Eleison Comments

1984 Attracts

1984 Attracts posted in Eleison Comments on January 26, 2008

When in a small publication of the Society of St. Pius X in England – circulation about 500 – an article recently appeared describing the police-state fast closing in on Great Britain, the British authorities complained to SSPX headquarters in Switzerland! It gives one to reflect . . . .

As people have today less and less religion, so they have less and less reason to control themselves. If I believe neither in God nor in any moral law, nor in any after-life, eternally rewarding or punishing my observance or non-observance of that law, why should I put any brake upon satisfying my selfish desires in this life? But a society of such egoists must turn into a jungle of human beasts devouring one another.

Therefore where the people have neither faith nor internal self-discipline, they must welcome any external discipline enabling their society to survive, e.g. (or i.e.) a police-state. As seminaries close, so prisons must open. Today, prisons can hardly be built fast enough.

Now in any such dissociety of course there will be villains fabricating reasons to impose and extend the police-state for their own nefarious purposes. 9/11 is a classic example. However, even in the case of 9/11 there might have been amongst the authorities some honest men who said, “Lies and fabrications are nasty, but how else can one govern a modern population?” Alas, they would have had a point!

So the police-state may be a bad substitute for godliness, but where the people are godless, such a State may appear to be the only way to hold a society together, and whoever opposes the police-state will then appear to be anti-social. In this respect the defenders of modern police-states may mean well, and not deserve blame.

However, let them have no part in tomorrow’s persecution of Christians towards which today’s police-states are being steered! The Catholic Faith upheld by the SSPX is not in fact their problem, but it is, of their real problem, the true solution.

Kyrie eleison.

Just Dispossession

Just Dispossession posted in Eleison Comments on January 19, 2008

An SSPX colleague in North England tells me a frightening little tale for the future of our country. Two months ago, parking his car briefly to take a telephone call in what looked like the ordinary street of an ordinary suburb of an English Midlands city, he found himself within a few moments being glared at by two immigrant youths standing in front of his car and then by two more positioned behind. Within minutes a car also pulled up alongside him, and the adult immigrant behind the wheel was facing him down with a still more hostile glare.

My colleague rolled down his window – “Is there a problem?” he asked. “What are you doing here?” “I have parked for a couple of minutes to take a telephone call.” „Alright.” Then my colleague ventured to add, “But this street doesn’t belong to you, does it?” The answer was a stream of vicious profanities (in English), concluding with, “If you don’t get out of here in two minutes, we will smash your car to pieces.” My colleague chose to move on.

The non-native Englishmen in this case were Muslims who have made of large parts of a number of English cities “no-go areas,” where the native English hardly set foot any longer, and where even the police prefer to stay out. In the early 1970’s when the immigrants began flowing into England, a native-English politician, Enoch Powell, famously warned that the flow would end in “blood in the streets.” He warned in vain. The flow of immigrants has not stopped since.

The same has happened in many a Western nation. How can one not see here the sentence of God upon these nations’ way of life? Firstly, the soft selfish living which refuses children in order to “enjoy life,” means that there are not enough native workers to man the pumps, so to speak, so that without immigrants the whole way of life would risk collapsing. Secondly, the liberalism and materialism of that way of life so undermine patriotism that the scheming globalists have a virtually free hand to pave the way for their international godlessness by breaking down the nations’ identity through unchecked immigration.

The kingdoms of the West are being taken from the natives and given to peoples that at least have babies (cf. Mt. XXI, 43). But without Jesus Christ as the uniting corner-stone (Eph. II,20), it means – blood in the streets.

Kyrie eleison.

Restless Change

Restless Change posted in Eleison Comments on January 12, 2008

Amongst recent manifestations of the puppet parade known as the “American political process,” one candidate – identity completely unimportant – allegedly became unhinged on being accused by another of being “in favour of the status quo.” In other words the accuser knew that the voting public wants change, and it wants their politicians to promise change, so no modern politician wants to be accused of not being in favour of change. Sure enough, the accusation struck home.

Similarly in Great Britain (once “Great,” maybe), it seems that last year’s new Prime Minister announced his intentions in a speech mentioning some 15 times the word “change.” Where in Heaven’s name does such restlessness come from?

Now by no means everybody today admits that human nature is a given framework inside which man has free will to operate as he chooses, but outside of which, or against which, he is powerless to do anything. On the contrary, are not modern men, for instance communists or feminists, proud of up-heaving any such supposedly given framework? “We are changing human nature,” boasted Lenin.

However, might not this restlessness of today’s political public and so of its puppit politicians be a testimony to the existence of that abiding human nature? Might not its unyielding resistance to all efforts to change it explain why one effort fails after another, and so the attempt to make a “new man” for a “new world” must be constantly –

renewed?

In truth, God exists and it is He who is the giver of man’s given nature. It has not changed since Adam and Eve, except for the damage that they – and not God! – did to it by their original sin. However for the last 500 years mankind has been in rising revolt against the Giver and his givens. Of course the revolt does not work. But men persist in their folly, and will not vote for politicians who do not promise “change.”

Kyrie eleison.

Decortisone

Decortisone posted in Eleison Comments on January 5, 2008

The essential illness of today’s world is godlessness. Purely natural philosophy without a supernatural dimension is by no means sufficient as medicine, but it can well analyze how human nature has been ravaged over the last 500 years by mankind’s turning away from the true God of supernatural Revelation.

Such a philosopher was the Belgian Marcel de Corte. Born in 1905, his writing career as a philosopher began in the 1930’s with serious studies of the tried and true philosophy of Aristotle, but from World War II onwards he turned his attention more and more closely to the world crumbling around him. He died in 1994.

In his last three full-scale books, “End of a Civilization” (1949), “Man against Man” (1962), and “The Mind in Danger of Death” (1968), he shows a close familiarity with modern poets and thinkers such as Kant, Marx and Nietzsche, but he had not abandoned Aristotle, on the contrary. In the light of that age-old philosophy, illuminated from above by his Catholic Faith, he makes a profound natural diagnosis of the modern illness.

The central point of that diagnosis is that out of the Renaissance dividing Faith from life, and out of the Reformation dividing spirit from flesh, there arose RATIONALISM, in which abstract thinking first spurns, and then returns to crush, concrete human living. That is a deep-down explanation of why we now find ourselves in a world of computers, electronics, technology and science which has less and less understanding of, or sympathy for, flesh-and-blood human beings. However, the man who pretends to be an angel turns into a beast, says the old saying, which is why we observe today the electronics being filled with more and more bestial material.

De Corte’s remedy? To restore the wholeness of man by the humble living of ordinary concrete daily lives, which today, he says, can only be done with the grace of God. And he comes back to “the greatest Saint of modern times” (said Pius XI), St. Therese of Lisieux and her “Little Way.”

God was there first, of course! He gave the solution which the philosopher afterwards understood. May God have mercy upon us.

Kyrie eleison.

Archbishop’s Wisdom

Archbishop’s Wisdom posted in Eleison Comments on December 29, 2007

Working through the monthly letters from Winona Seminary between the years of the episcopal consecrations (1988) and the year of Archbishop Lefebvre’s death (1991), I have been reading through a number of the direct quotes from those last years of his life. What clarity of vision!

Here are a few samples from mid-June of 1988, in other words after he had taken the decision to consecrate, but before the consecrations actually took place:

“It is not true that between ourselves and Rome it is just a question of details to negotiate. The basic problem is always there – Rome’s liberalism and modernism. They [the Roman churchmen] mean to bring us and all our works round to the Council while leaving us a little Tradition . . .”

Cardinal Ratzinger [as he then was] “put before me a letter to the Pope that I should sign, apologizing for my errors! But it is we that should be questioning them on their faith! We should be demanding of them to pronounce the Anti-Modernist Oath . . . But whenever I bring up their liberalism and modernism, they never reply. They just persist in their errors.”

“The more you think about it, the more you realize their intentions are not good . . . We cannot put ourselves into their hands . . . We made an honest attempt to continue Tradition under Rome’s protection, but it did not work out . . . They never intended to secure a place for Tradition within the Church. I entered these negotiations” (of May, 1988) because of “a faint hope that these churchmen had changed. They have not changed, except for the worse.” In conclusion: “I do not think one can say that Rome has not lost the faith.”

And by 2007, 2008, have we seen anything coming out of Rome to persuade us to the contrary? If anyone thinks so, let him show us his evidence.

Kyrie eleison.

Storm Advice

Storm Advice posted in Eleison Comments on December 22, 2007

The Christmas present for readers of “Eleison Comments” will be some practical advice for what looks like a very ugly financial situation advancing upon all of us. The advice comes from a man who worked on Wall Street for a number of years, now retired. Nobody is obliged to take seriously what he says:

1. Maintain at least 1,000 dollars in cash in a safe place inside your home.

2. Consider carefully whether any investments you may have are easily redeemable.

3. If you own securities, make sure you obtain stock certificates documenting your ownership.

4. Do not maintain any bank account in excess of 100,000, and consider carefully just how much faith you have in the government’s willingness or capacity to truly insure your “FDIC-insured” bank account.

5. Consider carefully keeping some funds in a currency such as Swiss francs, or purchase gold or silver coins if you believe these will not be confiscated in the event of a financial crisis.

6. Consider withdrawing from any debt instruments currently yielding less than the present true rate of inflation.

7. Consider withdrawing funds from tax-deferred investment plans, despite any penalty that will be incurred, because a crisis may make such funds in effect inaccessible.

8. Consider just how liquid your stock holdings may be in a crisis, because markets can and have been closed, and your assets can be frozen while they lose their value.

9. Develop a master plan for riding out the storm should there be a disruption of essential goods and services.

10. Do not take out loans under any circumstances.

11. Cut back on consumption. Buy necessities and eliminate purchases of “extras.”

12. Increase cash savings. Save no less than 10% of net monthly income.

13. If a major bank fails, seriously consider withdrawing all funds held in savings accounts and all but the bare minimum necessary for current expenses in checking accounts.

Forgive me, dear readers, for adding a 14 – do not ask “Eleison Comments” for financial advice, because “Eleison Comments” is incapable of giving any such advice. It is only capable of recognizing that we have made idols out of our money and our governments, and we are all going to be punished through our money and our governments. God is merciful, but he is also just. The Divine Baby came to Bethlehem to save our souls, not to save our money. Happy Christmas.

Kyrie eleison.