by Br. Alexis Bugnolo
The other day I decried Cardinal Raymond Burke for the outrageous mendacity and fraud in his recent Letter to the Faithful about the 100th anniversary of the apparition of Our Lady of Fatima, on Dec. 10, 1925, because that letter called for Catholics to pray for the pope, who is going to be persecuted.
Yet, Cardinal Burke has in hand not only the copy of the Sutri Initiative, which he never acted upon, but the Open Letter to a Cardinal about the invalidity of the recent Conclave of May, 2025.
So by his evil and deliberate silence he is continuing to gaslight Catholics into joining him in his criminal fraud.
This is an example where being silent is a mortal sin which merits damnation with 100000000% certainty. So for all his lace and rubrics, Cardinal Burke has chosen to serve the Father of Lies and drag souls down to Hell, in the service of the antipope Leo XIV who is a manifest formal heretic teaching lies as truths on a daily basis, with words and actions.
But there is another diabolic sin, which is fake obedience, when one obeys a man who is not one’s superior as if he is one’s superior. This fake obedience becomes more evil, when the office claimed by the superior is an office in the Church. And it becomes even more diabolic, when it is an office created directly by the Living God, Jesus Christ, when He said, to Saint Peter, “I give to you the keys of the Kingdom of Heaven”, for such false obedience leads souls into the Inferno, since the false superior has not the Keys of the Kingdom of Christ, but deceives with the works of the keys of Darkness and Deceit.
The insistence on “obeying Vatican II” has come to this: the demand and expectation and silence in the service of the lie, the crime and the violation of papal laws about who is and who is not the pope.
So the next time a fellow Catholic says, “I am a good Catholic and I don’t want anything to do with sedevacantism, in denying Leo XIV is the pope”, it is certainly the right moment to speak about the difference between true obedience and fake obedience. And then ask them to read the Papal Law of Pope John Paul II, Universi Dominici Gregis, paragraphs 4. 33, 68, and 76. And if they refuse, then make it quite clear to them what kind of obedience they are actually practicing and what kingdom they are descending into.
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The obedience argument falsely used is often a copout to impose conformity, to avoid responsibility, to avoid an uncomfortable question, or just plain laziness.
It is used by clergy to keep a low profile that protects them from the Cross.
In distinguishing between a just and an unjust law, the Catechism (no. 1902) makes a good point about the distinction between authentic obedience and false obedience. A just law, and therefore the obligation to authentic obedience, derives from right reason.
I made this very point to my Pastor and Bishop during the COVID craziness with respect to the Bishop’s order to wear masks. That order wasn’t based on right reason. Right reason took the form of over 10 Randomized Control Trials in the peer-reviewed published medical literature showing no statistical benefit of masks against viruses. This was tested mostly against influenza, but applicable to SARS-CoV-2 because mask efficacy is determined by size exclusion (filtering), and these two viruses are similar in size.
Of course, to those who argue that there is no such thing as a virus, I guess we could say that size is zero, in which case a mask is still of little to no use.
Dear Brother Bugnolo,
What is a Catholic to do, then, if he/she wishes to be in good standing with Christ? A relative of mine is strongly encouraging me to become a sedevacantist like he is, but I believe that would put me in schism. I believe in all of the traditional Catholic teachings and would love to attend the TLM but there are no Latin masses being offered anywhere close to me except for the one offered by a sedevacantist priest. I have been disappointed with both Pope Francis and now Leo, and find my soul aching for more when I attend the Novus Ordo mass. Under the circumstances, can one in good conscience become part of the sedevacantist church (CMRI) given that the current “pope” is illegitimate and the Chair of Peter is indeed empty? ( I have read some of your articles on sedevacantism, but remain uncertain given what is going on in the Church).
The sedevacantists are both schismatics and heretics, and even worse they are a form of cult, ideology, divorced from the reality of history and the rule of law. I strongly advise you not to attend their services. However, just because a priest does not think Leo14 is the pope does not make him a sedevacantist, such as Father Natale Santonocito, here in Italy.
I cannot give a solution which fits all, but I do not think that priests who name Leo XIV as the pope are necessarily guilty of schism, since they have not investigated the conclave and are unaware of his strong heretical views.
However, if they do name L14, and there is no non-sedevacantist church withing an hour’s travel you are not obliged to go to Mass on Sunday.
God willing soon we shall have a true pope, and then he will have to give instruction about these matters. My position is only my opinion and I have no authority backing it up other than what I have gleaned from the writings of the Saints in such matters.
In my parish, here at Rome, the pastor does not put the image of Francis or Leo in the Sacristy or in the Church. And when he says the name of Leo XIV he always pauses before hand, making it quite clear that he objects to pronouncing it.
So I do believe that it is not a sin to attend the masses of such a priest, now in this sedevacante, if you hold that L14 is not the pope, because he was invalidly elected or is a heretic, and even if you do not know these things, but just presume he was validly elected and is a Catholic. But once a new pope is elected, the problem will be different, and you will have to ask a priest why he names L14 if there is a true pope at Rome.