Eleison Comments French

RIGHTEOUS CAUSE

RIGHTEOUS CAUSE on December 14, 2024

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

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.

CORPORAL PUNISHMENT

CORPORAL PUNISHMENT on November 30, 2024

‘Tis God Who designed, created every child.

Neglect His own instructions – they go wild.

“Spare the rod and spoil the child” is an old proverb, going back certainly before our own time, going back at least to the Old Testament, in surprisingly many places. Eight of them are quoted here below, with comments, and there might easily be even be more. What matters is to realise that if Scripture is so insistent, then the principle comes not only from natural common sense, but ultimately from God Himself to instruct us on how human nature, specially of boys, is to be formed. Of course modern circumstances must be taken into account, for instance fundamentally wicked legislation by which a government’s so-called “social services” can take my children away from me and my wife if we dare to lay a finger on them. But the series of Scripture quotes tells us at least what to think of such “social services.”

Let us begin with Proverbs XIII, 24, an almost literal version of our familiar proverb –

He that spareth the rod hateth his son: but he that loveth him correcteth him betimes.

Proverbs XIX, 18 is an appeal to common sense. Corporal punishment is to be used justly, without excess –

Chastise thy son, despair not: but to the killing of him set not thy soul.

Proverbs XXII, 15 evokes the original sin which is the great truth behind the need for corporal punishment –

Folly is bound up in the heart of a child, and the rod of correction shall drive it away.

Proverbs XXIII, 13 is another appeal to common sense: it will not kill the child to warm his backside –

Withhold not correction from a child: for if thou strike him with the rod, he shall not die.

Proverbs XXV, 20 declares how unwise it is to spoil a bad person (or naughty child) with being too nice – As vinegar upon nitre, so is he that singeth songs to a very evil heart.

Proverbs XXIX, 15, 17 declare the good/bad effect on parents of punishing/ not punishing children –

15 The rod and reproof instil wisdom, but the child that is left to his own will bringeth his mother to shame.

17 Instruct thy son, and he shall refresh thee, and shall give delight to thy soul.

Ecclesiasticus XXII, 6 repeats the teaching of Proverbs on the value of corporal punishment -–

 . . . the stripes and instruction of wisdom are never out of time (“stripes” here means “beatings”).

Ecclesiasticus XXX, 1–12 is a little treatise on the value of taking care in bringing up one’s sons –

He that loveth his son, frequently chastiseth him, that he may rejoice in his latter end, and not grope after the doors of his neighbours. 2 He that instructeth his son shall be praised in him, and shall glory in him in the midst of them of his household. 3 He that teacheth his son, maketh his enemy jealous, and in the midst of his friends shall glory in him . . . 6 For he left behind him a defender of his house against his enemies, and one that will repay kindness to his friends . . .

9 Give thy son his way, and he shall make thee afraid: play with him, and he shall make thee sorrowful. 10 Laugh not with him, lest thou have sorrow, and at the last thy teeth be set on edge. 11 Give him not liberty in his youth, and wink not at his devices. 12 Bow down his neck while he is young, and beat his sides while he is a child, lest he grow stubborn, and regard thee not, and so be a sorrow of heart to thee.

Do not the “child psychologists” of today teach parents rather the opposite of the Old Testament? Do not many parents of today tend to give up on disciplining or instructing their own children, rather handing them over, or letting them be taken in hand, by their godless States? And are the boys any the better for it? Judging by a mass of today’s young men . . .

Kyrie eleison.

CONTROLLED CHAOS

CONTROLLED CHAOS on November 23, 2024

God then withdrew, a punishment quite just,

Yet still men are intent on going bust!

If there is one word with which to describe the state of the Catholic Church today, surely that word is “chaos.” The normal structure of the Church is that of a pyramid, with God’s own Authority descending through Pope, cardinals, bishops and priests, all raised up by God to look after His sheep, or laity, at ground level. This hierarchy consists of fallible men, from top to bottom, so that at all levels mistakes can be made. However, if in normal circumstances a Superior in the hierarchy misbehaves, he usually has a Superior of his own to whom I can appeal against his misbehaviour, because any given Superior in the Church will normally make decisions in accordance with Canon Law, and, with a minimum of good will, in accordance with truth and justice. And so, in normal circumstances, from lower down I can appeal all the way up to Rome.

However, what happens when the fallible human being at the top of this pyramid loses his sense of truth and justice, and even his good will? There can only be chaos in the Church from top to bottom, because the Catholic Church was designed by God to be a monarchy in which there is His own divine Authority to protect the great truths of salvation, so that He can populate His Heaven with souls to share His bliss. That Authority is recognised and exercised at all levels of the hierarchy, but supremely by the Pope, who has no human Superior above him, but only God. It follows that if the Pope, or the man in white who is universally accepted as Pope, seems to lose all sense of Truth for which alone he receives his awesome Authority over the Church, dwarfing all merely human authorities, then the Church is in chaos, from top to bottom.

In this respect, the Catholic Church resembles a string doll consisting of multiple pieces of coloured wood, upheld on strings, upheld in turn by the puppeteer above. If for one moment the puppeteer lets go of the strings, the entire doll collapses into a jumbled heap of meaningless pieces of wood. If for one moment Almighty God lets go of His Pope and Cardinals in Rome, His bishops and priests and laity turn worldwide into a jumbled heap of Catholics, disunited and divided among themselves, many of them striving to recreate in their own little corner a semblance of that divine Authority which can come from God alone. What less can they do? Wise Catholics recognise their basic impotency, unless and until God restores a Catholic Pope. Meanwhile Catholics must do what they can to rebuild Catholic corners, and help all other Catholics to do the same, just so long as they have the Catholic Faith (and here let nobody pretend to be infallible!).

And the Pope, or seeming Pope? The correct perspective on the history of mankind is that, because of original sin, each of its Seven Ages is launched by a key figure, followed by a period of decadence until the next key figure is appointed by God to raise mankind up again, until the Antichrist will bring to an end the Seventh Age of the World which was introduced by God Himself with His Incarnation, some 2000 years ago.

This Seventh Age has been by far the longest, because God’s own Incarnation has been the turning-point of human history, the climax of all Seven Ages, because the Incarnation has continued ever since through the Catholic Church, Jesus continuing to live and save souls for eternity among all races and nations.

But God, to honour man, chose to entrust His Church not to angels but to fallible men, without turning them into robots by taking away their free-will. This means that He laid Himself open to the possibility that the human ministers of His Church would eventually so misuse their God-given free-will as to destroy His Church. This is what virtually happened at Vatican II (1962–1965). In 1968, God gave mankind a second chance, when He guided Pope Paul VI to condemn artificial means of birth control in the Encyclical Humanae Vitae. But all mankind, not just the Catholics, rose up in revolt, to condemn the old man dressed in white, living in Rome, supposed to know nothing about marriage.

Almighty God then said, so to speak, “Alright. Have it your own way. You do not want My Church. Have your own, and see how you like it. Good-bye for now. Get back in touch as soon as you want My Church back. Meanwhile, I will keep it going, in distress. I will be waiting to hear from you. I love you still.

Kyrie eleison.

SOME ANSWERS

SOME ANSWERS on November 16, 2024

The chaos of today is serving to purge

Mankind. Bad men will undergo the scourge.

60 years ago this writer was given by God a real sense of civilisation disintegrating. From there it was merely a matter of time (and grace) before the pursuit of Truth led him to the Catholic Church. The same pursuit of Truth led him at the end of 1972 to Archbishop Lefebvre and to his Seminary in Econe, Switzerland. At the same time he entered the Society of St Pius X which had been founded as a framework of the Church to surround and support the priests that the Archbishop would soon be ordaining. He foresaw difficulties with the official Church in a few years’ time. He was right.

If he was right, how could he envisage defying the official Church? Because the Faith is greater than obedience. Alas, even the successors of Archbishop Lefebvre at the head of the Society that he founded, failed, like the churchmen of Vatican II, to have his grasp of the necessity to “disobey” when the Faith is at stake. Better to obey God than men, says St Peter (Acts IV, 19). The drama of our poor age is that the mass of men have lost their grip on objective truth. As man is taken to be above God, so the subject is supposedly above the object (Emmanuel Kant). This error “liberates” from any objective truth or faith.

What about the Priestly Union of Marcel Lefebvre? It became defunct and was dissolved soon after its founding in 2013, because of serious dissension among its first members. Since then the so-called “Resistance” has not been structured in any way. It is merely a loose association of priests who all over the world see the crisis of the Church in the same way, namely that neither the Newchurch of Vatican II, nor the “sedevacantists” against Vatican II (at least the dogmatic ones), nor the Newsociety following a different orientation from that of its Founder, Archbishop Lefebvre, have the right answer to the Church’s crisis. However, only the true Church’s proper Authority can impose what is God’s own answer, so the loose association of resistant priests waits for Almighty God to restore His stricken Papacy. Meanwhile, “The Shepherd is struck and the sheep are scattered.” Because this “Resistance” is not structured or even organised, it is difficult to tell just how many priests might claim that they belong to it.

As for the Newchurch, “renewed” by Vatican II in the 1960’s, it is surely much further down the path of total destruction than it was in the 1970’s or 80’s. The downhill slide is inexorable, until the churchmen abandon these disastrous principles of the French Revolution and of the modern world which were designed from the beginning by Judeo-masonry to do away with God, with Jesus Christ and with His Catholic Church. It looks very much as though only a severe Chastisement from God will bring the Conciliar churchmen to their Catholic senses. Alas, numbers of churchmen still refuse to understand that the Faith is greater than obedience, because Catholic obedience is only for the Faith. Authority exists in the Church only to protect the Truth from human beings, who all suffer from original sin. “Obedience is not the servant of obedience” – Spanish proverb. Obedience is the servant of Truth, and not its master.

True Catholic obedience presupposes a truly Catholic Pope at the top of the pyramid of the Church’s hierarchy. For such a Pope, God wants us to wait and to pray. We will have him, in God’s good time. If Catholics do see at last the need to return to Tradition, it is understandable if they wish to go further back than the liturgical reform of 1962, but it is not essential. Patience. The liturgy will be properly restored.

Catholics who in the 2020’s realise that they risk losing the Faith if they obey their Conciliar clergy need to do two things. Firstly, pray every day all 15 Mysteries of the Holy Rosary, and not just five. Secondly, to make sure of saving their souls for eternity, they need to find out all about the Five First Saturdays of Our Lady of Fatima, and do them. She will then look after them and protect them from the world, the flesh and the Devil, as only She can. And they will help towards the Consecration of Russia, essential for the restoration of the Catholic Church.

Kyrie eleison.

VIGILANT BISHOP

VIGILANT BISHOP on November 9, 2024

A bishop guards his flock by truth they learn.

That doctrine into fibs the modernists turn.

Just over one month ago one of the four bishops consecrated in 1988 by Archbishop Lefebvre without the Pope’s permission, died. It was from a fracture of the skull from falling down on a stone staircase in the Seminary of Econe, Switzerland, where he had been living for the past several years. His Excellency Bishop Tissier de Mallerais was 79 years old, and had in a long life rendered considerable service to the Archbishop’s Society of St Pius X. To commemorate his leaving this “vale of tears” let these “Comments” recall here at least three of those occasions, with the gratitude of all of us to him, and with our prayers for the repose of his soul.

Firstly, at the end of the 1960’s when the Archbishop had launched the first year of a projected Seminary, at the end of that year so many of the first seminarians left him that he was on the point of giving up his project as though it had no future. It was two of those young seminarians who persuaded him not to give up, but to try again for the next school-year. One was Paul Aulagnier, virtual founder of the Society’s anchor District in France. The other was Bernard Tissier de Mallerais, future bishop of the Society. Where would the Catholic Church – and the world – be today, had the two of them not persuaded the Archbishop to persevere in what would become the spearhead of upholding Catholic Tradition in a Church and world going mad?

Secondly, in the 1980’s the Archbishop was locked in a deadly struggle to the death with the Freemasonic enemies of the Church, who were firmly holding onto the levers of power in the Church handed over to them by Vatican II as a just punishment from God for mankind’s worldwide apostasy. The main problem was doctrinal – the joint errors of religious liberty and false ecumenism, both of them profoundly undermining all Catholic dogma. It was Fr. Tissier on whom the Archbishop largely relied to spell out the true doctrine of the Church in order to make clear why Catholic Tradition, being betrayed by the modernists, had to be defended at all costs. The inspiration came from the Archbishop, but Fr Tissier was his executive instrument.

And thirdly, in 2006, Bishop Tissier gave a serious interview to Stephen Heiner, then writing for The Remnant, American Catholic magazine which surely has the full text available in its archives. When Heiner thought that he had finished the interview, the Bishop objected – no, Heiner had left out the essential – once again doctrine, the horrific doctrinal errors of Pope Benedict XVI. It is clear from the last part of the interview that the Bishop had taken the trouble to read himself what Fr Ratzinger actually wrote earlier in his career as a “theologian.” How many of us have actually taken that trouble? In justice the Bishop tells Heiner that he does not know if Pope Ratzinger has renounced his sentimental foolishness, but Tissier does also say that by 2006 Ratzinger had not yet retracted his errors. Here is a quote from pages 232 to 233, translated from the German of Ratzinger’s book, Introduction to Christianity, appearing in 1968 –

“. . . some texts of devotion seem to suggest that the Christian faith in the Cross understands God as a God whose inexorable justice required a human sacrifice, the sacrifice of his own Son. And we flee with horror from a justice, the dark anger of which removes any credibility from the message of love.”

In other words the Cross was too horrible to be true, because God the Father cannot have required such a cruel sacrifice from His beloved Son, because such cruelty contradicts the new Conciliar religion of “luv.” Here is modernism, pure and simple. Contrast how St Ignatius devotes the whole First Week of the Catholic Exercises to making retreatants grasp just how serious their sins have been. Fr. Ratzinger was turning the Faith to mush. Bishop Tissier was guarding the Faith. See the whole Tissier-Heiner interview.

Thank you, Your Excellency. May you be resting in peace.

Kyrie eleison.