You're listening to the SSPX podcast produced by
angelus press. This week we start our crisis in the Church series with episode one "is there a
crisis?" We spoke with Fr. John McFarland, the Prior of Our Lady of Sorrows in Phoenix Arizona
about the effects, the symptoms of this crisis, and how we can judge it against the other trials
faced by the Church throughout her history. This is the first episode of almost two dozen
which will be released regularly over the coming months. WE invite you to subscribe to
the SSPX Podcast in your podcast app or feed and our youtube account so that you'll
always have the most recent episode. And if you have specific questions about
the crisis in the Church as a whole, feel free to ask them! Just visit
sspxpodcast.com/crisis and we'll do our best to answer them in an upcoming episode. Now
here's our conversation with Fr. John McFarland Fr. McFarland thank you for joining us
for this first episode of the crisis in the Church series on the SSPX podcast and on our
youtube account! How are you doing today Father? I'm doing well thank you Andrew. Good good well uh before we start with a
whole series about the crisis in the Church, we have to start from the
very beginning and discuss whether or not there is a crisis at all, and I
guess what do we mean when we say “crisis” so I guess I’m going to start out with the obvious
question: is there a crisis in the Church? Undoubtedly and I think probably most people
who are going to be watching an SSPX podcast on the crisis in the Church have some sense
that there is, otherwise they wouldn't uh wouldn't bother. Sure I think for for most
people that are going to be watching, you know, they’ve encountered the manifestations of
that crisis in their own life and they're looking for answers on some level, or being aware
of some of the answers, or trying to go deeper, so there is, you know, theree… in certain quarters
they do… there's denial of the crisis, and I think you either find that people who are just entirely
ignorant - they don't know anything about what the Church was like before the second Vatican council
- they have no point of comparison from which to work, so they are unable to recognize that
there is a crisis. And then there are those who really want everything to be fine. Either the
progressives who prefer the current chaos to the normal functioning of the Church, who don't
want the old thing at all, who want to break down the Church's traditions and reform according to
their own pleasure and prejudices, and then you have those conservative elements who think that if
we're going to salvage the notions of the Church or papal infallibility and so on, that we
have to say that “no it's not really a crisis… Fundamentally everything is fine, there might
be some some abuses, some particular problems, but there is there's no deeply rooted
crisis afflicting the Church right now.” okay so it's… go ahead… And I also say that there are fewer and fewer of
these people because it's harder to kid yourself these days with Pope Francis and everything that
he's done in the Church during his pontificate. Yeah it's increasingly I mean if you are
intellectually honest it's harder and harder to make that that distinction, and that's
kind of what you're talking about: conservatives generally you would assume are going to
be intellectually honest or you've got the progressives who are just not. And that that
group of of conservatives who are able to say, “uh no there's not really a crisis
it's just you know infallibility it's fine.” That's… yeah it's winnowing definitely.
As we are going through this crisis, you know here in 2020, are there -- have there been crises
in the Church before? I mean we all know about the time of saint athanasius - that was you
know basically one man against the rest of of the Church so to speak, but beyond that
have there been other crises in the Church? Oh certainly of all different sorts.
You've had heresies of different degree of how widespread they've been. You've had schisms
of course, the eastern schism, some major crisis, the great western schism was a tremendous crisis,
a great scandal which we can even say contributed to the protestant reformation, which is another
great crisis in the history of the Church. You have the liberal Catholic crisis of the of the
19th century. this is… Crises are nothing new for the Church. there are there are many more that
that we could talk about of all different sorts, but uh we don't have time to
go into all of them right now. But what makes this crisis
Father, uh different or unique or distinct? Or is it kind of the same
as some of the other ones we've seen? I would say the universality. That we are
seeing a complete - almost complete - disruption of the Church's practice, and the understanding
of the Church's doctrine. There's never been anything like that before and also it's
pervaded every level of the hierarchy. And we find it in the course among the
laity, but the priests, the episcopacy, in rome, and even with the popes themselves
- these contributions to the crisis. And there's the there's the old adage
of by their fruits you shall know them. We can see through many different effects…. The,
well… the effects, what has been happening since, uh since this all started in the Church, are there some really obvious effects that
really no one could argue with? I think so and I think that in particular the the
loss of of the Faith - at least objectively the loss of the a sense of the truths of the faith
- and I think you know we all encounter that: Catholics who don't believe what Catholics
are supposed to believe are extremely common in the political world right now. People who call
themselves Catholics, who don't hold any of the Catholic moral principles at all and consistently
in their political life work against those Catholic moral principles so… And we can give
statistics, you know, the pew research center quite frequently does these polls of Catholics
asking about belief in fundamental doctrines and in a poll they did in 2019 a survey
they include that about one of every three Catholics who practices regularly (those
who attend mass at least once a week) don't accept the Church’s teaching
about the real presence of Our Lord in the Blessed Sacrament which is a basic,
fundamental doctrine of the Catholic Church, obviously. Something that's a dogma, something
that we're obliged to hold under pain of being in heresy. They simply do not believe
that that Our Lord is truly present; and that it's merely a symbolic action
that represents Our Lord's body and blood. And beyond just the belief there's
massive amounts of moral issues, and basically the degradation of
morality, even among Catholics as well… Right. Again the Pew research center: 2015, 76%
of American Catholics think that the Church should allow the use of birth control. 62% think
that priests should be allowed to marry. 62% – again - think that those who divorce and
remarry should be allowed to receive communion. 59% think that women should be allowed to become
priests. 46 percent think that the Church should recognize homosexual marriage..
I mean… basic truths of the faith, or moral principles that - in many cases even a majority of those who
call themselves Catholic explicitly reject. Wow. And you've been giving some statistics
on American Catholics and obviously this is this is where we are, this is what
we know here in the states, Father, but what about internationally? Is the
picture any better, or is it worse, or…? It's comparable I would say and… Okay Taking samplings from other surveys done in other
countries among German Catholics 43% believe in the resurrection. And Saint Paul says that “if
Christ be not risen from the dead our faith is vain.” So why are we even bothering calling
ourselves Catholics if we don't believe then? Only about 19% of German Catholics
attend mass and of that 19% only 55% believe in the virgin birth of Our Lord. Again
a dogma… Only 44% accept papal infallibility. Again a dogma… And that is apparently about
8% higher than the worldwide average, though… Wow …France only 12 percent of Catholics claim to
definitely believe in hell. 72% percent deny its existence outright. Only 7 percent believe
that the Catholic religion is the only true one and 34% of regularly practicing Catholics in
France believe that Muhammed is a prophet. …Well that's, that's, cheery. This
is just making me feel great Father. Right, any time! There is you know a serious
crisis in belief among these Catholics in you know well-developed countries places where
the Church has been established for a long time, we're not talking about outlying regions where
they're they don't have access to the information. We're talking about wealthy countries So we don't have the same the same surveys as, you
know, today… The pew research center is not going to be doing the same surveys… you know, they
weren't doing these - or maybe they were - but we don't have access to those in the 40s 50s
etc., before a lot of this started, but we can see… maybe we can correlate some data
with traditional Catholics. Is there, are there any sort of studies, or any sort of
comparable data with traditional Catholics, people who attend the traditional Latin Mass,
compared to what we've just talked about? Yes you know on some recent surveys that have
been done on the subject polling Catholics of both sorts who attend the traditional mass
or trying to attend the the novus ordo mass, two percent of traditional latin mass attending
Catholics approve of contraception, versus 89 percent who attend the novus ordo. Not sure who
those two percent are but uh hopefully they can… You want to find out, right? One percent of uh traditional mass Catholics
approve of abortion, compared to 51 percent -more than half of those who attend the novus
ordo mass. 99 percent of traditional latin mass Catholics say they attend mass weekly as opposed
to 22 percent of novus ordo attendees. Two percent - and I wonder who this two percent is but
- uh of traditional latin mass goers approved of gay marriage as opposed to 67 percent of those who
attend the novus ordo in these particular surveys. So there's a very striking difference there
between those who are attached to tradition and those who are attending the novus ordo mass and
and I know this is probably speculative Father, but but… do you suppose that those
numbers were probably similar to what the majority of Catholics as a whole believed
in… you know, say, the early 1900s 1800s? I would say they're probably high. They're
probably above even that for the traditional Latin mass goers but certainly there was… you know
we're not… we would not have been talking about more than half of Catholics who believe things
that are opposed to very clear Church teachings. Uh-huh. It was interesting also, talking about
some of the some of the ways that we can see the actual crisis, there was a statistic
that the society of saint pius the tenth in this past year in 2020 ordained an equal
number of Irish priests as all of Ireland did, so in Ireland there was - I believe it was zero.
I may have to put this up on the screen if I’m forgetting it, but there were I believe there
were zero ordinations of Irish priests (maybe it was one) and inside the Society of Saint Pius
X we had… one. So going along that same route; vocations. That has been a huge crisis just
in and of itself in the last 50-100 years. Right and following Vatican II you had
a tremendous exodus from the priesthood and the religious life. The official documented
number of departures between 1964 and 2004 - it's from the Vatican - 57,580 priests left the
priesthood. And that doesn't count those who didn't bother with any kind of canonical procedure
or the like. And there are certain organizations that study this and work with priests who have
left the priesthood, and they give estimates that vary from eighty thousand to a hundred
thousand priests who have left the priesthood. Between 1965 and 2002 the number of
seminarians in the US decreased 90 percent. We often hear about closing seminaries,
there were there used to be just a lot more seminaries with a lot more
men in them than there are now. Right. And even if those numbers have perhaps picked
up a little bit from their lowest days they're not anywhere close to returning to what
they were in in the early 20th century. And religious life I assume is about the same? Yes you know, certainly the number of sisters
in the US dropped from 180,000 in 1965 to 75,000 in 2002, you know, more then half.
And I think even just anecdotally you know, if we talk to people of our parents generation
- they were who attended Catholic schools - they were all taught by religious. My Father was taught
by religious from first grade up through college and you know an occasional layperson, but almost
entirely religious. They were the backbone of Catholic education and there are very few
left. You know attending Catholic schools, uh as I did you know in the in the 1980s and 90s, we had a handful, you know two or three
sisters at a time in a given school. For the last 10 minutes we've been talking about
a lot of statistics. We've been talking about a lot of - you know - decrease in belief, here
are the actual numbers of Church attendance, and the number of priests… When we talk
about the crisis in the Church, just to get kind of back to a more 30,000 foot view of
all this, is this the crisis in the Church? These people who don't believe, these numbers,
is this the crisis? Or is the crisis something different? Maybe I’m getting a way ahead of
myself, maybe this is episode five or six, but is… are these the symptoms of the crisis,
or is this the crisis, what do you think? They're symptoms but they are certainly part
of the crisis too. You know the crisis is made worse by the unbelief of those who call
themselves Catholic. It's made worse by the lack of priests and religious, so it it's all
it's a symptom, yes, but it is… it's also part of the problem, undoubtedly. It's not
the entire story that's for sure. Right. And this seems so striking… i'm a
layman who doesn't know very much about theology or anything… The Vatican’s got to know; they've got to see these same numbers…? I
mean haven't the popes in the last 50 years seen this, hasn't the Vatican… I mean
you'd think they would respond in some way? Yes and they have. The recent popes have
pointed it out They haven't done much about it, at times they act as if there is no crisis,
but you do have some very telling admissions that they they've given over the years, and not
just one pope but most of them since the council. So Paul VI for example: “the Church is
in a disturbed period of self-criticism or what would better be called self-demolition.” It's a pretty strong statement that
the Church is destroying itself. Right, and and Paul this… pope Paul
VI he was also the one who said that the smoke of satan has entered the Church,
is that is that an accurate quote of his? Yes. “through some secret fissure the smoke
of satan has entered the temple of god. It was believed that after the council a
sunny day in the Church's history would dawn but instead there came a day
of clouds storms and darkness.” That's June 29, 1972, so we're not even
10 years after the council at that point. Yeah… And how much worse have things have gotten…
okay so that's pope Paul VI, and then we move on to later popes when these crises are getting
worse and worse, and more vocations are lost, a right-thinking person would say… certainly,
they would correct things but probably not, right? And they haven't really corrected things. There
have been some measures now and then in response to certain aspects of the crisis but overall
the direction has been the same. And there has been a recognition too that there's something
profoundly wrong! John Paul II in 1981 said “we must admit realistically and with feelings
of deep pain, heresies in the full and proper sense of the word have been spread in the area
of dogma and morals.” And he doesn't do a lot to respond to those heresies, but… and then
towards the end of his pontificate in July of 2003 is his famous remark that “European culture
gives the impression of silent apostasy.” And pope Benedict XVI I mean arguably a little bit
more traditional, a little bit more conservative, than the previous popes, and he spoke, I mean
from my own recollection, he spoke out about this crisis probably a little bit more
strongly, but again didn't do a whole lot. Right and only one month
before his election in 2005 he compares the Church “to a boat about to sink
a boat taking in water on every side,” which… Yeah. And it's really striking
to me, Father. I mean, again we're talking about this and maybe we're
just making it too simple, or maybe I’m just not that smart, but I’m just thinking, “okay obviously
you would have to do something,” um but when you and I talked a little bit ahead of time, before
we recorded this, Father, you know you mentioned: it's not just that they didn't do anything. The
popes had a major role in creating this crisis! Right absolutely, and in acting in ways that
cannot be squared with orthodox Catholic practice: praising the united nations as Paul VI did,
which is a free masonic organization, with goals that are steeped in naturalism, the
denial of the supernatural. You have the infamous Assisi prayer meetings of John Paul
II and that of Benedict XVI as well all the these false religions coming to saint
Francis's basilica and in Assisi to pray together, and that the first one
even having the statue of Buddha placed on top of a tabernacle, you know again a famous
incident of uh John Paul II kissing the Koran… In the way they acted, visibly, they do things that are detrimental to
the Catholic faith. Likewise they've permitted those who hold heterodox opinions - and promote
them and teach them - to remain in good standing. You know for example Henri Lubac the French
Jesuit who is a a favorite theologian of John Paul II, whose teaching effectively
equates nature and grace: “we're all beloved by God by the simple fact of being
human.” He was made a cardinal by John Paul II. Someone like Hans Kung, the swiss theologian,
if we can even dignify him with that name, he was so off the wall that he was finally
forbidden to teach. But that was the only censure. He wasn't allowed to teach. He was
still permitted to function as a priest you, know to preach, hear confessions, and
remains a Catholic in good standing. A more recent figure: James Martin, another
Jesuit, you know promoter of homosexuality… you can pretty much count on him to promote any
trendy left-wing cause. Remains in good standing, is invited by bishops into their dioceses.
You have the almost the entire German episcopate at the moment is flirting with open schism their
synodal path… and what do the popes do? Nothing. If anything they promote them. On the other
hand you have Archbishop Lefebvre the great defender of tradition, who's censured
and condemned for adhering to tradition… Right… For refusing to go along with the novelties And so… This is definitely a case of
or… “you tell me your five best friends, the five people that you spend the most time
around and that's basically a reflection of who you are.” We can kind of look at that
in the same way, with the Catholic Church; show me who your friends are: These are the guys. And that's basically what the Catholic Church
is today. It's kind of the same analogy, Right? I think so. So that's all the past or the most recent
more recent past, and then we get to today: I’ve talked with a decent amount of
conservative Catholics - not traditional Catholics but conservative Catholics - who
are just shocked, “shocked I tell you,” uh that some of these errors are happening
today, in the last you know two or three, four years, and certainly during the
pontificate of Pope Francis and they're surprised that this is all happening. But
we really shouldn't be surprised, right? Right and the important thing to remember is
that Pope Francis didn't come out of nowhere. Right. He's - we can say even - the
logical conclusion of what's been going on in the Church since the 1960s.
And he …you know it's not as if he, you know rode into the papal conclave
and forced his own election. He was… Right. He was appointed archbishop and cardinal
by John Paul II in spite of having, you know strange ideas, and strange
practices, he remained in that position. And it's impossible to even think that someone
like him could have been made a bishop, much less be elected pope, without Vatican II
and the subsequent crisis having taken place, so… And the crisis has really escalated.
I mean we see this, but from what, from our own experiences… But what are some, what
are some kind of water marks, some key points in the pontificate of Pope Francis that we can point
to, where this is really escalating the crisis? Right I think on the in a very
clear way the Pachamama scandal… Oh yeah… …of last year I think that that that shook up
a lot of people, and made them realize that something more was going on, and rightly
so. We're talking about this this idol, this image of the earth mother - whatever that is - at
the amazon synod, despite the fact that the idol is of Incan origin which is… any way - but during
the synod, you know in the Vatican gardens on October 4th in 2019 there was a pagan
ritual performed centering on this image, these idols of this earth mother, including
people prostrating themselves, bowing down, giving visible worship to an idol in in
in the Vatican gardens, with you know pope Francis close by. You know
the official… the first official position of the Vatican was they deny that it
ever happened but the video was already public. You know and after the ceremony, one of the idols
was presented to Pope Francis who blessed it, and in return he was given a pagan necklace, an
offering of soil, to pachamama and a tucum ring, which is apparently a black wooden ring with an
occult spell cast on it, symbolizing spiritual marriage with pakamama, and it's apparently also
taken as a symbol of liberation theology. But… and then the ceremony itself was only about
10 minutes long, the statues were still all over the Vatican throughout the course
of the synod. They're carried in procession and placed on the main altar in saint
Peter’s Basilica on October 7th, you know where the amazonians with Pope Francis and other
bishops offered prayers in a circle around it, and then others were set up in the Church,
Sancta Maria Transpotina, from which they were famously removed and thrown
in the Tiber by a layman. A clear violation of the of
the first commandment right? Right the offering worship to idols. You know
most the time when you're teaching people about the first commandment you say “well
you're probably not going to be tempted to literal idolatry these days,” but it would seem
that in some places they are right, that they're bowing down before an image of something that is
not God, is not Jesus Christ, is something pagan, and… there's no excuse that can justify it! You
can't say “well it's just hospitality to those who…” You can't do something evil for a good
purpose and is an objective evil. I mean in the old testament God is repeatedly chastising
the Israelites for their worship of idols. It's a serious thing! It's a serious thing! There's
no way it can be justified. And it's impossible to imagine this taking place in the pontificate of
Pius XII or Saint Pius the 10th or Pius XI or Pius V or any of the popes that came between, or any of
the popes that came before. You know, the popes in the early centuries of the Church died rather than
even give the appearance of committing idolatry. This is the… this is the obvious one, this is
the… this is the real break with any sort of tradition. I mean this is, again, like you said
Father, it's breaking the first commandment, you can't get much more clear than
that, that there is a real problem here. But this isn't the only one, this isn't…
this isn't like trads are just saying “hey this is the issue we have, the issue
with Pachamama, here now, we need to, you know, really rope you into traditional
circles,” uh there's been a lot more, right? Right and most notably amoris Laetitia, the
apostolic exhortation following the synods on the family in 2014 and 2015 which it …you know, being
a document and having that that usual sort of weaselly modernist approach, where they don't come
out and say things quite as clearly. Traditional Catholics would, you know…. traditional theology
would say very clearly what it meant and… but still it's certainly putting forward the
possibility of giving to communion to those Catholics who are divorced and civilly remarried,
which is a situation that Our Lord Jesus Christ Himself says constitutes adultery. And in chapter
19 of saint Matthew's gospel, also chapter 5, and then chapter 16 of saint Luke's gospel very
clearly, that you know to put away your wife and marry another you committed all three, and yet
the document itself Amoris Laetitia says that it can no longer simply be said that all those
in any irregular situation are living in a state of mortal sin, and are deprived of sanctifying
grace. Such situations, realize, they’re far too abstract, an “almost artificial theological
ideal of marriage, far removed from the concrete situations and practical possibilities of
real families in a partial and analogous way.” Right. So this is the… Our Lord Jesus Christ
puts forth a “nearly impossible ideal” that people “can't realize.” So in their
ability to… their inability to realize it, then they're certainly not in mortal sin
And in talking about what can be done for these people, the footnote to the text says, “in certain
cases this can include the help of the sacraments hence…” and this is quoting pope Francis, “…I want
to remind priests that the confessional must not be a torture chamber but rather an encounter with
the Lord's mercy. I would also point out that the Eucharist is not a prize for the perfect, but a
powerful medicine and nourishment for the weak.” Right And there's , you know,
deliberate ambiguity there. It's not a remedy for those who are in mortal
sin and one has to… the confessional is, but the holy eucharist is not! One has to be
in the state of grace to receive it worthily. Again that's very clear, right, as st
Paul points out “that if we if we receive the blessed sacrament unworthily we're guilty
of the of the Body and Blood of Our Lord.” And it's right there in the communion prayers
as well, right after the… if… and correct me if I’m wrong Father, but if right after the…. right
after the priest receives holy communion he says, um, “let this not be a judgment to my
condemnation” but, you know , it's something that helps me get to… I mean he says it right
there. The celebrant says this could condemn me, this could be something that could send me to
hell if I if I do it unworthily, and he's praying for that grace, you know “let me receive this
worthily.” It's there. This is not ambiguous. Right. And to you know to suggest that,
you know, that nowadays the situations are impossible and we can't we can't expect people to
live up to that is… is effectively denying the… you know… God's grace and the objective reality
of of what's taking place. We can't say that an adulterous relationship is something good
just because it might hurt people's feelings to say that it's something bad, you know?
Our Lord himself has told us this, Right. We can't say that Jesus Christ needs to get
with the times and realize the… you know… the new situations that people have to encounter. I
think he was well aware of what they would be. Right and this was about four years ago, and
from what I recall the Vatican stood by it, and has stood by it, um… But there have been
people who have really pushed for the Vatican to either clarify these things or to outright
scrap it including cardinals, is that correct? Right they have the the dubia. Five questions
presented by cardinal Caffarra, Burke, Brandmüller, and meissner on September 19th
of 2016. No response has been given to that. We also had a commission of 45 theologians
review it. They condemned 19 propositions present in the document Amoris Laetitia
of which they said 11 were heretical. And then you had the also the group of 40
who signed the the the correctio filiales, the filial correction sent in August
of 2016. And those are unprecedented. Right In the history of the Church, that there
be a filial correction of the pope, that you have cardinals presenting dubia, based on a document that is - at least has
the appearance of being magisterial. Right and God bless them for doing that.
And I want to take a side step for a second, and again maybe we'll be talking about this
over the next 10 - 12 episodes or not, but something that's always struck me about the
current pontificate is, you know, the first year or two where pope Francis was the pope uh there
were many people who said, “well his statements are ambiguous because he's just, you know, he's
used to just kind of speaking as a cardinal, he's not really used to speaking as a pope, you know,
give him some time he'll kind of figure it out.” But throughout the entire pontificate we have this
ambiguity where almost every time he's on a plane you know there's statements that people are
scratching their head: “Well did he mean this, or did he mean this?” Or interviews with, you
know, his favorite interviewee… or interviewer is an atheist um in in Italy, and there are
statements where again, there's that ambiguity. And we can't really defend that ambiguity like we
could maybe in the first year of this pontificate. Well I don't think you could ever defend it maybe
early on you might try to excuse it but it's… s Sure. …It's, and it's common in the in the conciliar
documents themselves of Vatican II and of the post-conciliar magisterium you find this
ambiguity and it's most the time it's deliberate. It would be very easy to clarify what you
mean but you don't want that clarification because you have some some plan to make some
change by means of this ambiguous statement, and so you don't really want to push it that
far, but you want to kind of leave the door open and let people interpret the way
they want; to not do the hard work… Right. …and we, and then we just sort of
move the ball gradually down the field ,right, by getting people used to
an ambiguous formulation and they say “well okay that previous document also
said it,” and so on. And you build on these ambiguous statements to justify ultimately
whatever it is you happen to feel like doing. Sure so the Society of Saint Pius X has stood up
for years, um since its founding, and Archbishop did against these against this crisis, and you
know we're… again we're talking about all these things that have happened since Vatican II, and
the SSPX has stood up against it, and now there are other traditional groups that are standing
up against it as well. But not a whole lot of outcry or defense of truth and tradition from
the conciliar Church, from within the Church, why do you think that is? Is it… are people
scared? Are archbishops and cardinals scared, or are they just along for the ride or…? Well I think it's… And I know I’m asking you to put motives in
people's heads sorry that's probably not fair but… And it certainly would, you know vary from person to person, um I think a
lot of them…. you know that the better ones are… don't think they can do anything, they're
just gonna rock the boat and then get smacked down by somebody. Smacked down in the
press, smacked down by their confreres, smacked down even potentially by the Vatican, lose their
positions, and so on. Some of them are certainly, you know, on board 100% and you know want to
keep pushing the envelope, keep the destruction of the crisis going, because they don't uh have
any love for tradition and what it stands for. Right so we do have those four cardinals
uh cardinal Burke cardinal Caffara cardinal Brandmuller and cardinal Meisner uh who spoke
out against, at least against Amoris Laetitiae, um and we have one archbishop who is more
recently sounding the alarm as well, right? Archbshop Vigano, the former nuncio
to the United States who has been very direct, very clear, and… this
is just you know within the past year or two that he's… he's really
become a public figure, and as that things… as time has gone on, we see him saying
more and more uh the sort of things that the even the Society has been saying for.. for a few
decades. And …and he's very clear too, that this crisis as it is today comes you know from that
that original moment, if you want of Vatican II, where this all broke out into the open. It's not
that it all started there it's been you know, currents have been running for centuries, as I
think we'll see in the in future uh podcasts, but… It all, it certainly you know, breaks out into the
open, becomes mainstream, is embraced by a large part of the … larger part of the of the Church
at Vatican II. And in his summary of the of the origin uh is is quite excellent you know he says
“If the pachamama could be adored in a church, we owe it to Dignitatis Humanae. If we have
a liturgy that is Protestantized and at times even paganized, we owe it to the revolutionary
action of Msgr. Annibale Bugnini and to the post-conciliar reforms… If we have come to the
point of delegating decisions to the Bishops’ Conferences – even in grave violation of
the Concordat, as happened in Italy – we owe it to collegiality, and to its updated
version, synodality. Thanks to synodality, we found ourselves with Amoris Laetitia
having to look for a way to prevent what was obvious to everyone from appearing: that
this document, prepared by an impressive organizational machine, intended to legitimize
Communion for the divorced and cohabiting, just as Querida Amazonia will be used to
legitimize women priests (as in the recent case of an “episcopal vicaress” in Freiburg)
and the abolition of Sacred Celibacy”. …Wow if that doesn't sum it all up… Yep! Wow. And it's, and it's one archbishop.
And that sounds kind of familiar. It does doesn't it? And I think there's… there could be the
temptation for us to sort of, you know, fold our arms and say “well it's about time
other people started showing up too” of this… Yeah It's something I think that we should avoid. You
know we're right, the more fellow travelers we have, it doesn't matter when they arrive, and… but
that they understand what's going on, that they're willing to to see the crisis for what it is, and
embrace the truth, is absolutely a good thing. So basically to sum up Father we are
looking at, again, whether we talk about these actions as crisis or we talk about
this act… these actions as um symptoms of a larger crisis overall the Church is almost
unrecognizable from what it was 60 years ago. It's been turned on its head
entirely. We have we have chaos in the hierarchy, we have scandals of all
sorts: moral scandals, doctrinal scandals, we have the open contradiction
of Our Lord Jesus Christ himself, we have the, you know, the surveys we've
talked about that indicate the loss of faith, the lack of practice of the faith, a ever-growing
lack of respect for the Church's moral teaching, we have a fall in vocations… all these
things unparalleled in the Church's history Wow. We are in in the midst of the crisis.
There have been other crises in the past, undoubtedly but nothing on this scale, nothing
with this depth nothing with this much damage. It's the greatest that has ever afflicted the
Church, and I think as we'll see in the, in you know, in the future episodes, all of
this comes from the disastrous attempt to marry the teaching of the Church with the
thinking of the modern world at Vatican 2. Well that's uplifting.
Well, and I’m sorry! I’m sorry to be flippant about it, I’m not trying to
be, but this is, again… We… This was not supposed to be a cheery episode. This is, this is… we are
laying out “is there a crisis?” And let's make it perfectly clear what we are talking about when we
talk about the crisis. It's all of these things. And I really want to just keep talking, and
now end the note with “well let's talk about some of the things that we can do,” um but Father
Franks has said “no let's just do one episode on what is the crisis” so I think for
now we're going to end it here Father. All right. I think we should
certainly remember that it is still the mystical body of Our Lord Jesus
Christ, and he is with it till the end of time, and the Church will come
through this crisis as well. There you go! Thank you for that
I… thank you for giving me that, at least at the end, Father, I appreciate it!
Well Father thank you for your time, I appreciate it. We're gonna be uh we're gonna
be chatting with you again on future episodes, along with some of our other priests, so
thank you again for not just doing this, but for all of your work uh helping to keep
the Society afloat and tradition going. Absolutely. All right thank you. God bless you. Thank you for listening to and watching this
first episode of the crisis in the Church series. please make sure to subscribe to this podcast
and our youtube account so you won't miss our next episode. Coming next week we'll be speaking
with Father Alexander Wiseman on the background of this crisis, which stretches back to the 1300s
- a lot further than the second Vatican council. And if you're able to help support this endeavor
please consider a small monthly donation of $5, $10, $20… these recurring donations help
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