Editor’s Note: Achbishop Viganò has issued a weighty criticism of Bishop Athanasius Schneider’s insistence that one not doubt the validity of Bergoglio’s election. While the Archbishop’s position in this debate is a unique one (as he questions the validity of the consent to accept his election, not the juridical validity of the election in March 2013), his insistence on confronting the objective facts of Bergoglio’s 10 year career of scandal is thoroughly Catholic and totally reasonable. — However, it remains equally untenable that an Archbishop put in doubt the juridical validity of the claim of a man to the Papacy, without insisting that his doubt be heard in a Council to judge the matter, since only the Sacred Hierarchy has the charism to judge the validity of elections. And in this case, that jurisdiction falls properly to the Bishops of the Ecclesiastical Province of Rome, as the Sutri Initiative admits and recognizes.

Full Text of the Archbishop’s public critique of Msgr. Schneider

TRADUCTION FRANÇAISE

In theory, a Pontiff’s governing action remains valid and effective even where a single act may be questionable; but in practice, an unbroken and consistent series of acts blatantly contrary to the purpose for which the Papacy exists demonstrates – not the Pope’s human fallibility in governing decisions (in which he is not infallibly assisted by the Holy Spirit and can therefore err) – but rather the determination to use papal authority and the power that comes with it for subversive purposes: this invalidates the authority itself not only in individual acts, but in their entirety, because it reveals Bergoglio’s mens rea and his incompatibility with the function he holds. This uninterrupted series of acts, contrary to the purpose of the Munus petrinum, which began from his first appearance on the balcony of the Vatican, confirms his defect of consent in the assumption of the Papacy, which Bergoglio intended to use-and still uses-to destroy the Church and damn souls.

Bishop Schneider’s arguments in defense of the thesis that it is preferable to leave the Argentine Jesuit on the Throne rather than recognize the invalidity of his election due to a defect of consent, on the grounds that this would create division in the Church (rectius: the ecclesial body, since the Church is one and indivisible) are completely untenable, because the unity of the Mystical Body – that is, of its members with the Head – is a unity of Charity in Truth, so whoever is not in Truth cannot be in Charity either.

The external evaluation of Bergoglio’s governing action cannot be limited to the critique of individual acts as if each were stand-alone, for the same reason that a sinful action has a different moral weight depending on its episodicity (occasional sin) or conversely on its habit (acquired vice as habitus operativus). The sin of a husband who cheats once on his wife does not have the same gravity as a frequent and habitual uninterrupted repetition of sins of adultery.

The cancer that has spread in the Church since the conciliar revolution and gradually spread in metastasis during the postconciliar years, has now with the Argentine Jesuit completely conquered the highest level. It is precisely this devastating revolutionary process with its fatal outcome in Bergoglio that conservatives like Bishop Schneider do not want to admit, also because it would make responsible for the present situation all the recent Popes who encouraged and determined it in its premises.

This should not be taken to mean that I share the opinions of the Sedevacantists.