(LifeSiteNews) — Archbishop Carlo Maria Viganò denounced Cardinal Gerhard Müller’s condemnation of the SSPX’s recent “Profession of Catholic Faith.”
Müller recently called on the Holy See “to reject” what he described as the SSPX’s “scandalous accusation that the Roman Church has departed from the Catholic faith.” The former Prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith even suggested that the SSPX is not “Catholic” and called for a commission to assist clergy and faithful who may seek reconciliation with Rome after the planned SSPX episcopal consecrations.
In response, Viganò decried Müller’s assertion as absurd and declared that his “pseudo-Catholic conservatism” “must be scornfully rejected.”
Instead of acknowledging the devastating crisis facing the Catholic Church due to the conciliar and synodal revolution, Cardinal Müller—defying all reason—maintains that the post-Conciliar Hierarchy has never deviated from Tradition and that the Society of Saint Pius X is… pic.twitter.com/Eekd4ofrRn
— Arcivescovo Carlo Maria Viganò (@CarloMVigano) June 28, 2026
“Instead of acknowledging the devastating crisis facing the Catholic Church due to the conciliar and synodal revolution, Cardinal Müller — defying all reason — maintains that the post-Conciliar Hierarchy has never deviated from Tradition and that the Society of Saint Pius X is mistaken in asserting otherwise,” Viganò wrote Sunday in an X post.
“We have reached the point of ‘credo quia absurdum,’” Viganò declared, using a Latin phrase meaning “I believe because it is absurd.”
The archbishop accused the post-Vatican II Church hierarchy of disregarding the truth in favor of its own distortions, as manifested, for example, in the Vatican Synod on Synodality.
“The Conciliar and synodal Church claims the power to reshape reality, bending it to fit its own narrative. It demands uncritical and contradictory assent from the faithful, under pain of excommunication,” wrote Viganò.
Viganò has repeatedly critiqued the Synod on Synodality for having issued numerous statements that appear at odds with traditional Catholic teaching, including in its “Final Document,” which has been denounced as “deeply anti-Catholic” by a group of Polish Catholics.
The archbishop has also highlighted errors of the Second Vatican Council, noting, for example, that Vatican II’s formulation of religious freedom “contradict(s) the testimony of Sacred Scripture and the voice of Tradition, as well as the Catholic Magisterium which is the faithful guardian of both.”
The Second Vatican Council, which Müller has often firmly defended, is a decisive bone of contention between the SSPX and the Vatican. The SSPX General House revealed earlier this year that Cardinal Víctor Manuel Fernández, the heterodox prefect of the DDF, has made clear that the Second Vatican Council documents must be accepted in full by the SSPX to achieve “regular” status in the Church.
However, Fernández’s demand of SSPX’s full acceptance of Vatican II texts is at odds with Archbishop Guido Pozzo’s clarification in 2016 that “some texts of the Council … are not doctrinal and are thus not binding on the Catholic conscience,” as journalist Maike Hickson put it.
Viganò thus questioned why the Vatican has condemned even the “slightest reservation” of Vatican II at the same time that it honors heretics, such as by formally receiving and celebrating the Anglican female “archbishop” of Canterbury earlier this year.
“The pseudo-Catholic conservatism of these ‘gatekeepers’ serves the implementation of synodality and must be scornfully rejected,” concluded Viganò.
In the face of Pope Leo XIV’s lack of response to the SSPX’s request to meet prior to their planned episcopal consecration date of July 1, the SSPX published a “Profession of Catholic Faith” as part of communications with the Pope and the cardinals and “in response to the chief and gravest dangers of our time.”
The Society maintains that “Tradition contains all the remedies for the deepest ills afflicting the Church and the world, for which solutions are sought in vain outside of it.”