Ab. Viganò’s third letter: "When the successor of Peter is negligent in exercising his principal mission"

Here is the opening of His Excellency's third letter, and it may be read here in full:

On the Feast of the North American Martyrs

To bear witness to corruption in the hierarchy of the Catholic Church was a painful decision for me, and remains so. But I am an old man, one who knows he must soon give an accounting to the Judge for his actions and omissions, one who fears Him who can cast body and soul into hell. A Judge who, even in his infinite mercy, will render to every person salvation or damnation according to what he has deserved. Anticipating the dreadful question from that Judge -- "How could you, who had knowledge of the truth, keep silent in the midst of falsehood and depravity?" -- what answer could I give?

I testified fully aware that my testimony would bring alarm and dismay to many eminent persons: churchmen, fellow bishops, colleagues with whom I had worked and prayed. I knew many would feel wounded and betrayed. I expected that some would in their turn assail me and my motives. Most painful of all, I knew that many of the innocent faithful would be confused and disconcerted by the spectacle of a bishop's charging colleagues and superiors with malfeasance, sexual sin, and grave neglect of duty. Yet I believe that my continued silence would put many souls at risk, and would certainly damn my own. Having reported multiple times to my superiors, and even to the pope, the aberrant behavior of Theodore McCarrick, I could have publicly denounced the truths of which I was aware earlier. If I have some responsibility in this delay, I repent for that. This delay was due to the gravity of the decision I was going to take, and to the long travail of my conscience.

 I have been accused of creating confusion and division in the Church through my testimony. To those who believe such confusion and division were negligible prior to August 2018, perhaps such a claim is plausible. Most impartial observers, however, will have been aware of a longstanding excess of both, as is inevitable when the successor of Peter is negligent in exercising his principal mission, which is to confirm the brothers in the faith and in sound moral doctrine. When he then exacerbates the crisis by contradictory or perplexing statements about these doctrines, the confusion is worsened.

Therefore I spoke. For it is the conspiracy of silence that has wrought and continues to wreak great harm in the Church -- harm to so many innocent souls, to young priestly vocations, to the faithful at large. With regard to my decision, which I have taken in conscience before God, I willingly accept every fraternal correction, advice, recommendation, and invitation to progress in my life of faith and love for Christ, the Church and the pope....

"The most serious and literally diabolical form of clerical abuse."

The following are excerpts from a column Claudio Pierantoni, professor of Medieval Philosophy in the Philosophy Faculty of the University of Chile (Santiago). Emphases added. 

Did Cardinal Maradiaga just confirm Viganò’s claims about Pope Francis?

 When Cardinal Maradiaga reduces sodomy (and the abuse of power for this purpose), to a mere “private affair” and “administrative matter,” he is clearly revealing to us what his own moral standard is on the subject.

How many steps on the scale of moral depravity must a man of the Church have already descended, to reduce sexual corruption, through abuse of power, of generations of seminarians, to a “private matter” to be resolved “administratively”? Certainly he knows that, on paper, canonical laws still exist which prohibit certain behaviors, and that these, in addition to being grave sins, are also, according to these laws, true and proper crimes.

But his words indicate that these norms ought to be considered, if not a dead letter, then certainly a mere “administrative matter” that “should be dealt with using more serene and objective criteria.” As we see, the picture presented by Viganò — which is horribly disgusting for any Catholic who has kept a minimum of modesty and the sensus fidei — is not at all denied by our Honduran Cardinal….

Yet, while demonstrating by these words the truly striking hardening of his own moral sense, Cardinal Rodríguez Maradiaga — consummate politician that he is — is well aware that he could never afford to make such an evaluation were he not protected under the safe umbrella of his Boss, who implicitly but unequivocally promoted himself from being the simple Vicar of Christ to the absolute Leader of the Church….

This brings us to the final point we wish to underscore: namely, the fact that in his testimony Viganò describes the cover-up of these crimes as a “conspiracy of silence, not so dissimilar from the one that prevails in the mafia.”

In fact, this cover-up has an important point in common with the mafia’s conspiracy of silence: it does not conceal crimes simply out of fear that they will be discovered. Instead, it covers them up because, in reality, it obeys a different system of values, one that does not correspond to the law in force in the community in which it operates (in this case, the Catholic Church).

In other words, the gay lobby covers up these crimes because it justifies them in the name of a different morality, which a certain elite of illuminati who are in power substitute for Scripture and the Tradition of the Church. And this, without any doubt, is the most serious and literally diabolical form of clerical abuse.

As we have been pointing out lately , interested readers can see our post from 11 years ago "Most Holy Redeemer and How it Got That Way" which addressed just this issue:

“The authentic community-forming experience...is not Catholicism, but homosexuality. If… the sexuality is experienced as more important than the doctrines of the Catholic Church, one would expect the doctrines of the Church to be discarded when they come into conflict with the community-forming experience. And this is exactly what happens... The doctrines will not only be discarded, but mocked… And this leads to the acceptance of blasphemy in an ostensibly Catholic Church. But such events will not be experienced by the parishioners as blasphemous because they validate the community-forming experience… what will be experienced by the parishioners as blasphemous is that which denies the value of the community-forming experience…”