Vigano, Traditionalism, and the Quest for Identity

When I did blogging regularly, I took pride in the fact that the blog stood out from others in that I normally avoided two things.  I avoided a running commentary on Catholic news, and I avoided a running commentary on various Catholic personalities.  If you read between the lines, it was clear these things inspired me to write about issues, but I tried to avoid being stuck in a time-specific piece.

I'm going to violate that rule here, and I think its important to give an outline as to why, and make clear this will be a norm I do my best to follow.  I think the case of Archbishop Carlo Maria Vigano is a fascinating study in itself, and what his popularity in traditionalist circles says is pretty instructive of traditionalism, though not for the reason most of your bloviating idiot pundits think.

As mentioned elsewhere, after his scathing J'Accuse of Pope Francis for complicity and coverup in the scandal of Theodore McCarrick, Vigano soon became a minor and then not so minor Catholic celebrity.  He opined on various issues, and he wrote in ways that were clearly trying to grab certain audiences.  This style became a hit among traditionalists, especially as he began to be influenced  by your traditional standard boilerplate about Vatican II.

The standard criticism about Vigano is that it shows how far off the deep end he's gone, and allegedly this is proof of what happens when you are in "rebellion against the Holy Father", whatever that means.  Yet it is also clear that he is going beyond even the standard criticisms of Vatican II.  Its not just that Vatican II is a failed council: its that the council itself was a conspiracy a century in the making, and that it was actually a wildly successful council: it was a successful redefinition of the Catholic Church.

I want to mostly avoid those debates.  I point them out to simply make mention of the fact that there is a bit of a point when some worry about a radicalizing effect Vigano could have.  He's not just thrown his lot in with conservatives and traditionalists:  he's thrown his lot in with the most conspiratorial of the bunch.  So, what are we to make of him?

First, whatever his positions now, it says nothing about the overall truth of his testimony against Francis regarding McCarrick.  This entry takes for granted the truth of his claim because REALLY MAN?  We really have to do this?  Okay then.  His first argument was that, unknown to everyone save a few, Benedict XVI suspended McCarrick from ministry, essentially permanently, for the crime of sexual sins regarding the confessional and sexual abuse of a seminarian.  (at the time his serial child predations do not seem to have been known.)  At the time it seemed like an utterly insane accusation.  For many of us, its sheer absurdity was why it was likely true:  nobody would make that up.

That turned out to be 100% correct: confirmed by McCarrick's own pen.  He admitted to his secretary Benedict had forcibly imposed restrictions on him.  We also learned that from at least the late 90's/early 2000's Rome was made aware of allegations regarding McCarrick that were pretty substantial. We also learned that Rome had secretly punished a few other bishops for similar crimes.  Suddenly secret sentences weren't that crazy.  So on that claim Vigano was absolutely right.

The second claim was the more explosive one:  that Pope Francis knew about it.  While we'll never get a confession, I think its pretty clear he knew about it.  His refusal to originally deny it, along with the overwhelming evidence that the pope would of course know about a good friend, advisor and senior cardinal being punished.  If he didn't, his staff would've made it clear the second his name popped up in the news.  To this day Rome has never answered how Francis couldn't have known, leaving us with only one possibility:  he knew.  He knew, and for whatever reason (it need not even be conspiratorial or sinful) he let those restrictions lapse around McCarrick.

So yes, Vigano was correct on both accounts.  This does not necessarily make him reliable on everything else.  It just means that he was in a unique and fundamental position to know that Francis wasn't being honest.  That doesn't suddenly make him qualified to speak on anything else.  Nor does it make him a figure worthy of belief on everything else.  Still, the man is enjoying his time in the spotlight, and doing what he can to stay in it.  If that means fighting with otherwise natural allies over perceived slights personally and professionally, so be it.

What does this say about traditionalism as a whole?  That's where I think its more interesting.  Traditionalism has always had a bit of a populist strain to it.  They are suspicious of the hierarchy (who, despite their ordained role as shepherds are viewed as rotten for a variety of reasons), and view conformity to a dominant way of life with skepticism.  This strain was evident in its popular thinking.  While today Benedict XVI is viewed as a natural ally of traditionalists who (in the eyes of his critics) did more than anyone to mainstream the movement, as Cardinal Ratzinger traditionalists looked upon him with skepticism, if not outright contempt.  That he mostly agreed with them on the liturgy was viewed as a trojan horse for a variety of other ideas.  Any bishop who did likewise was often treated with the same skepticism, outside of elder princes like Cardinal Stickler.

That is not the traditionalism of today.  Today traditionalists count among their allies or heroes bishops such as Schneider and yes Vigano.  They also count among them Cardinal Sarah, Cardinal Zen of Hong Kong, and a host of other leaders.  Far from an adversarial relationship with bishops in the US, it is pointed out that relations have improved pretty remarkably outside of a few bad dioceses.  That traditionalists are so hungry to quickly point to anytime someone remotely agrees with them, this in itself is instructive.  Its a sign of a movement looking to become more accommodating to the mainstream.  

It is for this reason that a lot of the calls for traditionalists to denounce those individuals tends to fall on deaf ears.  They suspect, often correctly, that the Dawn Eden's and Where Peter Is gang are operating in bad faith.  Traditionalists are rebels against the hierarchy, but when they find episcopal support, those individuals are cranks or rebels.  They are in a perpetual state of rebellion against the Holy Father, but they are also preventing the Holy Father from wielding his Petrine authority when they appeal to him to use that Petrine authority to not allow married priests in the Latin Rite.  

For far too long traditionalists have been told they need to mainstream themselves, and that it wouldn't do to have just high school religion teachers or lay columnists advocate for them.  So they went and persuaded priests and bishops, and are now accused of radicalizing them.  We can't win gang.  We have these kind of debates about what to think of these individuals all the time.  We just refuse to do so on the schedule of hostile outsiders.

If you want to ignore all this and have a quick summary, its this:  we should always be careful about who we elevate, but the choices in who is being elevated should be instructive.  We're playing the game people have long asked us to win, are playing that game pretty well, and now they want us to stop playing.