Bishops Viganò & Schneider Reject Authority of Vatican II

Abp. Viganò is supposedly the “point man” over against Pope Francis? No thank you. I was willing to hear him out, but now it is manifest that he is yet another hysterical radical Catholic reactionary and conspiracy theorist, who comes very close to denying the indefectibility of the Church: just as we have come to expect from many of the Holy Father’s critics. The big danger now is schism, not syncretism. We have bishops like Viganò and Schneider disseminating ideas like those found in absurd anti-Catholic Jack Chick tracts.

The papal (and Church) critics from within are getting more and more extreme, and are clearly imploding (slowly but surely). This will cause conscientious Catholics who might have been inclined to dislike or diss the pope, to think twice about the sort of men they prefer (to the extent that they submit to anyone) to the Holy Father and the true Mind of Holy Mother Church. I’ve been consistently warning Catholics about this for about five years now.

Sensible, rational Catholics will start to see, I think, how the factions are lining up, and they will have to be for the Church (not just the pope) or against her (and him). In a large sense that’s good. It clarifies things and exhibits a stark contrast which will make it easier for the observant, devout, committed Catholic to see nonsense, hysteria, and quasi-schismatic folly for what it is.

Joshua 24:15 (RSV) [A]s for me and my house, we will serve the LORD. (

Here are some remarkable excerpts from Abp. Viganò’s “Letter #62”: “Set out into the deep”):

The building of the House of the Abramitic Family seems to be a Babelic enterprise, concocted by the enemies of God, of the Catholic Church and of the only true religion capable of saving man and the whole creation from destruction, both now and in eternity, and definitively. The foundations of this “House,” destined to give way and collapse, arise where, by the hands of the builders themselves, the One Cornerstone is about to be incredibly removed: Jesus Christ, Savior and Lord, on whom is built the House of God. “Therefore,” warns the Apostle Paul, “let everyone be careful how he builds. Indeed, no one can lay a foundation other than the one already found there, which is Jesus Christ” (1 Cor 3:10).

In the garden of Abu Dhabi the temple of the world syncretistic Neo-Religion is about to rise with its anti-Christian dogmas. Not even the most hopeful of the Freemasons would have imagined so much!

Pope Bergoglio thus proceeds to further implement the apostasy of Abu Dhabi, the fruit of pantheistic and agnostic neo-modernism that tyrannizes the Roman Church, germinated by the [Vatican II] conciliar document Nostra Aetate. We are compelled to recognize it: the poisoned fruits of the “Conciliar springtime” are before the eyes of anyone who does not allow himself to be blinded by the dominant Lie.

Pius XI had alerted and warned us. But the teachings that preceded Vatican II have been thrown to the winds, as intolerant and obsolete. The comparison between the pre-conciliar Magisterium and the new teachings of Nostra aetate and Dignitatis humanae — to mention only those — manifest a terrible discontinuity, which must be acknowledged and which must be amended as soon as possible. Adjuvante Deo (“with God’s help”). (my colored bolding and italics)

Meanwhile, just thirteen days ago, it was announced that Bishop Athanasius Schneider: one of the pope’s most prominent critics, has rejected (at least in part: but this is very typical of the conciliar critics) the supreme authority of the Second Vatican Ecumenical Council (convened and ratified by two saint-popes, and enthusiastically endorsed by Pope St. John Paul II and Pope Benedict XVI and Pope Francis) as well.

This comes as no surprise to me at all. As I have been arguing for many years now, those with the reactionary mindset habitually bash popes, Vatican II, the ordinary form Mass, and usually also legitimate ecumenism. And so it has come to pass with Bp. Schneider, with regard to at least three of these four things. Sometimes there are nuances and degrees and “saving qualifications,” especially as a person first moves into reactionary thinking, but the movement in the same direction is almost inevitable once the trend begins.

I was recently asked in person by a friend at a group discussion at my house, if I thought Cdl. Burke and Bp. Schneider were reactionaries. I said I would have to see what they thought about Vatican II and the Pauline Mass. I already knew they were habitual pope-bashers. And then, lo and behold, there I was a mere two days later, having discovered this article in the notoriously reactionary and extreme Lifesite News: “Bishop Schneider: Pachamama idolatry during Amazon Synod has its roots in Vatican II Council” (11-8-19). No one could make these things up. This is now fashionable and chic among the reactionary crowd, and many traditionalists as well: to bash an ecumenical council.

The good bishop, states (all quotes from the article now):

Here, Bishop Schneider refers to the Council’s claim that “we adore, together with the Muslims, the one God.”

In the Council’s Dogmatic Constitution Lumen Gentium (16), the Council Fathers state: “But the plan of salvation also includes those who acknowledge the Creator. In the first place amongst these there are the Muslims, who, professing to hold the faith of Abraham, along with us adore the one and merciful God, who on the last day will judge mankind.”

Bishop Schneider also refers to the attendant idea that “man is the center and the culmination of all that is on earth.”

Furthermore, Bishop Schneider also refers to the Council’s teaching on the “freedom of religion,” the “natural right” implanted in human nature by God to choose one’s own religion. While it is true, he adds, that one should not be “forced,” this new teaching also means that one “has the liberty to choose a religion.”

Here, Schneider points to the contradictions in the conciliar texts. At one place, in its document Dignitatis Humanae, the Council teaches “every person has the obligation to seek the truth, and this is the Catholic Church,” Schneider says, “but then further down it says that you have freedom of religion rooted in your nature.” This teaching is “not clear,” it is “ambiguous,” as the prelate explains, and the consequences after the Council were “that almost all Catholic seminaries and theological faculties, and the episcopate and even the Holy See” promoted “a right of every person to choose his own religion.” . . .

“This is already rooted here [in the Vatican Council],” Bishop Schneider states. “If you have a right by God given to you, by nature, also to be able to choose acts of idolatry – like the Pachamama – when it is rooted in your dignity of man even to choose a Pachamama religion: this is the last consequence of this expression of the Council text,” he explains. The expression of the text was “ambiguous” and needed to be “formulated in a different way” to “avoid these applications in the life of the Church, which we also had in the Assisi meeting of Pope John Paul II in 1986 and the other meetings, where even idolatrous religions were invited to pray in their own manner – that is to say in their idolatrous manner – for peace.” . . .

He says that what we have now in Rome, the “formal performance of idolatrous acts in the Catholic Church, in the heart of the Catholic Church of St. Peter, is the triumph of the evil.” (my colored bolding and italics)

Bishop Schneider showed some signs of this negative direction in an interview dated 7-21-17 at the reactionary site Rorate Caeli:

Some of the new statements of Vatican II (e.g. collegiality, religious liberty, ecumenical and inter-religious dialogue, the attitude towards the world) have not a definitive character, and being apparently or truly non-concordant with the traditional and constant statements of the Magisterium, they must be complemented by more exact explications and by more precise supplements of a doctrinal character. A blind application of the principle of the “hermeneutics of continuity” does not help either, since thereby are created forced interpretations, which are not convincing and which are not helpful to arrive at a clearer understanding of the immutable truths of the Catholic faith and of its concrete application.

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See also further Facebook discussions on Abp. Viganò and Bp. Schneider.

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Related Reading:

(slightly revised on 11-25-19)

Photo credit: Ipankonin (1-25-08). Reverse of the Great Seal of the United States. [Wikimedia Commons / Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported,  2.5 Generic, 2.0 Generic and 1.0 Generic licenses]

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