Archbishop Viganò writes letter to Trump, and it’s every bit as wild as you’d expect.

iganò (sounds like Figaro) is one of a quar­tet of pseu­do-popes that the fret­ful Catholic right wing has heaped unto them­selves; he does a great job sat­is­fy­ing their itch­ing ears. The oth­ers in this weird Fab Four are Car­di­nal Burke, Car­di­nal Sarah, and Arch­bish­op Schnei­der; and they all seem to be in a con­test to see who can out­do the oth­ers for Crazy by the time of the next con­clave. Once upon a time, Viganò was the apos­tolic nun­cio to the Unit­ed States. In that role, dur­ing the papal vis­it of 2015, he arranged for the pope to meet with Kim Davis. She’s the one who made head­lines when she refused, in defi­ance of a court order, to issue mar­riage licens­es to same-sex cou­ples. The thing got sen­sa­tion­al­ized and the pope appar­ent­ly felt, after­ward, that he’d been manip­u­lat­ed to make it appear that he was tak­ing her side in a com­plex dis­pute that was as polit­i­cal as much as it was moral. As CNA reports, it caused Vat­i­can infight­ing and com­pet­ing nar­ra­tives about how the meet­ing got arranged to begin with. In 2016, after the dust had set­tled, Pope Fran­cis allowed Viganò’s nun­cia­ture to expire. (Viganò had reached the retire­ment age of 75 and was oblig­at­ed to offer his res­ig­na­tion. Often popes will ask nun­cios to stay on, but Fran­cis chose to replace him.)

Viganò is now a for­mer nun­cio and, as far as I can find out, noth­ing else. He’s tit­u­lar arch­bish­op of Ulpi­ana. Because there are more bish­ops in the Catholic Church than dio­ce­ses, bish­ops who serve in the Curia in some capac­i­ty, or as a papal diplo­mat, will be named “tit­u­lar bish­op” of a dead dio­cese like Ulpi­ana. Ulpi­ana is an archae­o­log­i­cal site. Since Viganò is for­mal­ly retired and Pope Fran­cis has not asked him to do any­thing else, all the man has is a dead dio­cese. I can only guess that it’s out of frus­trat­ed cler­i­cal­ism that Viganò now spends his days ful­mi­nat­ing, lev­el­ing accu­sa­tions against the pope, defend­ing him­self in inher­i­tance law­suits, grant­i­ng inter­views to Life­Site­News, and in gen­er­al send­ing out dog whis­tles to a scared and mal­con­tent fac­tion of Catholics who are unpleased with Pope Fran­cis and think of them­selves as most faith­ful among the faith­ful. Viganò, true to his pro­cliv­i­ty for sen­sa­tion­al­ist pop­py­cock, claims to be in hid­ing for fear of his life.

•••

It is in this context—and the heat of an elec­tion year, pan­dem­ic, and surge of race riots when it’s nat­ur­al to feel uneasy and have apoc­a­lyp­tic worry—that Viganò has writ­ten a let­ter to Pres­i­dent Trump. Nat­u­ral­ly, Life­Site­News has the exclu­sive and the tran­script. (Viganò and the oth­ers in his band of false prophets always go through Life­Site and Pentin at the Nation­al Catholic Reg­is­ter to leak their unend­ing stream of mis­sives.)

The let­ter is gob­s­mack­ing­ly wild and it real­ly does have to be read to be believed. I’ll give you a small taste of what’s in it.

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, while the chil­dren of dark­ness rep­re­sent an absolute minor­i­ty. [This sounds a lot like Richard Nixon’s talk of a “silent major­i­ty,” but Viganò casts it in reli­gious terms.] 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. [Viganò, I imag­ine, longs for the glo­ry days when he “held strate­gic posi­tions.” Those who hold them now are “chil­dren of dark­ness.”]

It’s always foul play to treat peo­ple who dis­agree with you, or are dif­fer­ent from you, or have pow­er where you don’t, as not just wrong but actu­al­ly evil. Vigano plays to the strong sense some Catholics have that they are being per­se­cut­ed. Trump too has a strong per­se­cu­tion com­plex, and Viganò takes it upon himself—with all the author­i­ty of a Catholic archbishop—to con­firm it. It’s psy­cho­log­i­cal manip­u­la­tion.

Viganò:

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.

 

[Actu­al­ly, we can’t “mer­it” the King­dom of Heav­en through obe­di­ence to the Law. That’s a heresy.]

 

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.

Viganò describes the so-called “chil­dren of dark­ness” as though they pos­sess total deprav­i­ty (anoth­er heresy) and no good qual­i­ties of any kind. They “do not hold any moral prin­ci­ples,” he says. That’s utter­ly absurd. That’s fan­ta­sy. Nobody fits that descrip­tion. Orig­i­nal sin com­pro­mis­es but does not erad­i­cate our will to do good. This is a self-right­eous fan­ta­sy: I am good, I thank God that I am not like oth­er men, I desire to raise my fam­i­ly and help oth­ers. But those who are not in my fac­tion want to destroy every­thing and per­se­cute me and turn the world upside down. This kind of think­ing comes of sep­a­rat­ing your­self so far from peo­ple who are dif­fer­ent from you and don’t share your world­view that you won’t lis­ten to them and don’t trust them and hold them in sus­pi­cion.

It also comes of a pecu­liar fun­da­men­tal­ist escha­tol­ogy that imag­ines we are liv­ing in the Last Days and the final bat­tle between Christ and Satan is play­ing itself out in pol­i­tics and the Church. Thus our polit­i­cal side belongs to the chil­dren of light, and their polit­i­cal side belongs to the chil­dren of dark­ness. This is not the place to exegete the bib­li­cal lan­guage “chil­dren of light” and “chil­dren of dark­ness,” apart from point­ing out that eschat­a­log­i­cal appli­ca­tions that suit our own fac­tion­al­ism are always dan­ger­ous. And using pri­vate rev­e­la­tions and so called “Third Secrets” to fur­ther that kind of divi­sion is per­ni­cious and comes pret­ty close to blas­phe­my. All it does is manip­u­late weak-mind­ed peo­ple into a state of per­pet­u­al anx­i­ety.

Viganò:

[T]he chil­dren of darkness—whom we may eas­i­ly iden­ti­fy with the deep state which you wise­ly oppose and which is fierce­ly wag­ing war against you in these days—have decid­ed to show their cards, so to speak, by now reveal­ing their plans.

 

[Here Viganò tells Trump (and his Catholic sup­port­ers) that those who oppose him are “chil­dren of dark­ness.” Got it. Quite brazen.]

 

Although it may seem dis­con­cert­ing, the oppos­ing align­ments I have described are also found in reli­gious cir­cles. There are faith­ful Shep­herds who care for the flock of Christ, but there are also mer­ce­nary infi­dels who seek to scat­ter the flock and hand the sheep over to be devoured by rav­en­ous wolves. It is not sur­pris­ing that these mer­ce­nar­ies are allies of the chil­dren of dark­ness and hate the chil­dren of light: just as there is a deep state, there is also a deep church that betrays its duties and for­swears its prop­er com­mit­ments before God.

I tell you what I make of that. I don’t think Viganò is real­ly talk­ing to Trump here. I don’t think Trump under­stands or cares about any of it; he cares about what­ev­er will get him re-elect­ed. He cares that he has a will­ing mouth­piece who will try to get him as much of the Catholic vote as he can get. But Viganò is not writ­ing a pri­vate let­ter to Trump; he’s pub­li­ciz­ing this through Life­Site and the oth­er right-wing Catholic media. He’s send­ing a dog whis­tle to his fac­tion, that he’s one of the good ones, don’t trust those oth­er bish­ops, they’re out to destroy the Church and remove God from the tem­ple. Per­haps your bish­op may be among them. Viganò’s encour­ag­ing divi­sions with this. It’s an old game in Vat­i­can pol­i­tics, but he’s play­ing it through the lan­guage of Amer­i­can pol­i­tics and Trump­s­peak. (Viganò has obvi­ous­ly stud­ied it very care­ful­ly.) Viganò uses the right-wing media to get at the right-wing Catholics and gain pow­er over them—over their think­ing, their sus­pi­cions, their fears. And maybe he thinks four more years of Trump ben­e­fits him per­son­al­ly in some way.

Viganò even drags in con­spir­a­cy the­o­ries about Masons:

[The false shep­herds in the Church] are sub­servient to the deep state, to glob­al­ism, to aligned thought, to the New World Order which they invoke ever more fre­quent­ly in the name of a uni­ver­sal broth­er­hood which has noth­ing Chris­t­ian about it, but which evokes the Mason­ic ideals of those want to dom­i­nate the world by dri­ving God out of the courts, out of schools, out of fam­i­lies, and per­haps even out of church­es.

This is all whack­adoo­dle, and I’m not sure what Viganò thinks he can achieve by it. I sus­pect he’s so habit­u­at­ed to the inside cler­i­cal­ist pol­i­tics that he can’t stop play­ing that game into his retire­ment. Except now he must use sym­pa­thet­ic media to play it; he must go “above the heads” of Catholics’ own bish­ops and the Mag­is­teri­um. He strikes me as a small, frus­trat­ed man who still wants to feel like he mat­ters, who thinks that only author­i­ty and influ­ence will give him any worth. So he has decid­ed to play upon a fac­tion of Catholics who are also frus­trat­ed and feel per­se­cut­ed.

It’s very sad to watch. Peo­ple all over Face­book are call­ing this let­ter “pow­er­ful” and “one for the his­to­ry books.” “He rep­re­sents the true Church,” one said. “Extra­or­di­nary courage,” said anoth­er.

When you can say words like that about a let­ter filled with con­spir­a­cy the­o­ries and eschat­a­log­i­cal gob­bledy­gook about the “chil­dren of light” and “chil­dren of dark­ness,” I don’t think you’re in a posi­tion to be rea­soned with. Viganò’s let­ter is what a fac­tion’s itch­ing ears want to hear, and in their anx­i­ety they have turned unto fables.

Please, please don’t be tak­en in by any of this. Lis­ten to the Mag­is­teri­um of the Church. Lis­ten to the Holy Father and the bish­ops who teach in union with him.