Archbishop Viganò, Donald Trump

And the Americanist Delusion of Traditional Catholics

 

In his June 7, 2020 open letter to President Donald Trump, Archbishop Carlo Maria Viganò offers his analysis of the present crisis. In the Archbishop’s own words:

“In recent months we have been witnessing the formation of two opposing sides that I would call Biblical: the children of light and the children of darkness. The children of light constitute the most conspicuous part of humanity [and therefore, we may presume, a very significant majority], while the children of darkness represent an absolute minority. And yet the former are the object of a sort of discrimination which places them in a situation of moral inferiority with respect to their adversaries, who often hold strategic positions in government, in politics, in the economy and in the media. In an apparently inexplicable way, the good are held hostage by the wicked and by those who help them either out of self-interest or fearfulness.

“These two sides, which have a Biblical nature, follow the clear separation between the offspring of the Woman and the offspring of the Serpent. On the one hand there are those who, although they have a thousand defects and weaknesses, are motivated by the desire to do good, to be honest, to raise a family, to engage in work, to give prosperity to their homeland, to help the needy, and, in obedience to the Law of God, to merit the Kingdom of Heaven. On the other hand, there are those who serve themselves, who do not hold any moral principles, who want to demolish the family and the nation, exploit workers to make themselves unduly wealthy, foment internal divisions and wars, and accumulate power and money: for them the fallacious illusion of temporal well-being will one day – if they do not repent – yield to the terrible fate that awaits them, far from God, in eternal damnation.” [all bold emphasis ours].

In accordance with the Archbishop’s view of reality, the children of light (who are “in the obedience of God”) are the majority in this country. Later in this letter, he states: “The American people are mature and have now understood how much the mainstream media does not want to spread the truth but seeks to silence and distort it, spreading the lie that is useful for the purpose of their masters. However, it is important that the good – who are the majority – wake up from their sluggishness and do not accept being deceived by a minority of dishonest people with unknowable purposes.  

It is the absolute minority (the “deep state”, “invisible enemy”), according to Archbishop Viganò’s further analysis, who,  being the children of darkness, are responsible for conspiring against this good majority through the coronavirus “pandemic” and the violence perpetrated in cities in response to the George Floyd murder. They have done so through the power of international finance, the liberal media, liberal politicians, the “social engineers’ promoting a New World Order, etc.

The problem in Archbishop Viganò’s analysis does not lie in his depiction of what is indeed a reality in regard to the central figures and forces of Antichrist now promoting social engineering in service to the formation of a New World Order at the expense of the destruction of Christian Civilization and the Catholic Church. The problem lies in his absolutely erroneous – and seemingly profoundly ignorant – depiction of the majority of American who he claims are children of light in obedience to God, and therefore to be considered the offspring of Our Lady.

Let us look at this “most conspicuous” majority:

In the United States, according to polls (Pew and Gallup), 91% of its citizens believe in contraception, and this despite the fact that an estimated 10 to 18 times as many unborn babies are murdered by contraception than surgical abortion. Somewhere around 80 % of all Americans approve of abortion at least in some cases, 77% of Americans approve of the legality of divorce, 71% approve of the legality of sex outside of marriage, 64% approve of embryonic stem cell research, 63% approve of the legality of same sex relations, 52 % believe that doctor-assisted suicide should be legal, etc.

The phrase children of light can only refer to those who truly follow Christ, are living in sanctifying grace, and therefore in the state of friendship with God. In light of the above statistics, Archbishop Vigano’s depiction of the majority of Americans as children of light is therefore not only inexplicable, but absurd. Rather, the vast majority are believing and/or living in service to the Serpent. Certainly, we may rightly concur in the existence of a deep state minority consciously and calculatingly bent upon our enslavement; but it amounts to complete blindness to not see that the vast majority of Americans are living in rejection of the obedience of God, and are therefore in deep moral cooperation with the Enemy towards their own future enslavement, and a deserved chastisement by God. We should rather compare them to the vast majority of the Jews living at the time of the Babylon Captivity. The Book of Jeremiah would be much more worthy of reading and contemplation at this time in American history than Archbishop Viganò’s letter.

In his letter, Archbishop Viganò declares to President Trump, “I dare to believe that both of us are on the same side in this battle, albeit with different weapons”. Donald Trump is of course pro-contraception (pro-murder), pro surgical abortion in at least some cases, pro-divorce, supportive of homosexuality and the legality of “gay marriage”, etc. He has done some things to support the pro-life cause and the family, but there is nothing to indicate that he is anywhere near being integrally pro-life, pro-family, or pro-Catholic in his moral beliefs. There is of course, no way of determining how calculated or cynical in terms of political “opportunism” is his courting of the Catholic and evangelical vote on such issues. In either case, any notion that the current battle with the forces of antichrist can be engaged in effectively, and defeated, by such poisoned conservativism is pure fantasy. The same may be said of the promotion of the program “Make America Great Again”. America never was great, except from the standpoint of its unending growth in pursuit of the things of this world, and consequent denial of that poverty of spirit towards all the things of this world which is integral to the Gospel. The American Constitution, with its alleged establishment of all power of government being rooted in the people, and its explicit denial of the Kingship of Christ in the First Amendment, is itself a recipe for what we now have with us (see our article The World Cometh: Democracy and the Spirit of Antichrist).

The question must be asked as to how Archbishop Viganò could be so wrong and so lacking in spiritual depth of discernment in regard to what actually comprises light versus darkness in respect to the current situation and conflict. The answer almost certainly lies in the overwhelming human tendency, rooted in original sin, which always divides the world into “We” and “Them”. It is the sin of Pharisees of all ages. It now appears to be that sin which is most seductive towards those who still seek to hold on to the traditional Catholic Faith, especially if that Faith is in any way identified with “Americanism” (and this identification has existed from this country’s founding). And now Archbishop Viganò has appeared to yoke himself to such American Traditional Catholicism and its blindness.

Having demolished the myth concerning the virtuosity and innocence of the vast majority of American people in the face of the “Enemy”, we yet need to speak of ourselves. What about those of us who possess the traditional Catholic Faith, are not in mortal sin (as far as we know), and can firmly answer “No!” to all of the questions asked in the polls mentioned above?  Are we not innocent? Are we not worthy of claiming to be children of light in relation to all the rest of Americans?

In order to answer this question, we need to look at what has led the American people in their majority (including the majority of Catholics) into its present apostasy from Christ, and whether we also are participants in this ongoing and accelerating process.

We must first realize that possession of sanctifying grace (which is what constitutes being a child of the light) is something that is lost only through mortal sin (including rejection of the Faith), and that this loss is instantaneous. There is no living in half- friendship with God, no gradualness in loss of sanctifying grace.

But there certainly can be a profound decrease of the penetration of this grace into our souls through failure to live the Christian virtues and beatitudes, and the consequent failure to bear fruit in the Holy Spirit. In other words, there can indeed be a quite long and extended process, both in individuals and nations as a whole, leading up to such loss. And during this extended process, there can be many individuals who indeed still justly claim to possess the Faith and who even might still be considered to be free from mortal sin (and therefore in possession of sanctifying grace), but who through their increasing “friendship with the world” are on that rapidly descending slope by which they are not only participants in the process that leads to general apostasy, but have settled into that seductive path of self-deception which will lead them eventually to full companionship with the children of darkness.

Is it any wonder therefore that our prayers against the enemy, who we view almost exclusively as existing “out there”, seem to produce so little fruit?

In this light, we cannot fail to mention Archbishop Viganò’s appeal to President Trump to join in prayer “to protect you, the United States, and all of humanity from this enormous attack of the Enemy”.  And he adds, “Before the power of prayer, the deceptions of the children of darkness will collapse, their plots will be revealed, their betrayal will be shown, their frightening power will end in nothing, brought to light and exposed for what it is: an infernal deception.”

Such words do indeed seem appealing. They may also be seen as profoundly deceptive. As scripture says, “Praise is not seemly in the mouth of a sinner” (Ecclus. 15:9).  Nor is prayer effective in the mouth of those who seek friendship of God in adultery with friendship with this world:

“You ask and receive not; because you ask amiss: that you may consume it on your concupiscences. Adulterers, know you not that the friendship of this world is the enemy of God?” (James 4: 3-4).

We are in a profound state of emergency. Our hope is not to be found in lying down on the peripheries of God’s infinite waters of grace, while occasionally lapping a drink which sustains our faith and our lives for the moment. Our hope, and our faith, will not ultimately survive lying in the muck of believing we can be a friend of this world – especially the American dream of prosperity and affluence – while at the same time being a friend of God. Nor will our hope achieve any fulfillment in the “Make America Great Again” of Donald Trump. And our prayers will not be answered if they are offered primarily against the deep state or the invisible enemy without. They will only be answered in the desert of “We have sinned” rather than “They have sinned”. Here lies the ocean of God’s grace which is Mary, who awaits our immersion in Her Immaculate Heart for the sake of our own purification and the purification of the whole Church. It is only this which the Enemy truly fears.

The entirety of the effort which we have called The Rosary to the Interior: For the Purification of the Church is established upon an attempt to infuse within the hearts and minds of Catholics the self- knowledge which will enable them to see the truth of what we have offered above, and to propose the course of action which must be taken if we are to survive. This is very succinctly laid out in our Original Proposal. We ask all reader to meditate upon this very carefully, and to take action upon it. The primary Feast proposed for its implementation is the Feast of the Purification and Presentation on February 2^nd. For reasons spelled out in our proposal, we believe it singularly appropriate. Quite frankly, however, we have no idea whether the” Enemy Without” will not have again succeeded in depriving us of our churches – places of united worship – by that date. We therefore implore people to begin to implement this now at every opportunity within their churches and wherever else possible. If we do not enter our collective desert now in profound unified surrender to the purifying fires of Our Lady’s Immaculate Heart, we may well end up in isolated aloneness in the wilderness of the world by next February 2^nd.

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Note:  None of the above is intended as a personal attack upon Archbishop Viganò or anyone else. Archbishop Viganò’s letter has only been employed as a singularly appropriate opportunity to expose the superficiality and lack of self-knowledge which characterizes the “operation of error” (2Thess. 2: 10) which is now descending upon us all.