Archbishop Carlo Maria Viganò presents a trenchant critique of an article by Cardinal Blase Cupich, Archbishop of Chicago. Viganò's central thesis is that the liturgical and ecclesiological reforms of the Second Vatican Council do not represent a "restoration" of a primitive purity, as Cupich argues, but rather the culmination of a long revolutionary process, of a Gnostic-Pantheistic nature, which seeks to replace the theocentric religion of God with the anthropocentric religion of Man.
Viganò denounces Cupich as an exponent of the "conciliar and synodal church," aligned with the "globalist and LGBTQ+ left," and accuses him of falsifying liturgical history to justify the Novus Ordo. According to Viganò, the claim that the traditional liturgy was "obscured" by elements from imperial courts (Carolingian and Baroque periods) is a historical falsehood, repeating accusations from Protestant and Modernist heretics. The true intention of the reform, he argues, was to invert the theocentric approach, transforming the Mass from a Sacrifice to God into a "community event" centered on man.This inversion, according to Viganò, is analogous to the political revolution against the throne, now completed by the revolution against the altar. He concludes that Cupich's view of Tradition—a "living" faith that evolves, as opposed to a dead "traditionalism"—is, in fact, a betrayal of the Catholic faith, which consists in transmitting intact the deposit of Revelation. Cupich's article is seen as a "declaration of war on Tradition," driven by the fear that the power usurped by the "Innovators" in the Church is threatened by the growing traditionalist movement.
📖The Liturgical Inversion: From the Worship of God to the Cult of Man
The thesis presented rightly denounces the inversion carried out in the post-conciliar Church, identifying it as a paradigm shift from theocentric to anthropocentric. This analysis, however, gains even greater depth when understood not merely as a modern crisis, but as the contemporary manifestation of a much older and more persistent phenomenon: Anthropotheism, or the Religion of Man. This "karstic religion," which sometimes emerges and sometimes hides in history, finds its decisive battlefield in the liturgical crisis, for it is at the altar that the relationship between the Creator and the creature is defined and lived.
The argument that the liturgical reform sought a "noble simplicity" against a supposed "tumorous growth" of ceremonial is, in fact, an echo of ancient Gnostic heresies. Gnosticism, in its essence, repudiates matter as a prison for the spirit. Consequently, its ecclesiology tends toward a "spiritualism" that rejects everything visible, hierarchical, material, and ritualistic in the Church. Bells become "trumpets of Satan," temples "piles of stones," and vestments and images are seen as corruptions that obscure the "purity" of an invisible church, "of the heart." The accusation that the Church became corrupt by associating with temporal power, especially from Constantine and Pope St. Sylvester onwards, is a constant refrain in movements such as the Cathars, the Fraticelli, and later, the Protestant reformers (Fedeli, 2011).
This hostility to external form is the visible manifestation of a deeper metaphysical hatred. The traditional Catholic liturgy, with its symbolic richness, its sacred hierarchy, and its ad orientem orientation, reflects the order of creation. In it, every gesture, every vestment, every note of Gregorian chant are like "veils that both conceal and reveal the Creator," mirroring the hierarchy of beings that ascend analogically to God (Fedeli, 2011). The liturgical reform, by abolishing this sacredness in the name of "active participation" and "simplicity," not only impoverished the rite but also destroyed its exemplary function, transforming it from a mirror of heaven into a mirror of the gathered community itself. The Sacrifice offered to God was replaced by the celebration of the life of the people.
The thesis under discussion correctly points to the inversion of the altar, but it is crucial to understand that this liturgical inversion is the direct consequence of a soteriological inversion. Catholic soteriology affirms that man, fallen by sin, needs an external and divine Redeemer. The soteriology of Anthropotheism, on the other hand, affirms that man is the "redeemer who redeems himself" (Fedeli, 2011, p. 222). If man is his own savior, the liturgy naturally ceases to be an act of propitiation and adoration to a transcendent God and becomes an act of self-celebration and awareness of his own immanent "divinity." "Active participation" ceases to be the interior union with the Sacrifice of Christ and becomes human protagonism, where man becomes the center of the sacred action.
In this new paradigm, the Church ceases to be the Mystical Body of Christ, whose purpose is the eternal salvation of souls, and becomes an institution at the service of man, concerned with "social injustice" and the construction of an earthly utopia. This is the ecclesiological manifestation of Pantheism, the other branch of the Religion of Man. While Gnosticism attacks the Church for its materiality, Pantheism co-opts it for its immanent ends. The "Church I want," described with irony in certain modern texts, a church "without dogmas," "homely," where "sinners, faggots, drug addicts" are the foundations, is nothing more than the grotesque expression of this anthropotheistic ecclesiology (Fedeli, 2011).
Finally, the proposed distinction between "Tradition" and "traditionalism" is the very essence of Gnostic dialectics applied to history. In the heretical view, "living Tradition" is that which adapts, evolves, "changes" to remain "the same"—a contradiction in terms. For the Catholic faith, Tradition is the immutable transmission of a deposit that cannot be altered, for its author is God. The accusation that "traditionalism" is the "dead faith of the living" echoes the Gnostic charge that the Law of the Old Testament—fixed and immutable—was the work of an ignorant Demiurge, while the "true" revelation is always fluid, secret, and "spiritual." The attack on Tradition is therefore not a mere debate over customs, but a war against the very nature of Revelation and against the God who does not change.
📚References
Fedeli, Orlando. (2011). Antropoteísmo: A Religião do Homem [Anthropotheism: The Religion of Man]. Editora Celta.