Commentary by Br. Alexis Bugnolo

French Translation

Finally, the Archbishop did the decent thing and confronted the canonical problems with Pope Benedict XVI’s renunciation.* In his judgement, it is “clearly invalid” to effect the loss of the office of Pope.

The Archbishop, throughout his interview and the explanation of his viewpoint, still omits the distinction between someone who is a heretic before God and someone whom the Church declares to be a heretic. If one continues to ignore this distinction, one will end up usurping the authority of the Church to put someone outside the Church, as I have said many times. Personally, if our faith persuades us that a certain person is a heretic, we are obliged to avoid him and to denounce him, but we must never take the next step, on our own authority, and say he is not a member of the Church, nor that on our judgement alone he no longer has canonical rights, including the right to hold office or be appointed to an office before the Church has condemned him. Otherwise there would be chaos in the Church and we would fall into the error of Protestants and the Greek Orthodox, who have new and ever newer schisms among themselves unto this very day.

Moreover, how can a man who decries the rape of a woman and molestation of her children, be content to announce this to the world but fail to come to the police station and file criminal charges to identify the culprits? What kind of man would he be? As an Archbishop incardinated in the Vatican his duty is grave and immediate. That is why, it is not enough that he say what he says, he has a most grave obligation to bring a canonical complaint to the competent authorities, which in this case is a Provincial Council in the ecclesiastical province of Rome, or indeed, in any ecclesiastical province.

Because it is no small crime that a man claim the papacy but not have the Catholic Faith or the canonical basis to validly do so. And it is no small danger to the entire Mystical Body throughout the world that such a depraved man’s claim be allowed to tacitly go unchallenged.

All these things Archbishop Viganò will be answerable for before God if he should pass from this life having left undone. And this is why I have been publicly reproving him for his behavior for a long time.

Let us pray, therefore, that all urge the Archbishop to do these things (you can petition him through his website here), and that they urge other Bishops to undertake similar actions as has already been advocated by myself in the Sutri Initiative.

For, if because of my own status as no-one-with-any-more-importance-than-a-layman may have kept others from urging this very course of action, now that this eminent, bold and courageous Archbishop, incardinated at the Vatican has agreed on the fundamental canonical issues (that Pope Francis was NOT canonically elected pope on March 13, 2013, and that he does not appear in the judgement of honest and serious men to hold the Catholic Faith, and that he is destroying the Church), there can be no other course of action for honest Catholics, clerical or lay, than to urge a trial and reprehension of the man, to obtain either his willing deposition or his canoncially valid removal from office on the grounds that he has not the canonical qualifications to claim it).

All other Bishops, who are ordinaries of a  diocese, or hold any office, and indeed all retired Bishops, are also now gravely bound to see this matter resolved canonically. For it is a grave public scandal to the world, and if a Bishop of God has not the integrity of moral character to urge such a thing — an action which risks nothing, since any one of them can do so without taking any side in his appeal other than that the Church resolve such a grave public crisis — of what value is he to Jesus Christ and His Church? — And as a Catholic, YOU personally have the right to tell them this to their faces when you meet them!

Finally, as a postscript, I wish to publicly thank and acclaim Dr. Taylor Marshall for having conducted this interview and published the Archbishop’s responses, especially in those matters contrary to his own habitual positions. This is what Catholic journalists and commentators should be doing, always.

FOOTNOTES

* If you have been a reader of FromRome.Info, you knew the resignation did not cause Pope Benedict XVI to cease being pope at least from 2018, though I have covered this controversy since 2014.