CHARITY 2025

CHARITY 2025 on January 11, 2025

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If Catholics practised charity, every foe 

Would be, without a drop of blood, struck low.

About one month ago a priest of the Catholic “Resistance” in France, Fr. Matthew Salenave, another refugee from the SSPX, penned a wise portrait of the state in which the Catholic Church finds itself today. Previously he had written in public somewhat critically of the state of the Newsociety of St Pius X as having slidden from what it used to be when it was founded and led by Archbishop Lefebvre. With the text that follows he wrote that he wished to add a few “more positive and encouraging considerations.” He continued –  

“. . . . If God allows for a priestly operation to slide, that does not mean He wishes to abandon His Church or the souls redeemed by His Precious Blood. That is why alongside the sad deterioration of the Society of St Pius X He has been raising up for at least the last 10 years a number of strongholds, a variety of little fortresses of the Faith. They do not necessarily all share the same point of view or show the same firmness in their positions, but for sure and certain they none of them want to go on following the Newsociety in its desire to go back under Roman authority.

Thus we have the Company of Mary with Fr Chazal, the Apostles of Jesus and Mary with Bishop Faure, the Priory of Villeneuve with Fr Pivert, the Dominicans of Avrille, the Benedictines of Bellaigue and various priestly confraternities under the authority of the “Resistance” bishops and different priories . . . all gathered together under the moral and spiritual authority of the seven bishops of the “Resistance.” Obviously, most important of all in this Catholic effort to resist is the Catholic Faith, with bishops in the front line of defence, for that is how the Church continues in its Faith, hierarchy, and sacraments. 

 Each stronghold will have its own characteristics and even weaknesses. One or the other stronghold may even fall to the enemy, as Fr Calmel said about them, but the fall of one or the other will not bring them all down together, as it would do if they were all united in one single organisation of Catholic Tradition. 

 Fr Calmel used to underline also the need for charity to bind these strongholds together. There may well be a certain autonomy to be respected in the case of each stronghold, but there is no less need for them to look after one another, and for them to avoid those ecclesiastical and religious jealousies which have always been a bane of Church life. This situation will not last for ever, but only until the Church regains a perfectly Catholic Pope. Let us so pray and act that God can give us one such as soon as possible!” 

 So why are these considerations of Fr Salenave worthy of recommendation?   In a few bullet-points –  

 * The prime perspective is of God (para 1), and of what He is doing to look after His Church. It is God who allowed the SSPX to flirt once more with the apostates in Rome, partly because their pride deserved it, partly because He needed a single worldwide congregation to re-establish the rights of Tradition, but once that was achieved, He no longer needed a single Congregation that might even seem to replace the official Church. 

 * Thus we have a diversity of Traditional groups (para 2), all centred on the Faith, not on their own glory nor even their survival, but relying on their own bishops for a minimal resemblance of Catholic authority. 

 * This diversity of these strongholds and the unofficial status of their bishops (para 3) are certainly not a normal way for the Catholic Church to function, but in today’s circumstances, of God cleansing His Church, the diversity prevents a joint fall (para 2), and the unofficiality leaves room for God to restore His Church officially and properly, in His own good time, by the Triumph of the Immaculate Heart of His Mother. 

 * Fr Salenave began with the Faith and he finishes with Charity (para 4). If strongholds claim to be serving the Church but have no charity, especially towards one another, they are, as St Paul strongly says ( I Cor. XIII, 1) “as a noisy gong or a clanging cymbal.” Let strongholds realise what example of charity they are giving! 

Kyrie eleison

BATTLEFIELD, the MASS

BATTLEFIELD, the MASS on January 4, 2025

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Between the New Mass and the Old is war, 

Ending not with sweet talk, but blood and gore! 

“Take away the Mass, destroy the Church” is a famous quote attributed to Martin Luther (1483–1546). Perhaps he never said it, although it seems highly likely that he did, but in any case the quote is true, as Catholics could see in the aftermath of Vatican II. The very first of that Council’s 16 documents concerned the liturgy, by name “Sacrosanctum Concilium,” but the words of the text are thoroughly ambiguous. They can seem conservative but in fact they are designed to open the door to that liturgical revolution which in the aftermath of the Council virtually destroyed the Mass. Very soon after the – apparently – official imposition of Pope Paul’s New Mass in 1969, Archbishop Lefebvre said that if he had to introduce it in his newly founded Seminary of Econe, he might as well close the Seminary down within three weeks. Such is the anti-Catholic power of the “renewed” liturgy, for it is by attending Mass that most Catholics live their religion.

In fact, from 1969 until today, Pope Paul’s “renewed” liturgy turned the rite of Mass into the central battlefield of the great war of the Faith between the unchanging Catholicism of Tradition and the constantly evolving Revolution of Protestant-Liberal-Modernism. And it is still the central battlefield, as shown by the perseverance of Pope Francis in his insane efforts to obliterate the Latin Mass altogether. An excellent article by a French layman, Yves de Lassus, is summarised below. For access to the original article, much fuller, in English translation, see:   

https://respicestellam.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/12/Letter-to-Friends-of-AFS-Jan-22.pdf 

On December 18 2021, the Congregation for Divine Worship and the Discipline of the Sacraments (CCD) published a note entitled Responsa ad dubia  responding to questions about the application of the Motu Proprio Traditionis Custodes . Many of the faithful were distraught by the harshness of this response. But from the outset, the intention of the Motu Proprio was clear; the response of the Congregation only makes explicit a firmness already expressed in Traditionis Custodes . For the CCD, the Mass is the “sharing of the one broken bread” and the “memorial of the Passover”. To attend Mass means “to participate in the Eucharistic table”.  It is never recalled that the Mass is a sacrifice,  the unbloody renewal of the one sacrifice of Christ on the Cross. 

This wiping out of the sacrificial character is accentuated by the purpose that the CCD attributes to the Mass. For the CCD, the purpose of the Mass is unity. The first objective of Traditionis Custodes  and consequently of the Mass itself is to ” continue the constant search for ecclesial communion.”  Not one of the four traditional purposes of the Mass is recalled. For the CCD, the Mass is above all a manifestation of unity among men instead of an act entirely turned towards God. Thus it is clear that the general intention of the CCD response is to put an end once and for all to the use of the traditional Missal. The old rite, says the CCD, “is not part of the ordinary life of the Church.” Moreover, the CCD insists that “the liturgical reform is irreversible”. Any return to the old rite is therefore meant to be impossible.

We must not hide from the truth. The Holy See has gone to war against the Traditional Rite with the desire to completely eradicate it from the life of the Church. It is a real war between two different conceptions of the Mass and two radically opposed conceptions of the Church and the Christian life. We are even legitimately entitled to wonder if they are the same religion. Thus it is an illusion to hope that the Holy See will soften its position if only we hold a conciliatory discourse. No! Rome wants the end of the Traditional Mass, whereas we want to maintain the Tridentine Rite, because it is willed by God Himself. In the face of this war between the two rites, it is no longer possible to put off a decision. We must choose one side or the other.

Which side? We must condemn error, even if it comes from the Holy See. The Mass is first and foremost a sacrifice offered to God for a purpose that is at once adoration, thanksgiving, propitiation and expiation. No pope can ever abrogate the bull of St. Pius V authorizing the use of the Traditional Missal in perpetuity.

The Mass is in a situation which, in many ways, resembles that experienced by Our Lord during his Passion: the supreme Authority condemns it to death. But during the Passion, Our Lady did not revolt: She remained unfailingly close to Her Son, silent and recollected. No doubt She prayed for the executioners. With regard to the Latin Mass, let us adopt the same attitude: let us remain unfailingly attached to it, even if it has just been condemned to death. 

Kyrie eleison 

AGAINST SEDEVACANTISM

AGAINST SEDEVACANTISM on December 28, 2024

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How men behave must be by law refined,

But law must follow reality close behind.

The controversy over the resignation by Benedict XVI from the Papacy in February of 2013 continues to feed the argument over the vacancy of the Apostolic See – was that resignation valid or not? If it was valid, then the ensuing election of Pope Francis was not invalidated by Benedict still being in any way the valid Pope. But if Benedict’s resignation was doubtfully valid, then a doubt is left hanging over all Francis’ subsequent papacy, because Benedict only died in 2022 after Francis had acted as Pope for the space of nearly ten years. In the autumn of last year Bishop Athanasius Schneider wrote a most interesting article, accessible on the Internet, giving precious principles on the whole dispute of whether the Apostolic See (Latin “sedes”) is vacant or not.

It may seem an idle dispute, but it is not. The Catholic Church is a worldwide organisation, strictly hierarchical, in which all parish priests depend upon valid diocesan bishops for their valid appointment to parishes, and those bishops depend in turn upon a valid Pope for their valid appointment to their dioceses. For the Church to be able to function, its head must be really existent, clearly identified and universally accepted. Of course several times in Church history the identity of the Pope has been disputed, notably during the Great Western Schism from 1378 to 1417, which saw at its end not just two but three candidates all claiming to be Pope. However, all Catholics knew that more than one Pope was most harmful to the Church, so the Schism lasted only 39 years.

In that dispute, it is precious to observe how the Church judged of the validity of the popes in question. On the one hand Urban VII was duly elected in Rome in the papal conclave of 1378 amid huge pressure and threats, but he was accepted and recognised as Pope by all the cardinals who had elected him. The Church has come to see in him and in his successors the line of true and valid Popes. On the other hand, a few months later, French cardinals counter-elected a Frenchman as Pope Clement VII, who set up the Avignon papacy in Southern France. This line of “Popes” the Church has come to condemn as anti-popes. What is to be observed from this example and several others, especially in the Middle Ages, is that for a Pope to be valid the letter of the law is less important than the absolute need for the Church to have a single, visible, recognised and certain head.

Thus Gregory VI bought his papacy in 1045 for a large sum of money, so that his election was strictly invalid, yet the Church has always recognised him as a valid Pope. In 1294 Pope Celestine V doubtfully resigned and Boniface VIII disputedly succeeded him, yet both events were “healed at the root,” or made valid afterwards, by their being universally accepted by Catholics, clergy and laity. This doctrine of an event, illegal at the time but being made legal afterwards, the Church applies to marriages and to papal elections, under certain conditions. For papal elections those conditions are that the new Pope should be immediately accepted as Pope by the Universal Church. This was surely the case of Pope Francis, when he greeted the crowd from a Vatican balcony overlooking St Peter’s Square just after his papal election, with all the election’s possible canonical faults.

As for the disputed or doubtful resignation of Benedict XVI, opinions may differ, and the Church may decide with Authority what it meant, only after the Church emerges at last from the unprecedented crisis brought about by the splitting of Catholic Authority from Catholic Truth at the Second Vatican Council. However, based on the realistic principles laid out by Bishop Schneider in his article, it does not seem difficult to conclude that that resignation was both doubtful in itself and harmful in practice to the Church.

Doubtful in itself, because God designed His Church as a monarchy, or rule of one, and not as a diarchy, or rule of two. God obviously meant His Vicar, or stand-in, to have at his disposal in Rome a whole aristocracy of officials to help him to rule the worldwide Church, but of that aristocracy he is the undisputed sole king. And harmful in practice, because Benedict’s distinction between “munus” (office) for himself and “ministerium” (ministry or work) for Francis, did not clearly exclude his own continuing to participate in the rule of the Church. However, who did rule the Church from Benedict’s resignation to his death? Not Benedict. And when Benedict died – was there a papal conclave? No. It is Francis who has been Pope, from 2013 until now.

Kyrie eleison.

AMERICAN ELECTION

AMERICAN ELECTION on December 21, 2024

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God is supremely generous. His bliss

Is something I shall be quite mad to miss.

The re-election at the beginning of last month of Donald Trump as President of the United States of America for the next four years can be seen from a religious or a political point of view. If God did not exist, then the religious point of view would be of little or no interest, and that election might be taken as encouraging proof that the American people have not lost all good sense, because that election showed the people rising up against the extreme left-wing folly of the last four years’ government under President Biden and the Democrats. On the other hand if God does exist, then that election is not so encouraging, because so many democratic elections in modern times show the right-wing conservatives to be conserving relatively little, while the revolutionaries are all the time gaining ground on the left. This election was no exception.

For instance, the valiant Catholic editor of the Remnant magazine and website in the United States, Michael Matt, compared Trump’s 2016 Republican Manifesto when he was elected President for the first time, with the Manifesto for his second successful election in 2024. In 2016 he stood against abortion, often mentioned. In 2024 pro-life is hardly mentioned, as he had made known that he was no longer against abortion. In 2016 the Manifesto mentioned God 16 times. In 2024 God was mentioned twice. And leading up to the election of 2024, he gave several extra indications of his deference to those anti-Christian people who rule the USA, to the point that one wonders if they are not confident that they can control him for the next four years. In 2016 they may have feared Trump’s heading up a popular reaction against them, but hardly in 2024. In 2016 he was a man with decent values of family, country and God. Is he still the man he was in 2016? Or has he slidden to the left, like the large part of his fellow-countrymen?

Of course this slide to the left, despite some right-wing appearances as in this election of 2024, is not only in the United States, it is in all countries of the post-Christian West. Why? Because religion underlies politics as God the First Cause underlies the being and action of all secondary causes. When men chase God out of their lives, of course they lose all sense of any importance of religion, and to attain the good life they rely on themselves alone, and they make substitute religions out of a variety of alternatives to God, notably out of politics. Ever since Henry VIII, Englishmen have worshipped their government instead of God, with disastrous results for England and for the eternal salvation of English souls at their Judgment before God.

But He does not cease to exist, nor does He cease to do all He can, short of taking away men’s free-will, to save their souls. That is why they may vote democratically to be rid of Him and of His Ten Commandments, but as a result their lives will become more and more unbearable, as a punishment by His absence of their refusing His presence (to paraphrase Cardinal Pie). Of course men are aware that their godless lives are becoming more and more murderous – the food that does not nourish, schools that do not teach, doctors that no longer cure, hospitals that kill all ages of patients, politicians that betray – the list goes on and on – but does the mass of people even dream of turning back to God, or to Our Lord Jesus Christ? These make up the one solution which is excluded in advance. These may be mentioned neither in polite conversation, nor in politics.

Here is how and why we have the politicians and politics that we have. Politics are not a substitute religion. They are merely the arrangement of human society between men and men. Religion is far deeper and higher than politics, concerning the arrangement of eternal salvation, between men and God, notably the Ten Commandments, notably the first: I am the Lord your God, it is I who designed your human nature for you to go to Heaven, and if you co-operate, that is such a supreme gift for all eternity, and I surround you in your life on earth with so many creatures to help you to Heaven, that it is no more than just for Me to demand of you love and obedience in return. But I am a jealous God, and for your own good I will have no other gods before Me. Heed what I say, pay no attention to the liars who contradict Me, obey My Commandments, and then a bliss that you cannot remotely imagine will be yours, without interruption, for ever and ever. Heed My Mother, who will never lie to you, and She will show you the sure way to My Heaven, through My Catholic Church.

Kyrie eleison.

RIGHTEOUS CAUSE

RIGHTEOUS CAUSE on December 14, 2024

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A Russian convert thunders against the West?

Only because he sees God’s foes the best!

Dear readers, beware. Today’s long quote below comes from the former president of Russia from 2008 to 2012 when he was filling in for Vladimir Putin, who was obliged by Russia’s Constitution at that time to step down for four years from the Presidency, even if Putin remained Prime Minister. To this day Dmitri Medvedev (1965- ) remains, upon information and belief, a close colleague of Putin, certainly a believer in what Putin is trying to achieve in the war with Ukraine, as shown by these words of his from December of two years ago. In Medvedev’s highly coloured denunciation of today’s rotten West, one may not agree with every detail, for instance the earliest European empires by which Portugal and Spain built a Rosary of Catholic nations from top to bottom of Central and South America, must have sent to Heaven hundreds of thousands of Catholic souls. However, as for the heart of the matter, Medvedev is absolutely right.

God exists. The Devil exists. Between the two of them is a pitched, and irreconcilable battle for the conquest of souls, by God to populate Heaven, by the Devil to populate Hell. God being the Creator and the Devil being a mere creature, then God could utterly paralyse the Devil at any moment that He wanted to. But He does not want to, because the more men have to struggle in this brief life to save their souls, the higher will be the quality of the souls saved, the more beautiful will be God’s paradise. So God is always giving a measure of liberty to the Devil to tempt and damn souls, but never so much liberty as to force souls to choose damnation. Even in the Garden of Gethsemane, Our Lord still tries to convert Judas Iscariot – “Friend, why are you here?” (Mt. XXVI, 50). All human life plays out against this battle between God and the Devil as its ultimate background, and to pretend one can be neutral is to side with the Devil.

This is what Medvedev sees so clearly in the war between Russia and the Ukraine: the West is rotten, it is the business of Russia to pour out its blood and treasure to clean out the rot. Surely Our Lady of Fatima thinks the same. Medvedev converted to Russian Orthodoxy at the age of 23. Most probably She obtained that grace for him. Here is what he said in 2022 – prepare to be shocked.

Everything against Russia today belongs to a dying world. It is a bunch of mad nazi drug-addicts, of zombies intimidated by them, and a huge pack of barking dogs coming out of the western doghouse. Together with them, a variegated herd of honking pigs and a narrow-minded middle class, originating from the collapse of the empire of the West, with the saliva of degeneracy dripping down their chins. They have neither faith nor ideal, unless it be the obscene morals they have invented and the norms of doublethink they have spread around, negating any of the morality granted to normal people. Here is why, by rising up against them, our fight has taken on a sacred character . . .

But then, you may object, why did you keep quiet for so long? We were weak, laid low by a sorry episode in our history. Whereas now we have fully woken up from that sticky half-sleep and from the mournful fog of these last tens of years in which the death of the Fatherland immersed us. Other countries were waiting for us to wake up, countries violated, enslaved and oppressed by the lords of darkness, who still dream of their monstrous colonial past, while they aspire to maintain their power over the world. Many countries gave up believing in their nonsense long ago, but they are still afraid of the colonial powers. Soon they will have to wake up. And when today’s rotten world order collapses, it will bury beneath the tons and tons of its wreckage all of its arrogant high priests, blood-stained followers, mocking servants and dumb zombies.

So what weapons do we have? They are various. We have the means of consigning all our enemies to a fiery hell, but that is not what we are about. We are listening to the Creator’s words in our hearts, and we are obeying what we hear. These words give us a sacred purpose, which is to stop in his tracks the supreme leader of Hell, whatever name anyone wants to give him . . . because his purpose is death. Our purpose is life. His weapon is one huge lie. Our weapons are the Truth. Here is why our cause is just. Here is why the victory will be ours!

Kyrie eleison.

SILENT MAJOR

SILENT MAJOR on December 7, 2024

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In all things modern, Luther led the way?

Then heeding modern man must lead astray.

What on earth is a silent Major? Is it an army officer who does not talk much? Actually, no. It is a way of naming perhaps the most interesting feature of the book written by Archbishop Georg Gänswein, published last year, entitled “Who believes is not alone. My life beside Benedict XVI.” Gänswein was Pope Benedict’s choice to be his private secretary from 2003 to the Pope’s death on the last day of 2022. As secretary to the Pope for all those years, Gänswein was closely involved in affairs of the Catholic Church at the very top, and his book naturally relates interesting details of many of these affairs. However, from the standpoint of Catholic Tradition, what is of greatest interest is the Silent Major.

In logic, “Silent Major” names that essential part of a syllogism when it goes unmentioned, as one way of abbreviating a syllogism expressed in full, because the content of the Silent Major is supposedly too obvious to need mentioning. A syllogism is an argument consisting of three connected propositions, two Premisses, Major and Minor, and the Conclusion which can be deduced from the two Premisses when linked together. The Major might be compared to an expectant mother, the Minor to a mid-wife, and the Conclusion to the baby. Thus the Major implicitly includes the Conclusion, but the Minor is needed to make that Conclusion explicit by showing that is included in the Major.

Thus the most famous syllogism of all runs – Major: “All men are rational,” Minor: “Socrates is a man,” Conclusion: “Therefore Socrates is rational.” With the Silent Major the syllogism might be abbreviated as, “Socrates is a man, so he is bound to be rational,” or shorter still, “Being a man, Socrates is rational.” In daily life we are all the time syllogising, or deducing one thing from another two things, but it is rare for us to lay out the syllogisms in full. Frequently we leave out the Major or the Minor, but more frequently the Major, and then we have a case of the Silent Major. Here are two more examples – “Football is a sport, so it’s a waste of good time.” And “Catholic Tradition does not get through to modern man, it’s a waste of time.” The Silent Majors here are that “All sport is a waste of time,” and “Any religion is useless which does not get through to modern man.”

Thus in his book Gänswein paints a basically sympathetic portrait of life inside the Vatican and especially of Pope Ratzinger himself as a brilliant but humble man, basically an academic who never had any desire to be Pope because he would have preferred to retire somewhere calm where he could read and write books. In fact he wrote 66 of them, and they are no doubt full of many wise and traditional insights, as was his daily life, as Gänswein relates. This why many Traditionalists at that time put their hope and trust in him. Yet ultimately the Pope disappointed them. Why? Because of the Silent Major.

For indeed Ratzinger, like all modernists, was obsessed with getting through to modern man. Therefore for him the unchanging Truth of Catholic Tradition which he knew, always had to be at least expressed anew in a way that would fit modern man. But Luther, said a famous German “philosopher,” Johann Fichte (1762–1814) was “the first modern man.” And read “Three Reformers” of Jacques Maritain to see how today’s world is marinated in the revolt of Luther against the Catholic Church, in fact against God. So how is any modernist going to adapt godly Truth to godless modern man without resorting to ambiguity, on the way to outright heresy, which can also be found in the writings of Joseph Ratzinger?

And what weight can there be behind the best insights of Archbishop, Cardinal or Pope Ratzinger? If he believes in the Silent Major – “Catholicism must get through to modern man” – then at best he can only half believe in Catholic Truth. But Catholic Truth is all or nothing. If I believe in just one heresy, I have lost the Catholic Faith. Archbishop Lefebvre was not exaggerating when he said in 1990 that Rome had lost the Faith. Yet Gänswein portrays apostate Rome and Romans as though they are quite normal. He can only be himself a victim of the Silent Major.

Kyrie eleison.