Archbishop Carlo Maria Viganò: I invite everyone to meditate on this excellent article.
As the date of July 1, 2026, approaches, the ecclesial climate is becoming increasingly heated. The announcement of the upcoming episcopal consecrations at the seminary of the Priestly Fraternity of Saint Pius X in Écône has, predictably, unleashed a flurry of reactions, attacks, and attempts at mediation that, far from clarifying the situation, only confirm the depth of the abyss into which the Church finds itself. These reactions culminated in Pope Leo’s speech on Tuesday evening (June 16) at Castel Gandolfo. Called upon to speak on the Fraternity, the Pontiff delivered a performance so superficial it made one’s wrists tremble: “We invited them, and I am still considering whether to launch another appeal, saying: ‘Don’t do it. Let us try to live in communion within the Church.’ But the choice is theirs. We must realize what this means for them and for the Church. Certainly, division among Christians is always something painful. However, they refuse to accept some fundamental elements of the Church, starting with several points of the Second Vatican Council. If they make this choice, I’m sorry, but we must move forward.”
Faced with such vacuity, a pressing question arises: what, exactly, must be believed so that the stigma of exclusion does not also strike those who, while not belonging to the SSPX, continue to profess themselves Catholic? The Pontiff brandishes “various points of the Council” like a cleaver, but is unable—or unwilling—to say which ones. The Church, in its millennia-old wisdom, has always distinguished between dogmas of faith, definitive doctrines, and authentic magisterium. Now, suddenly, the hierarchy would like to impose an indistinct conciliar cauldron as the criterion of orthodoxy. So, let us question this new tribunal of the reverse Inquisition : must we perhaps give Lumen Gentium the same assent of faith that we owe to the divinity of Our Lord Jesus Christ? Is adherence to Dignitatis Humanae and Unitatis Redintegratio perhaps bound by a need for salvation equal to that for the Immaculate Conception and the Assumption into Heaven, body and soul, of the Blessed Virgin Mary? If religious freedom and ecumenism belong to the deposit of revealed Truth, may the Pope indicate to us—on which page, in which line, in which dogmatic pronouncement—these doctrines have been defined as such. The paradox reaches its peak when one attempts to impose not only the text, but a specific interpretation. If the continuity of Vatican II requires a complete exegetical theory, a mammoth hermeneutic to prevent it from collapsing under the weight of contradictions with the past, how can the Pontiff so arrogance maintain that the meaning of the documents is so evident that it can be brandished as a criterion for excommunication? If a document must be “explained” to avoid appearing heretical, then it is itself, by its very nature, Ambiguous . And ambiguity cannot be the cornerstone of ecclesial communion. While Leo pays homage to the (fake) Anglican bishop and winks at the Communist-appointed bishops, his “we must move forward” sounds like a threat. Where, we ask ourselves, are we going? Toward a “Church” that, having traded the Kingship of Christ for dialogue with error, has nothing left to offer but its own dissolution?
In any case, the debate is no longer limited to sterile corridor polemics, but has inevitably shifted to the doctrinal and canonical plane, where positions appear increasingly irreconcilable. On the one hand, we witness frontal attacks that, brandishing jurisdiction as a weapon of mass destruction, do not hesitate to cry schism rather than address the tragedy of the state of necessity. On the other, attempts at “reconciliation” are emerging that, through convoluted exercises in hermeneutics, seek to force the Second Vatican Council into the fold of Tradition, ignoring the reality of a post-conciliar practice that, in fact, has already abundantly betrayed the perennial Magisterium.
This is the case, respectively, of Eamonn Clark’s article, “My Will Be Done”: on the Episcopal Consecrations of the SSPX , and Walker Larson’s examination, ” Finding Common Ground Between Rome and the Society of Saint Pius X. ” Both texts, although starting from different angles—one markedly hostile, the other avowedly conciliatory—reveal the same inability to look at the crisis with a Catholic eye, preferring to take refuge in blind legalism or an illusion of continuity that finds no reflection in the life of the Church.
We cannot allow these operations to go unnoticed. It is our duty to dismantle this scaffolding of errors piece by piece.
Part I: Legalism Versus Faith. The Eamonn Clark Case
The article by Eamonn Clark, STL at the Pontifical University of St. Thomas Aquinas, is a document that deserves attention not for its theological depth, but for its emblematic representation of post-conciliar neoclericalism .
Clark argues that the current crisis is not unique, but a perennial condition of the Church Militant. Comparing the current moment to the time of Qoheleth, the author downplays the post-conciliar doctrinal and liturgical drama, reducing it to just one of many historical vicissitudes. This thesis is disturbing in its banality: since the Church has always been in crisis, today’s crisis would justify nothing!
This position reveals the method of historical relativism applied to supernatural life. Clark confuses the objective difficulty of living in a fallen world (specific to every age) with the internal crisis of the hierarchy that affects the common good of the Church (Faith and Worship) and the purpose of the Church: the salvation of souls. We are not faced with a crisis of “unworthy” leaders, but a crisis that affects the very instruments of salvation. If the Liturgy no longer transmits the doctrine of the Sacrifice and if doctrine (religious freedom, ecumenism, etc.) is in open rupture with the past, the faithful’s “right to salvation” cannot be sacrificed on the altar of a juridical positivism that ignores the real danger to souls. The heart of Clark’s polemic revolves around the accusation of schism linked to episcopal consecrations. The author argues that the episcopate today (that is, after Vatican II!) implies a “potential” jurisdiction such that exercising it without a mandate constitutes a violation of the law. in itself a schismatic act, since the Pope holds the supreme power to regulate the selection of collaborators (for the refutation of this position see here ).
Here Clark stumbles into a voluntaristic vision of authority, forgetting that ecclesiastical law exists for the good of souls ( Salus animarum suprema lex ). The SSPX does not claim ordinary jurisdiction (which belongs to the Pope), but invokes substitution of jurisdiction in a state of necessity. When authority, while existing, uses its power to impede supernatural life—by prohibiting the Mass of All Time or sanctioning those who defend it—the Church itself provides the principle of substitution (canons 1323 and 1324 of the 1983 Code, similar to 1917) to prevent the faithful from being abandoned. This is not an act against the Papacy, but an act for the survival of the Church.
Clark seems to almost absolutize the power of the Roman Pontiff, making it an end in itself, detached from its primary purpose: the defense of the Depositum Fidei . This is a non-Catholic view of obedience. St. Thomas Aquinas teaches that obedience is a moral virtue guided by prudence and subordinate to the Faith. There is no obedience that can be legitimately given to a command that endangers the salvation of souls or the purity of dogma. Clark forgets that the Pope is not an absolute monarch who can invent a new religion; he is the Vicar of Christ, bound by Tradition. True disobedience comes from those who betray the sacred deposit, not from those who remain faithful to it.
Finally, Clark indulges in a fatalistic consideration: God will save the Church independently of the Society, which should therefore “keep its head down” as many priests do in the Novus Ordo . This is an apologia for conformism. The invitation to “keep your head down” in the face of disaster, in the name of alleged obedience, is in reality an invitation to desert the battlefield. Jonah, recalled by the author himself, was saved not by his formal obedience, but by having finally fulfilled his prophetic mission.
Clark’s fundamental limitation is his inability to distinguish between the papal institution (which we defend) and the current line of conduct (which, if it breaks with Tradition, cannot be followed). The Society does not seek to “resolve the crisis” by its own efforts, nor does it seek to “do its own will”; it seeks only the will of God, expressed for twenty centuries by the Magisterium.
Clark’s contribution is an exercise in willful blindness, an attempt to cover the wounds of the Mystical Body with the jurist’s robe. But history, and especially Divine Judgment, do not stop before canonical formalism when it is wielded to deny the Truth. The SSPX will not be judged for resisting a contingent order that emptied the Faith, but for preserving, in the midst of the storm, the Holy Mass and the Catholic priesthood.
Part II: The Deception of Hermeneutics. Larson’s Unrealistic Attempt
If Eamonn Clark’s article presents itself as a legalistic axe, Walker Larson’s, ” Finding Common Ground Between Rome and the Society of Saint Pius X ,” dons the reassuring mask of a peacemaker. The author attempts a “diplomatic ecumenism”: animated by good intentions, he seeks to compose a puzzle whose pieces have irreconcilable forms, forcing them to fit together through a hermeneutic reinterpretation. Larson’s insurmountable limit is the claim that the Second Vatican Council and its reforms can be saved through the classic “hermeneutic of continuity,” which, in fact, does not exist. The author climbs up every wall to demonstrate that Marian affirmations, concepts of salvation, or the nature of the Church are “almost identical” between Tradition and Rome.
He commits a fundamental error of abstraction: he confuses the text —which he seeks to interpret in a Catholic light—with the Church’s experience (practice and magisterium). Larson cites Dignitatis Humanae or subsistit in as academic exercises, removing them from their historical context and real-world application. It is irrelevant whether a private theologian can find a reading of these documents compatible with the Syllabus of Pius IX: the reality is that the reigning Pope, the world episcopate, and the episcopal conferences interpret these texts in diametrically opposed ways. If “continuity” were real, the life of the Church would not have changed so radically. The very fact that Vatican II must be “interpreted” to save it from its ambiguity is proof that the problem lies in a real rupture within the documents.
Larson makes an arbitrary selection (the so-called cherry-picking ), comparing Father Pagliarani’s “Declaration of Faith” to some current documents. When Rome speaks of the Blessed Virgin Mary or the necessity of the Church, it uses terms that seem similar to those of Tradition, but it places them within an ecclesiological framework (that of the horizontal people of God ) that empties of meaning the social Kingship of Christ and the uniqueness of the true Church of Christ, which is the Roman Catholic Church.
The SSPX seeks not only “points of convergence” or a “lowest common denominator,” but the integrity of the profession of Faith. To accept common ground based on verbal ambiguities is to betray the mission of bearing witness to the entire Truth . Agreement on an isolated phrase does not erase the fundamental error that permeates the entire structure of the new theology. There is no common ground between the affirmation that the State must submit to Christ the King and the practice of the hierarchy promoting the secular State; there is no common ground between the Mass as a propitiatory Sacrifice and its reduction to a paschal banquet.
The Church is not a dialectic of opinions to be pacified, but the Bride of Christ to be defended. Tradition is not “one of the possible interpretations” of Vatican II; it is the norm that judges the Council. If Larson’s interpretation were the correct one for the Church, then the Church would have to daily contradict the practice of its pastors. Since post-conciliar practice (ecumenism, religious freedom as a subjective right, synodality) is the acid test of the hierarchy’s interpretation of the Council, it follows that that is the doctrine actually proposed.
Larson seems to want to “save” today’s Church, almost dreaming of a nonexistent continuity. The Fraternity, however, observes reality: the conflict is not between two interpretations, but between the Faith of all time and the new things introduced.
Larson’s attempt is dangerous because it entertains the idea that, with some terminological “clarification,” the crisis can vanish. This is the classic logic of doctrinal compromises that Archbishop Lefebvre rejected: reconciliation is desired without the Hierarchy’s conversion to Tradition. The common ground Larson seeks is not the Truth, but an accommodation that would leave intact the errors that are destroying souls.
The Church is not supported by a private exegesis of the conciliar texts, but by the constant and unchanging preaching of the Gospel. The very fact that Larson has to write a long article explaining that “the same thing is said in different words” is clear proof that Vatican II introduced a new language, foreign to the Church. The Society does not need “common ground” to be Catholic: it is enough to remain what the Church has always been.
Conclusion
Before pointing the finger at Archbishop Marcel Lefebvre, anyone who claims to be “Catholic” should ask themselves a simple question: where would the Mass of All Time and the Catholic priesthood be today if, in 1988, the Archbishop had chosen the path of compromise? The answer is terrifyingly clear: they would have disappeared. The Mass of All Time would have become, at best, a museum exhibit for a few nostalgic scholars.
All those who today fill their mouths with calls for unity and “communion with the current hierarchies”—including the former Ecclesia Dei Institutes , so praised for their deference—should remember that their very existence is the product of Archbishop Lefebvre’s “obstinacy.” It was his holy “disobedience” (apparent, but real obedience to the Church of all time) that forced Rome, first with John Paul II and then with Benedict XVI, to grant those “indulgences” on the traditional Mass. Without the “sign of contradiction” of Ecône, the hierarchy would never have had reason to take those steps.
What’s the point of boasting about a formal, juridical, or diplomatic communion if it lacks real unity in Faith and Worship? Catholic communion is not a union contract; it is a communion of life. Those who prefer a “peace” that involves silence about modernist errors or even implicit acceptance of liturgical reform have exchanged the unity of the Church for a public relations office.
The Church is not saved by theological transformism, but by integral fidelity. Archbishop Lefebvre did not “do his will,” as Eamonn Clark suggests: he did what was necessary for the Church to continue offering God the pure Sacrifice. The trad-cons who criticize that act today fail to realize that they are spitting in the plate they eat from. Tradition continues to be lived today only because someone had the courage to be, in the eyes of the world, the “rebel” necessary to remain, before God, a Bishop Catholic .
These “conservatives” of compromise prefer a formal membership that smells of ashes to a fidelity that burns with true theological charity. They boast of their “regularity” while remaining silent in the face of the demolition of the Bride of Our Lord Jesus Christ. They prefer to be “approved” by the executioners of Tradition rather than remain faithful to the mandate they received. Let’s stop calling it “prudence.”
The time for compromises is over, and with it the mask of those who claim to serve the Church by sacrificing its doctrine on the altar of a “regularity” that smacks of surrender. We have no need for “common ground” built on the shifting sands of ambiguity, nor for interpretations that attempt to reconcile day with night; we need Bishops who are not afraid to be, in the eyes of this neo-modernist hierarchy, the last bastion of the integral Faith. “In the evening of life,” we will not be asked to account for how many diplomatic “communions” we have woven with the demolishers of the temple, but for how much we have defended, without yielding a single iota , the Sacrifice of Calvary and the universal Kingship of Christ the King and of Mary Most Holy, Co-Redemptrix and Mediatrix of all grace. Faced with a crisis devouring souls, the choice is clear: either an inconvenient, scandalous, and militant fidelity to Tradition, or the ashes of a Pharisaism that, to save its position in the system, has traded its soul for guilty silence. We are not prepared to make this trade: our battle is not for canon law that justifies error, but for the glory of God and the salvation of those souls who, despite everything, still wait to see, in the darkness of the post-conciliar desert, the pure and immutable flame of the Church of all time.
Source: Radio Spada