Eleison Comments

Family Destruction

Family Destruction posted in Eleison Comments on September 22, 2007

Anybody today seriously concerned for human beings realizes two things: first, the three-letter word is enough for human beings to happen, but for them to grow up to be truly human, family is absolutely necessary. Secondly, that the so-necessary family is under fierce attack. Why and how?

The deep-down reason why is that God instituted the family (father-mother-children) to launch souls on their way to Heaven, whereas modern man is making war on God, and a major part of that war is to get as many souls as possible into Hell. Therefore the family must be destroyed as God designed it, and modern life must be redirected accordingly. As for the how, here are a few paragraphs (from the letter of a non-Catholic friend) to illustrate that direction being taken in England today, and surely in many other countries as well, unless they have the good fortune to be “under-developed.”

“A decade of Labour government and its policy of ‘absolutely anything goes’ has resulted in what appears to be pretty much the destruction of the family. There is little incentive to marry, following the total loss of tax advantages for married couples and the subsequent State recognition of co-habiting couples and equality of the sexes (a side-effect of feminism).

“Single mothers abound and all mothers are required to work, mainly I think to further fill the nation’s coffers. There seems to be no onus of responsibility on fathers. This has led to the mushrooming of inferior childcare services and nursery schools. Even tiny babies are dropped off into daycare and collected at the end of the working day. Schools run breakfast clubs and after-school child-sitting arrangements. There is a huge loss of hands-on parenting.

“At the bottom end of the social scale the children, with few father figures and exhausted, incapable mothers, resort to a sort of ‘family life’ within the urban gangs now proliferating in the major cities. Children turning into wild animals are a genuine problem. Higher up the social scale, educated parents feel enormous guilt at not spending more time with their children because of their work, relying as they do on nannies and au pair girls. This leads to absurd levels of indulgence, relaxation of discipline, a laissez-faire attitude as to what the kids are up to (benign neglect) and tremendous emphasis on the terribly sad concept of ‘quality time’ – e.g. ‘I might get home in time to spend five minutes getting to know my children better before they go to bed.’

Many of these parents are older career women who in my view have little idea anyway of what being a parent involves – they, after all, were themselves brought up by Sixties parents who frequently rejected ‘old-fashioned’ concepts of child-rearing and set few boundaries of behaviour. I’ve been struck by the lack of self-confidence in dealing with their children shown by many parents these days. Kids aged three still in diapers? Ye gods! You get the awful stock phrase: ‘If I discipline him he won’t love me.’ Pathetic! Smacking in public is illegal; it’s a pity that tantrums aren’t as well.”

Kyrie eleison.

Slay Errors

Slay Errors posted in Eleison Comments on September 15, 2007

A soul complained to me recently of my “dialectical thinking” on the Pope’s Motu Proprio of July 7, meaning no doubt that I was going backwards and forwards in a confusing way. I replied that what I had said was surely just an application of an old Catholic principle memorably formulated by St. Augustine many centuries ago: “Slay the errors, love the people erring.”

This is because God is Truth, so there is no way that untruth, or error, can get a soul into his Heaven. As error, or false doctrine, leads to sin, so only truth can lead to God. If then I wish to get to Heaven and to help other souls to get there, I must be strict on Catholic doctrine. Many people do not know its truth, but it is knowable (this is what liberals deny), and it is known. For my own salvation and theirs, I must tell it to them without watering or softening it down.

On the other hand I am (in varying degrees) bound in charity to wish to all souls that they get to Heaven, and this is the purpose of telling them the truth. Therefore I will not tell it when telling it will only help them to Hell – Jesus was silent before Herod, and fell silent before Pilate. I may and must, according to circumstances, “temper the wind to the shorn lamb.” I must love both the truth and souls. So I must “Slay error but love those erring.”

In fact the more I love the truth, the more – and not the less – I can afford to have compassion for souls. The more firmly I am attached to the tree on the bank, the more safely I can reach out to souls drowning mid-stream. But woe to me reaching out if I am not firmly attached! Lack of doctrine is why liberals also lack true charity.

Thus the doctrine of Benedict XVI in his Motu Proprio and its accompanying Letter to the Bishops is a confused and confusing mixture of Catholicism and Vatican II, and I cannot cease highlighting the error of that Council’s attempting to reconcile the true Faith with the false modern world. On the other hand the so-called “Tridentine Mass” is loaded with Catholic doctrine, so I can only rejoice that the Motu Proprio both recognizes that it was never properly suppressed and grants a certain freedom to priests to celebrate it. “In the land of the blind” where even “the one-eyed is king,” that recognition and even limited grant are surely major steps forward.

Kyrie eleison.

Credit Crunch

Credit Crunch posted in Eleison Comments on September 8, 2007

A global financial problem may soon be changing the lives of all of us. Let me offer a few answers

(A) to a few elementary questions (Q):

Q. What is the problem? I have not yet felt anything. A: The problem is a credit crunch, or, a worldwide lack of money. Money circulating in an economy is something like oil circulating in an engine. Just as an engine will seize up if there is not enough oil, so an economy will seize up if there is not enough “liquidity,” or money circulating.

Q: I might understand one or a few nations being short of money, but how can they all be short at once? How can such a problem be global? A: Because the unprecedented ease of communications and trade between modern nations by, for instance, airplanes and electronics, is making the world into a “global village” where all the national economies interlock, so that if one nation, especially the USA, sneezes, they all catch cold. That is what is now happening.

Q: Still, how can not enough money be circulating amongst all the nations at once? A: Because the 300-year rise of “fractional reserve banking” means that the vast amount of money circulating worldwide comes into existence in the form of a loan. For instance you are most likely unaware that there is every probability that even the cash in your pocket was borrowed by your country’s government from the country’s (non-government) central bank, to which the government is paying interest on that cash! Now for a loan to take place, both lender and borrower need confidence, the lender that he will be paid back, the borrower (if he is honest) that he will be able to pay back. This confidence has been dwindling in a big way, worldwide, since about July.

Q: Why? A: Mainly because of a new form of debt paper being introduced a few years ago called “derivatives,” named from debt deriving from other debt. Even many experts are not exactly clear how derivatives work, which must be part of the problem. However, one very successful American investor, Warren Buffett, who must have studied them, has called them “weapons of mass financial destruction.” Indeed. There is now a shaking 30 trillion US dollar mountain of derivatives threatening the world’s financial system.

Q: What do we do? A: One, be ready for hardship. Two, do not be surprised if a 9/11 Part II happens to distract us. Three, turn to the Gospel:— “Seek ye first the Kingdom of God, and all these things will be added unto you.” “Fear not him who can harm only the body. Fear him who can throw body and soul together into Hell.” Economics are only of things bodily.

Kyrie eleison.

Wagnerian Redemption

Wagnerian Redemption posted in Eleison Comments on September 1, 2007

Teaching some Humanities to pre-seminarians, I have again chosen to introduce them to Richard Wagner, German composer of famous music-dramas, and one of the most interesting characters of modern times. Straddling most of the 19th century (1813–1883), he was certainly not the greatest man of his time, but he was surely its most comprehensive artist. For breadth and depth of his world-vision, he must rank alongside Dante and Shakespeare, but not for truth, because he held up the mirror to an age falling away from God. Here was his greatness, and his misery.

Here was his greatness, because there is no question that he had a real sense of the heights and depths of man, crying out for religion. His misery lay in the fact that he came up with a non-religious solution to that religious need. However his substitute solution has been enormously popular to this day, precisely because he seems to satisfy that religious need while leaving the real God, as modern man wishes, out of the picture. Hence the veritable cult of Wagner by “Wagnerians,” for whom his music-dramas can act as a substitute religion.

What is that solution of his? Basically, the redemption of a fallen world by love between man and woman. In each of the four great works of his maturity, “The Ring,” “Tristan and Isolde,” “The Mastersingers” and (with a slight variation) “Parsifal,” the basic plot is the same. Up against, primarily, a social structure and authority unable to adapt and therefore stranded in unreality, and up against, secondarily, a kind of underworld also resisting, there arises a hero to love and win a heroine, united with whom in redemptive love he brings about a revolution which, through their love, rescues society and restores reality.

In other words, the authority figure or figures are ineffective and, if not themselves villains, at least seconded by villains, whereas if only the boy can find his girl, he and she will make everything happy ever after. Does anyone recognize the formula of numberless Hollywood films? Of course a good wife is a tower of strength to her husband and children (see Proverbs Chapter 31), but to rest the salvation of the world upon her shoulders is asking altogether too much – how long are households patterned primarily on Hollywood apt to last? Often not long.

Of course Wagner is not the sole source of Hollywood plots, but he is the main origin of a mass of its sub-Wagnerian music, and there is no denying the huge influence of that music and of Wagner’s mythology on modern times. Boys and girls, take heed. Wagner is a great musician, but there is no substitute for the true God. People in authority are not automatically antiquated, or villains; and neither of you is the complete solution to the other’s problems. You both need Our Lord Jesus Christ and the fullness of his Catholic Truth, and his sacraments.

Kyrie eleison.

Rebuilding

Rebuilding posted in Eleison Comments on August 25, 2007

The argument continues – I will not say, to rage – but certainly to go back and forth over Pope Benedict XVI’s recent Motu Proprio, recognizing that the Tridentine rite of Mass was never abrogated, and granting to priests anywhere in the Church a certain measure of freedom to celebrate it. Serious heads condemn the document for its doubletalk, and see in it no better than a decoy to lure Traditional Catholics back into the quick-sands of the Conciliar church.

As to the doubletalk, now favouring Catholicism, now favoring Conciliarism, there is no doubt about it. Yet what else can one expect from what one might call a double-pope? Benedict XVI, like Paul VI and John-Paul II before him, surely cannot see that he is believing in two contradictory religions at once. So he goes on promoting both at once. Short of a miracle, Benedict XVI will follow this line to his grave. That is a mighty crooked line, but as far as the Motu Proprio is concerned, surely that is not the main point.

The point as it seems to me is that, in the words of the proverb, “God writes straight with crooked lines.” In many countries we hear of the Catholic laity and individual priests – not as a rule their bishops! – re-awakening to the true rite of the Mass, ordering Missals, ordering Mass-kits, vestments, etc . . . I hear a hard-liner protest! . . . I say, go easy, go easy, indeed not everything will be perfect all at once. There will be fumbling with the Latin, fumbling with the rubrics and so on, and so on, but let us give God’s grace a chance!

With God a little good will goes a long way –

A Catholic priest is not rebuilt in a day!

Let me give you a controversial scenario. You do not have to believe in it, but here it is. Mankind’s present desperate situation can be compared only to that of Noah’s time, just before the Flood. Our televidiot civilization, now worldwide, can only crash. God cannot allow it to go on sleep-walking millions of souls into Hell. When it crashes, Catholics are going to be running through the streets, screaming for a priest to confess their sins. There are not going to be enough liturgically perfect priests of the S**X to go round. Therefore God is preparing a number of priests – known only to himself – outside the S**X for those dramatic days. The Motu Proprio, enabling them to pick up the true rite of the Mass at least in private, is an important step in that preparation. Let us pray with all our hearts for all such priests, and for the Pope!

Kyrie eleison.

Austerlitz Battle

Austerlitz Battle posted in Eleison Comments on August 18, 2007

I love battlefields. Silent monuments of the battles of past ages, they are turning-points of history where men were ready to die so that their cause might prevail. Men will not usually die for trifles. They will often die for their religion, where their highest and deepest convictions are at stake. In fact whenever men are ready to die for a cause which does not seem to be religious, that cause can often prove upon examination to have been, in effect, their real religion. What is life? Battles tell!

So when several months ago I found myself purely by accident within a half-hour car-ride of the battlefield of Austerlitz, I had myself as soon as possible taken out there. Austerlitz, in the now Czech Republic about 70 miles north of Vienna, is where on the wintry Sunday morning of December 2, 1805, Napoleon achieved one of his greatest military victories by crushing with his Revolutionary French army the numerically superior joint Austrian-Russian army of the Third Coalition mounted against him. After the battle, featured towards the beginning of Tolstoy’s famous novel “War and Peace,” Russian survivors limped back to Russia, and the Austro-Hungarian Empire both lost much territory and was forced to pay a large war indemnity. French Revolutionary presence and influence made a major advance on the map of Europe. To this day a Paris railway station carries the name of Austerlitz (like Waterloo in London).

How did Napoleon achieve such a victory? Mainly, as one learns on site, by the “Lion’s Leap.” Soon after battle was joined, he struck hard at the weakened center of the Coalition line, broke it in two and overwhelmed the strong but now surrounded enemy left wing. Had the “lion” struck at the center because he guessed or knew that the enemy were weak there? The history books probably say it was his military genius. On the battlefield one learns that the “lion” was tipped off . . .

Engraved in the bronze presentation mounted for visitors on the hillock from which Napoleon commanded the opening of the battle is the fact that on the night before, he received a visit from someone who revealed to him the Austrian General Weyrother’s plan to mass the Allies’ attack against the French right wing to cut off their retreat to Vienna. This concentration to the south is what weakened the Austrian-Russian center. In effect, one could say that the visitor provided Napoleon with his victory. Who was he?

A French spy? An Austrian traitor? Very possibly neither and both. In other words, a Freemason working for the triumph of the liberal Revolution over the still Christian empires of Austro-Hungary and Russia. In nearby Austerlitz Castle, which gave the battle its name, an exhibit for tourists shows portraits of the generals who took part in the battle. On the side of the Coalition, they are all older men, aristocrats, looking serious and responsible. On the French side they are all younger men, few if any aristocrats, with a wild gleam in their eyes. Truly, a new world taking over . . . And the Christian world

today? –

Kyrie eleison.