Good Seed Bearing Fruit

Throughout the ages, God has raised up men—learned doctors of the Church who fought against the errors of their times; or sometimes martyrs whose blood injected the Church with renewed life and who inspired the rest of us ordinary Christians with their courage and example.

For the sixty or so years since Vatican II, we have looked for such a man, one who would know the faith as well as any of those wise Church doctors of the past, while possessing the courage of the ancient martyrs to stand up for that faith. Faced with a solid wall of modernist popes, bishops and clergy who contradict and try to destroy everything we believe in, we wondered… will God find such a man, and if so, where?

Even the most conservative churchmen of the Vatican II Church swear their allegiance to a man who is a manifest heretic and usurper of the throne of Peter.  How could any of them be persuaded to see the light and be courageous enough to stand up and denounce Vatican II, all its destructive effects, and the line of popes who followed and promoted it?  And yet, when we look to the traditionalists, we see a dysfunctional pack of warring factions, each with its own defects, ranging from inadequate training and experience to unreliable moral character and uncertain validity.  No wonder then that our disillusioned view of the Church has led us to doubt and even despair.

Then, three or four years ago, there appeared a churchman called Carlo Maria Viganò.  He was very high in the Church’s chain of command, having been in charge of the Vatican Curia for several years and spending several years after that as the Apostolic Nuncio to the United States.  He made waves first by demanding Bergoglio’s resignation over his handling over the McCarrick affair.  He then condemned the Second Vatican Council, explaining how it could not possibly be salvaged in any way, and why the Church must render it null and void.  This was far beyond anything any other bishop had ever said, let alone one so high up in the hierarchy as he was. It was already enough for us to take notice and raise an eyebrow. More recently he has denounced Jorge Bergoglio as not merely a heretic but an apostate and a usurper, one who deliberately sought the papacy in order to destroy the Church from within.  A couple of weeks ago, he even called upon the Vatican’s Swiss Guard to arrest this so-called pope and force him to appear before an ecclesiastical tribunal according to the dictates and requirements of Canon Law.

In short, Archbishop Vigan seems to be a man on whom we can finally rely to be a leader in our times.  It remains to be seen whether he can succeed in leading us out of the mess we’re in, but he certainly seems to be our best chance since the death of Pius XII.  The most important thing is that we not lose sight of the help that God provides at all times to those in need.  In the past few weeks we have compared Archbishop Vigano to St. John the Baptist, a voice crying in the wilderness, and then last week to St. Peter, who repented his earlier denials and went on to be a great martyr.  On this Sunday of Sexagesima, we can note certain similarities between him and St. Paul, especially in the apostle’s “perils by the heathen”, and “perils among false brethren”.  What concerned Paul most, however, was “besides those things that are without, that which cometh upon me daily, the care of all the churches.”  This care for the Church is the driving force behind Archbishop Vigano’s apostolate and we are honoured to be a part of it, no matter how small.  Let’s hope that his work in caring for the Church will be the planting of good seed that will “fall on good ground, spring up and bare fruit an hundredfold.”