Francis is obviously a non-Catholic man who seeks to do as much damage as possible to the Catholic Church. Understandably, this reality leads many sincere Catholics to insist that he cannot possibly be a true pope. As Archbishop Carlo Maria Vigano indicated in a recent talk, though, the matter of officially declaring him an anti-pope is not as simple as we might like:

“What we cannot do, because we do not have the authority, is to officially declare that Jorge Mario Bergoglio is not Pope. The terrible impasse in which we find ourselves makes any human solution impossible.”

Even if Archbishop Vigano was incorrect in this assessment, we have to acknowledge that this statement demonstrates that the solution to the crisis is not merely a matter of individual Catholics declaring that Francis is an anti-pope. Indeed, this was also one of the key assertions of the so-called Sedemenefreghismo Thesis, discussed in a recent article.

Because so many otherwise faithful Catholics refuse to condemn the errors of Vatican II — which sought to make peace with the sinful world, and promoted the false ecumenism that gives rise to almost every error we see today — we collectively find ourselves in the position of begging God’s mercy to remove the disastrous fruits of a tree we insist on protecting.

As Archbishop Vigano said, we find ourselves at a “terrible impasse,” which lacks any ordinary human solution. Although The Remnant has published articles (2018, 2022) advocating for an imperfect council to potentially remove Francis and elect a new pope, the likelihood of that extraordinary solution is so low that it would seem to require divine intervention. With no ordinary human solution, it is more obvious than ever that we must petition God’s mercy. On this front, Archbishop Vigano courageously identified one major stumbling block preventing many Catholics from effectively turning to God:

“[I]n the ecclesial sphere in the face of the devastation caused by the conciliar revolution and the so-called ‘liturgical reform’ there are still those who do not want to admit the causal relationship between the less criminal action of those experts and consultors – who were notoriously modernist well before Vatican II and as such rightly condemned by the Holy Office or regarded with suspicion by the Bishops – who used nothing less than an Ecumenical Council as a prestigious stage on which to perform the false and deceitful pièce of dialogue with the world, ecumenism, democratization and parliamentarization of the Church, all with the endorsement of the ‘Popes of the Council.’ That assembly was rightly defined by its own architects as ‘the 1789 of the Church.’ John XXIII, Paul VI, John Paul I, John Paul II and Benedict XVI did not fail to emphasize how the revolutionary and Masonic principles – liberté, égalité, fraternité – could in some way be shared and made their own by Catholicism, starting from the acceptance, indeed the convinced promotion of the secularity of the State and the substantial cancellation of the divine and universal Kingship of Our Lord Jesus Christ.”

Because so many otherwise faithful Catholics refuse to condemn the errors of Vatican II — which sought to make peace with the sinful world, and promoted the false ecumenism that gives rise to almost every error we see today — we collectively find ourselves in the position of begging God’s mercy to remove the disastrous fruits of a tree we insist on protecting. Everything we know about God and salvation history should convince us that this willful blindness is virtually guaranteed to prolong the crisis.

For those who doubt the connection between Vatican II and Francis’s heresies, the ongoing Synod on Synodality provides more than sufficient evidence. Although the “headline” issues of the Synod involve the promotion of the LGBTQ+ agenda and potential ordination of women priests, the most egregious evil of the Synod is arguably its ostentatious substitution of the concept of the “People of God” (from Vatican II) for members of the Catholic Church. From this, we can clearly see two defining aspects of the current crisis: (i) almost all of Francis’s heresies flow naturally from Vatican II, and (ii) the overwhelming majority of faithful Catholics are indifferent to the true roots of the Church’s crisis.

First, what are Francis’s most manifest heresies? Without attempting to compile a comprehensive list, it is evident that we would need to include the following categories:

• Effectively eliminating the concept of mortal sin by allowing unrepentant sinners — and non-Catholics — to receive Communion;
• Consistently attacking the immutable nature of Catholic Truth; and
• Rejecting the Church’s teaching that Our Lord wants all souls to faithfully practice the unadulterated Catholic religion.

Almost every other heresy from Francis — including the recent permission to bless “same-sex unions” — fits into one or more of these categories of heresy.

Because the Synodal Church includes all baptized people, it necessarily encompasses all of their religious beliefs, which means the doctrinal content of the Synodal Church must be no more exclusive than the lowest common denominator of all Christian religions.

And, crucially, each of these heresies flows inexorably from the false ecumenism Archbishop Vigano named above. This false ecumenism was in full display during John XXIII’s opening speech of Vatican II; it was the animating spirit of almost all of the Council’s innovations; it has been called an “irreversible path” by Francis, Benedict XVI, and John Paul II; and it is at the heart of the Synod on Synodality’s “People of God” heresies.

Prior to Francis’s announcement of the Synod, the International Theological Commission’s study on Synodality in the Life and Mission of the Church described the membership of the new Synodal Church as the “People of God”:

“Taking up the ecclesiological perspective of Vatican II, Pope Francis sketches the image of a synodal Church as ‘an inverted pyramid’ which comprises the People of God and the College of Bishops, one of whose members, the Successor of Peter, has a specific ministry of unity. Here the summit is below the base.”

Moreover, as has been made abundantly clear throughout the Synodal process, all baptized souls are part of the People of God:

“The entire People of God shares a common dignity and vocation through Baptism. All of us are called in virtue of our Baptism to be active participants in the life of the Church.” (Vademecum for the Synod on Synodality)

“This call to cooperate in the mission of the Church is addressed to the entire People of God. Pope Francis made this clear when he issued a direct invitation to all the People of God to contribute to Church efforts towards healing: ‘every one of the baptised should feel involved in the ecclesial and social change that we so greatly need. This change calls for a personal and communal conversion that makes us see things as the Lord does.’” (Vademecum)

Who is included in “all baptized people”? This obviously includes any person who has been baptized in a non-Catholic religion. As such, Catholics and non-Catholics are all members of the new Synodal Church.

Because the Synodal Church includes all baptized people, it necessarily encompasses all of their religious beliefs, which means the doctrinal content of the Synodal Church must be no more exclusive than the lowest common denominator of all Christian religions. Anything permitted by any Protestant religion — such as blessings of “same-sex unions” and “communion” for unrepentant sinners — must therefore be accepted by Francis’s Synodal Church. This follows logically from the premise that the Synodal Church includes all baptized people.

Accordingly, the only Christians who are unwelcome in the Synodal Church are those who believe what the Catholic Church has always taught about the need for all souls to practice the unadulterated Catholic Faith. It follows from all of this that Francis will accept every Protestant heresy and reject Traditional Catholic teaching. Francis has made this abundantly clear. 

So Benedict XVI commended the Council’s downplaying of the concept of the Mystical Body of Christ — whose members are limited to Catholics — and corresponding emphasis on the new concept of the “People of God,” which is less “exclusive.”

Francis is incapable of developing such heresies on his own, so where did they come from? Here is Benedict XVI’s helpful background on the subject from his February 14, 2013 farewell address to the clergy of Rome:

“[I]n the quest for a complete theological vision of ecclesiology, a certain amount of criticism arose after the 1940’s, in the 1950’s, concerning the concept of the Body of Christ: the word ‘mystical’ was thought to be too spiritual, too exclusive; the concept ‘People of God’ then began to come into play. The Council rightly accepted this element, which in the Fathers is regarded as an expression of the continuity between the Old and the New Testaments.”

So Benedict XVI commended the Council’s downplaying of the concept of the Mystical Body of Christ — whose members are limited to Catholics — and corresponding emphasis on the new concept of the “People of God,” which is less “exclusive.”

As discussed in a previous article, Cardinal Augustin Bea helped push the concept of the People of God into the Council’s documents to promote his false ecumenism. Here is what Fr. Dominique Bourmaud had to say about the Council’s false ecumenism in his One Hundred Years of Modernism (published in 2006, long before we knew of Bergoglio):

“For the sake of ecumenism, Vatican II has hidden the light of the Faith under a bushel basket, and ‘what we seek is not conversion but convergence.’ In other words, the Church seeks to supplant what is truly Catholic with what is merely global. Indeed, if ‘brotherly love,’ as the world understands it, is what unites men, the Credo can only divide. Truth has that seemingly perverse quality of exclusivity: if a wall is black, then it excludes red, white, or any other color than black. If truth be told, the only real obstacle to inter-religious dialogue is Jesus Christ.”

As he wrote, truth has the quality of exclusivity, which means that those who seek a globalist religion for a New World Order must attack the immutable Catholic Faith. Hence, Francis’s Synod on Synodality is directed to the “People of God” rather than Catholics.

Francis did not start this revolution, and indeed he has played a far less signifiant role in its development than his predecessors. Yes, he is manifesting the heresies of Vatican II in a much more open and hideous manner than his predecessors did, but they performed the far more crucial work in overcoming the Church’s doctrinal defenses to lay the heretical foundations.

God has not permitted the crisis to advance to this point so that we will reject Francis, who is a natural fruit of Vatican II, while defending the tree with all our might. Such a belief is unworthy of Catholics.

We can even see that the defense of Vatican II’s innovations and simultaneous rejection of Francis’s heresies is itself a manifestation of a special type of heretical mentality: it holds that some theological errors are fine so long as they do not force us to confront their unpleasant consequences. It is the heresy that says that we must not judge a tree by its fruits. And it is the heresy that prevents us (collectively) from cooperating with God’s grace to counteract the evils of Francis’s unholy occupation of the papacy.

Here is how Archbishop Vigano described the proponents of this heretical mentality (though he refrained from applying the label of heresy to it):

“The Hierarchy limits itself to demonstrating either cowardice or complicity with the tyrant, and the few discordant voices do not dare to draw the necessary conclusions in the face of the heresies and nonsense of the tenant of Santa Marta. Because they disagree with [Francis], but not with Vatican II; nor are they willing to recognize that it was precisely from that Council that the revolutionary process arose which permitted a person like Jorge Mario to enter the Society of Jesus, be ordained, become a Bishop, be created Cardinal, and finally to enter a Conclave and come out of it as ‘pope.’ For them, it is permissible to criticize Bergoglio, but only on the condition that one never criticizes the conciliar idol, the untouchable fetish of the Montinians who today, compared to the horrors of the Argentine Jesuit, seem to be champions of Catholic orthodoxy.”

It took courage for Archbishop Vigano to say these words because so many who detest Francis want to believe that we can solve the crisis by calling Bergoglio an anti-pope and then hoping that the College of Cardinals miraculously elects another “champion of orthodoxy” like Benedict XVI or John Paul II.

At this stage in the crisis, those who defend Vatican II do far more harm than good. God has not permitted the crisis to advance to this point so that we will reject Francis, who is a natural fruit of Vatican II, while defending the tree with all our might. Such a belief is unworthy of Catholics. As individual Catholics, we do not have the authority to officially declare Francis is an anti-pope, but we actually have a duty to reject all of the errors of Vatican II, including those promoted by Benedict XVI and John Paul II.

We must absolutely reject all of the errors of Vatican II. Once we do that, and make every effort to become saints, then perhaps God will mercifully intervene to rescue us from this grave catastrophe in the Church. In the meantime, we can honor God and save our souls by fighting Francis and every single error that fuels his blasphemous attacks on the Church. Immaculate Heart of Mary, pray for us!

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