THE THREE CARDINALS

 

Download this document as a PDF

     In a recent paper subtitled The Response of Catholic ‘Conservatives’ to the Episcopal Consecrations of the SSPX, the former Nuncio to the United States, Archbishop Carlo Maria Viganò, criticised the failure of three cardinals, Müller, Sarah and Burke, to address the current crisis confronting the Catholic Church and her faithful.[1]  He cited in support their respective negative attitudes to the Society of St Pius X and to the expressed intention of the Society’s principals on July 1st, should a pontifical mandate not be forthcoming, to consecrate bishops so as to ensure the continuance of a priesthood unsullied by the protocols of Modernism. 

 

He made this criticism of them:

“The [three] share several elements that demonstrate their absolute inconsistency with the principles they claim to be defending.  All three accept the acts of the Second Vatican Council and the post-conciliar magisterium sine glossa.  All three celebrate the Vetus Ordo and the Novus Ordo indifferently, considering both legitimate and relegating liturgical questions as mere matters of personal sensibility.  All three, despite criticizing it, adhere to the “synodal path” out of obedience to the Pope, and Müller took an active part in the meetings of the Synod on Synodality in both 2023 and 2024 as a voting member directly appointed by Bergoglio.  All three recognize episcopal collegiality, ecumenism, religious freedom, the Abu Dhabi Declaration, and, in general, all acts—even the most controversial—issued by the Roman Dicasteries.  All three criticized Fiducia Supplicans but did not demand its revocation.  All three expressed disappointment after Traditionis Custodes, without, however, committing themselves to preventing its implementation…

……

“[Moreover], not a single criticism has been heard from [any of] the three cardinals or the priests who refer to them, regarding the scandalous Doctrinal Note Mater Populi Fidelis, which declares the use of the Marian titles of Mediatrix and Co-redemptrix ‘always inappropriate’.”

 

As a further example of the vacuousness of their conduct, the Archbishop cited the uselessness of their presentation, some years ago, of dubia in respect of the content of the document Amoris Laetitia issued by ‘Papa Bergoglio’ on March 19^th, 2016, and his expressions of contempt for their efforts.

 

As the above instances show, while the three appear to be orthodox cardinals, prelates who appeal to the Church’s constant teaching against the departures from principle that marked the utterances of ‘Pope Francis’, they have not, to descend to argot, ‘put their money where their mouth is’; not confirmed their asserted Catholic convictions by their actions.  This raises the question of the reason for their collective ineffectuality.

 

The key is to be found in Pius X’s study of the Modernist heresy, Pascendi Dominici Gregis (September 8^th, 1907), at n. 27.  Before quoting him, we must insist (again) on the philosophical flaw which underlies the heresy.  Its proponents reject all consideration of the immaterial, the formal and determining, influence in reality.  They look only to material causes, to merely material changes such as occur in addition, subtraction, division, multiplication, and so on.  This why they appeal to evolution, a species of material alteration, and to the series of steps posited hypothetically by Hegel, thesis, antithesis, and synthesis, another trope of material alteration.  If the reader can but grasp that the heresy does no more than regurgitate modern philosophy’s materialist and subjectivist errors, he will begin to see it in perspective.

 

Now let us read Pius X.  He teaches that although the ‘evolution’ Modernists appeal to, is urged on by needs or necessities—

“if it were controlled by these alone, it would easily overstep the boundaries of tradition and thus, separated from its primitive vital principle, would make for ruin instead of progress.  Hence those who study their ideas more closely describe evolution as a resultant of the conflict of two forces, one… tending towards progress, the other towards conservation.  The conserving force exists in the Church and is found in tradition… represented by religious authority… [which], raised as it is above the contingencies of life, feels hardly, or not at all, the spur of progress.  The progressive force, on the contrary, responding to the inner needs, lies in the individual consciences and works in them—especially in such… as are in closer and more intimate contact with life…” (n. 27  emphases altered.)

The heresy’s exponents, imitating the conflict asserted illicitly by Hegel (and Marx, and others) as fundamental to life, propose two influences at odds.  The one seeks to keep things as they are; the other seeks to change them.  The Pope goes on:

“It is by a species of covenant and compromise between these two forces of conservation and progress, that is to say, between authority and individual consciences, that changes and advances take place.”

 

Let us apply Pius X’s analysis.  The two parties, ‘Papa Bergoglio’ on the one hand, the three cardinals on the other, are ‘in conflict’.  The cardinals, raised above the contingencies of life… hardly feel the spur of the Modernist progress; they represent the conserving force.  Bergoglio, ‘in intimate contact with life’ as he liked to say, insists things must change; he represents the progressive force.  Both are essential to the Modernist position.  Let us put it plainly: the cardinals’ efforts were not, are not, directed towards a rejection of Modernism, but towards compromise with it, that changes and advances [may] take place.  The three are not orthodox Catholics.  They are conservative Modernists!

 

In his audio/video tape on Modernism recorded in the year 2000 the late Fr Gregory Hesse S.T.D., D.C.L, addressing the dynamic of these two ‘forces’, identified another ‘conservative’ Modernist cardinal, the then head of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, Josef Ratzinger.

“Cardinal Ratzinger, who is a conservative, believes in authority; therefore, he believes in everything the Pope says, and wants everybody to think the same way.  But, at the same time, he does not condemn anybody – except Lefebvre...[2]

Five years later Ratzinger was elected Pope and after election he continued the ‘conservative’ Modernist character he had ever maintained.  Back in 1979, the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith had revoked the license to teach theology of the theologian Hans Küng for his denial of the Church’s doctrine on the infallibility of the pope.  He was a public heretic.  Instead of providing example to the faithful, as any orthodox pope would, by conforming rigorously with the Church’s teaching excluding communication with heretics (since a little leaven corrupts the whole mass – I Cor. 5: 6), Papa Ratzinger entertained the man (who was a former colleague) at Castel Gondolfo.  It concerned him not at all that he was giving grave scandal to the faithful.  His was not the action of an orthodox pope, but that of a conservative Modernist one.[3]

 

A further comment of Archbishop Viganò bears this out.

“All three cardinals are convinced Ratzingerians and supporters of that ecclesial variant of the Hegelian dialectical process, according to which it is supposedly possible to reconcile the thesis of Catholic orthodoxy and the antithesis of modernist heresy within the conciliar synthesis… Their claim that there is no rupture between the pre and post conciliar periods merely begs the question, is devoid of any foundation, and contradicts the reality of a devastating crisis, but nevertheless proves consistent with Benedict XVI’s hermeneutic of continuity, influenced by the Hegelian education of the German theologian.

 

The Archbishop’s paper is, in our view, admirable and ought be compulsory reading for all Catholics.

 

 

Michael Baker

March 12^th, 2026—Thursday in the Third Week of Lent

Commemoration of Pope St Gregory the Great