An Open Letter to the Scottish Hermits
“excommunicated” on Christmas Day

I have eaten lunch with one of the signers of your letter, if you remember, in the Piazza Navona, back in 2016. So I consider myself obligated in Christ to say something to you, as a fellow hermit.

Your recent letter denouncing Bergoglio was correct in everything but the most important point. You have presumed that Pope Benedict’s renunciation of Feb. 11, 2013 was in accord with canon 332 §2, when I informed you in my last email, before I lost your email when my old computer fried up, that you should read the information about ppbxvi.org.

I cannot find it easy to understand your position, which basically holds that what a single tweet by the ANSA reporter, Giovanna Chirri, said on that fateful day, is more certain than what Christ promised Saint Peter and what the Church taught infallibly at Vatican I on the infallibility of the Roman Pontiff, or even than the certitude of God’s will in adhering to the LETTER of Canon Law, which no one has the right to interpret in any other sense than the letter.

You have instead preferred to break from the See of Rome on account of a man who was never the Roman Pontiff, is a usurper and is rightfully called an Antipope.

Ann Barnhardt does a line by line critique of your letter, and this mind boggling stubbornness of yours, to hold political correctness or human opinion above divine faith.  I personally would never have written so strongly as she has, but having read what she has said, I must say I agree 100% because it is entirely rational, entirely based on the Divine Faith, and entirely in harmony with both Vatican I and the Code of Canon Law.

I humbly suggest, therefore, that you read it.

https://www.barnhardt.biz/2019/12/26/this-is-what-happens-when-you-hold-a-false-base-premise-ignorant-scottish-hermits-sever-communion-with-the-holy-see/

Because outside of the communion and submission to the Apostolic See there is no salvation.

I understand that you may hold fast to the rumor put out by Chirri and all the evil lies of the Revolutionaries who want that tweet to be true, but if you consider men friends who insist Bergoglio is the pope or that a heretic can be the pope, then you need to separate yourselves from their counsel, because it is evil counsel.

In fact, when you take as your truth, not the Gospel nor the laws of the Church, but the statements and assertions of journalists and political correctness, then what you are is not a Catholic, but a modernist, who believes truth changes with the times, and who refuses to apply unchanging principles to judge all things, even alleged papal renunciations.

Sincerely in Saint Francis, a fellow hermit:

Br. Alexis Bugnolo
Rome, Italy
Feast of Saint John the Apostle

P.S. If any reader can send this letter to the HERMITS please do so.  They know I have good will for them, from my past attempts to help them in other affairs.

POSTSCRIPT: Subsequently, the Hermits published statements on radio which so discord with the Catholic Faith, that I have to say that I honestly think they are professing heresy, because they seem to exalt the rights of conscience so much as they deny without shame the indefectibility of the Church and the papacy from which that grace comes, simply because they willfully and without cause refuse to accept the terms of Canon 332 §2 according to the norm of canon 17.  They actually want Bergoglio to be a legitimate pope so they can justify separation. I get the impression that they want to be Greek Orthodox Schismatics, which is very fashionable in the United Kingdom, but at the same time pretend they are Catholics. Let us pray for their souls, because in their present state I cannot see how they can save their souls. The greatest danger of the eremitical life has always been pride, thinking that you are the source of grace apart from the institutional Church. This is a prime example, sadly.