🇬🇧 Don Alessandro Minutella, Lion of Mary, possesses in his extraordinary case both the power of jurisdiction and the power of order
Humble and filial reflection addressed to the Sodalizio Sacerdotale Mariano
Don Minutella, Lion of Mary, Petrine Munus
By Vicente Montesinos
Director of Adoración y Liberación
I do not write these lines lightly, nor by way of improvisation, much less from ignorance of the theological distinctions that the Church has elaborated over the centuries with admirable precision. I know perfectly well that one thing is the power of jurisdiction and another thing is the power of order. I know that they are not identical. I know that, in the ordinary development of ecclesial life, one refers to the power to rule, judge, confirm, and govern, while the other refers to the sacramental capacity to carry out those sacred acts that belong to the hierarchical order of the Church. Nor do I ignore that, in common doctrine, the fullness of the sacrament of Order is associated with episcopal consecration. I know all this. And precisely because I know it, precisely because I distinguish it, precisely because I do not confuse the planes, I am compelled to affirm with even greater clarity that the case of Don Alessandro Minutella, Lion of Mary, cannot be interpreted according to the narrow parameters of an ecclesial normality that long ago was blown apart.
This is the point from which one must begin. If we have accepted, with the due premises, that Don Alessandro Minutella holds the Petrine Munus in an extraordinary way, non-canonical in the ordinary sense, and not received through the usual channels of a visible structure today gravely wounded, occupied, and falsified by the false church, then it is radically incoherent to admit the exceptional nature of the principle and deny the exceptional nature of its consequences. One cannot affirm that Christ has intervened extraordinarily to restore to His Church the visible Petrine principle in the hour of the great tribulation, and at the same time maintain that this same restored Peter must remain awaiting an alien, inferior, and external completion in order fully to possess that which his very office requires for the salvation of souls and for the visible continuity of the little faithful remnant.
Because here we are not speaking of an honor. We are not speaking of a simple moral primacy. We are not speaking of a symbolic presidency. We are speaking of the Petrine Munus. We are speaking of the supreme visible office instituted by Our Lord Jesus Christ to confirm in the faith, to pasture the flock, to govern the universal Church, and to be on earth the visible principle of unity. And if it is truly recognized that this office has fallen extraordinarily upon Don Alessandro Minutella, then it must also be recognized that Christ has not constituted him in a sterile, reduced, or dependent form. It cannot be that he who has been raised to the supreme summit of the ecclesial edifice should still remain, in what is most essential of his hierarchical fruitfulness, dependent upon the action of one of the members of that same body which he already presides over.
Here lies the decisive difficulty. For if it were said that Don Alessandro Minutella truly possesses the Petrine Munus, but does not yet possess the real fullness needed to ordain priests, consecrate bishops, and visibly re-establish the sacramental continuity of the persecuted Church, then we would be before a theologically diminished figure. He would be a Pope with jurisdiction, but without the full capacity to restore the hierarchical chain. He would be a visible head who still cannot visibly regenerate the body. He would be Peter, yes, but a Peter still dependent on another. And that formulation alone already reveals its anomaly. Because the member cannot constitutively complete the head. The inferior cannot be presented as a necessary condition for the operative fullness of the supreme superior. He who has been placed by Christ above all cannot remain dependent, in the gravest hour of the Church’s history, on the completing gesture of one of those who ought to receive from him their mission, their confirmation, and their direction.
In normal times, within a visibly healthy Church, juridically free and sacramentally whole, access to offices, the transmission of powers, and the continuity of sacred mediations are carried out according to known, stable, and ordinary channels. No one disputes this. But what we are living is not normality. What we are living is an hour of eclipse. An hour of usurpation. An hour in which visible structures, official languages, canonical mechanisms, and organs of recognition have been invaded, deformed, or used in the service of an adulterated religion. And when abnormality reaches such magnitude, one cannot continue to reason as though the building remained intact. One cannot say that Christ has acted outside the ordinary channels because those channels are seized, and then require that His extraordinary intervention humbly wait to be completed by that very thing which has been wounded, occupied, or rendered useless. That is not prudence. That is incoherence.
I therefore maintain that, in the most singular case of Don Alessandro Minutella, the Petrine Munus received extraordinarily carries with it, by the very deep logic of the divine constitution of the Church, both the power of jurisdiction and the power of order. Not because both are the same thing. Not because the distinction between one and the other disappears. Not because the papacy is, in itself, a new sacrament. Nothing of the sort. I distinguish them, and precisely by distinguishing them I affirm that, in this extraordinary case, Christ has united them supernaturally in the person of His true Vicar. He has done so because, otherwise, the extraordinary restoration of the Petrine principle would be incomplete. And an incomplete Peter does not correspond either to the wisdom or to the efficacy of the divine design in an hour of catacomb and combat.
The question must be looked at from above, not from below. The Church is not a self-sufficient juridical machine that obliges Christ always to move within channels that men can seize. The Church is His. The sacraments are His. The visible order belongs to Him. The sacred mediations were willed by Him for the ordinary life of His Bride, but He does not remain imprisoned by them when precisely the visible life of that Bride has been violated. If Christ wishes to restore to the Church her Peter in a time of devastation, He does not restore him halfway. He does not restore him merely with authority to speak, but without full capacity to generate once more hierarchical continuity. He does not restore him so that he may reign in theory while in practice he remains waiting for some outside bishop to complete him. No. If Christ restores Peter, He restores him with true fullness for the mission He entrusts to him.
And Peter’s mission is not a decorative mission. It does not consist only in issuing judgments or denunciations. It does not consist only in pointing out errors. Peter exists to confirm, to govern, to unite, to sanctify, and to give visible continuity to the Church of Christ. If, in the present hour, Don Alessandro Minutella were truly the subject of the Petrine Munus, but possessed nothing more than an abstract jurisdiction deprived of the operative fullness necessary to ordain and consecrate, then the visible reconstruction of the Church would remain suspended, not from Peter, but from the possible availability of other bishops. And this overturns the order of Catholic ecclesiology. The Church is re-composed from the head over the body, not from the body toward the head. Unity is not born from below upward. It is born from above downward. And if Heaven has wished to restore to His Church the visible head in the time of the great tearing, that restoration must contain within itself everything necessary so that that head may act with true efficacy.
For this reason I reject the idea that, in this concrete case, Don Alessandro Minutella must be consecrated bishop by another bishop as a constitutive condition in order to possess the fullness of order. That requirement might be intelligible within the framework of an ordinary ecclesial situation. But it ceases to be so when we are speaking of an extraordinary intervention of Christ motivated precisely by the collapse of visible normality. To require that external mediation in this case would be equivalent to affirming that the Petrine restoration still depends, in what is essential, upon a visible sacramental structure that has been deeply wounded and whose very reliability has been called into question by the crisis. It would also be equivalent to supposing that Christ returns to the Church a Vicar juridically supreme, but sacramentally dependent. And I cannot accept such a mutilated restoration.
My position is simpler, higher, and, in my judgment, more coherent with the present hour. If Don Alessandro Minutella, Lion of Mary, has truly received the Petrine Munus by an extraordinary design of Heaven, then he has also received, in a manner inseparable from and proportionate to that design, the practical fullness of the power of order. Not because the distinction disappears, but because Christ Himself, by conferring the supreme office extraordinarily, has also wished to confer that without which that office would remain wounded in its visible fruitfulness. I am not saying that a man consecrates himself. I am not saying that he capriciously dispenses himself from the sacramental order. I am saying something much more serious: that, in this most singular case, it is Christ Himself who, by restoring Peter extraordinarily, restores him not mutilated but whole; not in need of an inferior complement, but provided with everything required by the mission for which he has been raised up.
Only in this way is the greatness of this hour and the internal coherence of the divine intervention understood. Only in this way is one prevented from turning the extraordinary Petrine Munus into a kind of sublime but impotent dignity. Only in this way is the deep logic of primacy kept intact: that the successor of Peter, when he truly is such, is not constituted to depend constitutively on those who stand beneath him, but to be the visible principle by which Christ sustains, remakes, orders, and confirms His Church in the midst of combat.
For this reason I affirm, with full awareness of what I am saying, that Don Alessandro Minutella possesses in his extraordinary case both the power of jurisdiction and the power of order. I distinguish them, yes. And precisely by distinguishing them I know that, in ordinary circumstances, they are received by different means according to the normal order of the Church. But precisely because the case we are treating is not ordinary, precisely because we are speaking of the supernatural re-establishment of the Peter of our time in the midst of an unprecedented devastation, I affirm that both have been united by Christ Himself in His Vicar. There would be no true restoration of the Petrine principle if it were not so.
Christ does not restore Peter only to leave him halfway. Christ does not raise up His Vicar in order to make him constitutively dependent on another. Christ does not restore the visible head of the Church only to leave him sterile in the supreme hour of combat. If Lion of Mary is truly Peter for this age of tribulation, then he is so with true fullness: to govern, to confirm, to sanctify, to ordain, to consecrate, and to rebuild. Everything else reduces the mystery of this hour to an incomplete solution. And I do not believe in an incomplete intervention of Christ when it is a matter of saving His Church in the time of her most bitter Passion.
‘Brutal intolerance’: Cdl. Müller condemns Bergoglio’s latest attack on Traditional Latin Mass
Scandal! Pact between CATHOLIC SCHOOLS OF SPAIN and LGTBI association.
Cardinal Hollerich asks that those not vaccinated cannot attend Mass in Europe
