop of Astana in Kazakhstan.
In fact, it was one of Schneider's own writings, published on June 6, that gave Viganò his opening to lash out from that point on against Vatican Council II.
With the difference that while Schneider was asking that the individual errors of doctrine contained in conciliar documents be "corrected,” particularly in the declarations "Dignitatis Humanae" on religious freedom and "Nostra Aetate" on the relationship with non-Christian religions, Viganò, in a text published on June 9 and then in all of his subsequent texts, goes on to claim that it is the whole of Vatican II that must be scrapped.
To be precise, this is the formulation that Viganò has given to his thesis, in one of his latest statements, dated July 4, in response to questions from the editor of "LifeSite News,” John H. Westen:
“Anyone with common sense can see that it is an absurdity to want to interpret a Council, since it is and ought to be a clear and unequivocal norm of Faith and Morals. Secondarily, if a magisterial act raises serious and reasoned arguments that it may be lacking in doctrinal coherence with magisterial acts that have preceded it, it is evident that the condemnation of a single heterodox point in any case discredits the entire document.
If we add to this the fact that the errors formulated or left obliquely to be understood between the lines are not limited to one or two cases, and that the errors affirmed correspond conversely to an enormous mass of truths that are not confirmed, we can ask ourselves whether it may be right to expunge the last assembly from the catalog of canonical Councils. The sentence will be issued by history and by the ‘sensus fidei’ of the Christian people even before it is given by an official document.”
If this rejection by Viganò of the whole of Vatican Council II is not a schismatic act, it is undoubtedly on the brink. But who among the bishops and cardinals will want to follow him? Probably no one.
Getting back to Bishop Schneider, it must be said that even some of his arguments appear fragile to those who have a passing familiarity with doctrine and the history of dogma.
His thesis is that already at other times in history the Church has corrected doctrinal errors, some them serious, committed in previous ecumenical councils, without thereby "undermining the foundations of the Catholic faith.” And therefore it should do the same today with the heterodox statements of Vatican II.
In a statement on June 24 Schneider offered two examples of doctrinal errors that were corrected later.
The first attributed to the Council of Constance:
“With a Bull in 1425, Martin V approved the decrees of the Council of Constance and even the decree ‘Frequens’ — from the 39th session of the Council (in 1417). This decree affirmed the error of conciliarism, i.e., the error that a Council is superior to a Pope. However, in 1446, his successor, Pope Eugene IV, declared that he accepted the decrees of the Ecumenical Council of Constance, except those (of sessions 3 - 5 and 39) which ‘prejudice the rights and primacy of the Apostolic See’ (absque tamen praeiudicio iuris, dignitatis et praeeminentiae Sedis Apostolicae). Vatican I’s dogma on papal primacy then definitively rejected the conciliarist error of the Ecumenical Council of Constance.”
2he second attributed to the Council of Florence:
“An opinion different from what the Council of Florence taught on the matter of the Sacrament of Orders, i.e. the ‘traditio instrumentorum’, was allowed in the centuries following this Council, and led to Pope Pius XII’s pronouncement in the 1947 Apostolic Constitution ‘Sacramentum Ordinis’, whereby he corrected the non-infallible teaching of the Council of Florence, by stating that the only matter strictly necessary for the validity of the Sacrament of Orders is the imposition of hands by the bishop.
By this act, Pius XII did not implement a hermeneutic of continuity but, indeed, a correction, because the Council of Florence’s doctrine in this matter did not reflect the constant liturgical doctrine and practice of the universal Church. Already in the year 1914, Cardinal W.M. van Rossum wrote concerning the Council of Florence’s affirmation on the matter of the Sacrament of Orders, that this doctrine of the Council is reformable and must even be abandoned (cf. ‘De essentia sacramenti ordinis’, Freiburg 1914, p. 186). And so, there was no room for a hermeneutic of continuity in this concrete case.”
It is not surprising that when reading these lines a distinguished historian of the Church such as Cardinal Walter Brandmüller, president from 1998 to 2009 of the Pontifical Committee for Historical Sciences, should have been taken aback by the errors contained therein and evident to him.
He therefore sent Schneider a quick summary of the inaccuracies. Which he then put in writing in this note received by Settimo Cielo:
[Mons. Schneider writes: “The Council of Constance (1415-1418) put an end to the schism that had divided the Church for forty years. In that context, it has often been stated - and recently repeated - that this council, with the decrees 'Haec sancta' and 'Frequens’, defined conciliarism, the superiority of the council over the pope."
But this is not true at all. The assembly that issued those decrees was by no means an ecumenical council authorized to define the doctrine of the faith. It was instead an assembly of none but the followers of John XXIII (Baldassarre Cossa), one of the three 'popes' who were contending at that time over the leadership of the Church. That assembly had no authority.
The schism lasted until the assembly of Constance was joined by the other two parties as well, meaning the followers of Gregory XII (Angelo Correr) and the 'natio hispanica' of Benedict XIII (Pedro Martinez de Luna), which happened in the autumn of 1417. Only from that moment on did the 'council' of Constance become a true ecumenical council, albeit still without the pope who was eventually elected.
So all the proceedings of that first 'incomplete' phase of the council and its documents did not have the slightest canonical value, although they were effective at the political level in those circumstances. After the end of the council the new and only legitimate pope, Martin V, confirmed the documents issued by the 'incomplete' pre-conciliar assembly, except for 'Haec sancta’, 'Frequens’, and 'Quilibet tyrannus'.
'Frequens’, valid because it had been issued by the three former factions in concert, did not require confirmation. But it does not teach conciliarism at all, nor is it a doctrinal document, but simply regulates the frequency of the convening of councils.
As for the Council of Florence (1439-1445), it is true that in the decree 'Pro Armenis' it affirmed that in order for priestly ordination to be valid this required the 'porrectio instrumentorum’, meaning the conferral of the instruments of his office upon the one ordained.
And it is true that Pius XII in the apostolic constitution 'Sacramentum Ordinis' established that for the future this would no longer be necessary, and declared as the matter of the sacrament the 'manus impositio' and as its form the 'verba applicationem huius materiae determinantia'.
But the Council of Florence, regarding priestly ordination, did not deal with doctrine at all. It only regulated the liturgical rite. And it must be remembered that it is always the Church that orders the ritual form of the sacraments.”
That does it for Cardinal Brandmüller's memo on the “fake news” in Mons. Schneider's contestation of Vatican II.
It is striking that, at 91, Brandmüller should be the only cardinal who is raising an articulate critical voice against the latest ipisode of anti-Vatican II denunciations.
Likewise striking is the silence on the Viganò case of another cardinal who is habitually very combative and vocal, Gerhard L. Müller, former prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, and therefore expected to be quite sensitive to such questions.
Unfortunately, however, Müller is also one of the three cardinals who signed Viganò's political manifesto of May 8 against the "New World Order.” [The third is HonKong's Emeritus Cardinal Zen.] Is it perhaps because of this careless antecedent that he now feels obligated to keep quiet?
Full text of the May 8 'manifesto' - formally designated an 'appeal' - and its original 80 signatories:
www.ncregister.com/blog/edward-pentin/four-cardinals-several-bishops-sign-appeal-against-coronavirus-rest...
For some reason, I practically ignored the aforementioned May 8 'manifesto' by Mons. Viganò, posting only on the minor row occasioned afterwards by Cardinal Sarah's unfortunate change of mind about signing the petition and then withdrawing his signature because he thought he shouldn't have signed, being a member of the Roman Curia (even if he tweeted, after being reproved by Viganò for withdrawing his signature, that "I fully accept my choice").
The appeal argues that the unprecedented quasi-totalitarian infringement of personal liberties with Covid-9 pandemic as the pretext was the prelude to 'the realization of a new world government behyond any control". In the process, it also argues against the complete validity or truth of the supposedly scientific and health-protective reasons given for the forced regimentation of the global lockdown.
Many of the signatories to Vigano's May 9 appeal are also signatories of the Open Letter in support of him and Schneider.
[Modificato da TERESA BENEDETTA 16/07/2020 10:00]
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