Eleison Comments Spanish

LAW DEFINED

LAW DEFINED on August 3, 2024

And if I don’t see the monstrosity, I must pray,

As often urged, full fifteen Mysteries a day!

The desperate attempts of Pope Francis to use all of his papal Authority to crush the Tridentine rite of Mass and eliminate it from the Catholic Church once and for all, are rightly gaining less and less traction from among Catholics. Just how Almighty God can have allowed His own Authority that He entrusts to His Vicar on earth to be so misused, remains a mystery, because of course He gives it into the hands of men to build up His Church and not to pull it down. Many Catholics are so agonised by the problem that they are resorting to the simple solution of sedevacantism, because by that theory of there having been no valid Pope since John XXIII (1958–1963), all six Popes since Vatican II (1962–1965) have not been Popes at all. But that theory, which seems to solve the problem of the Conciliar Popes with such ease, takes many contradictory forms, and can lead to Catholics abandoning the Faith altogether, on the grounds that there can be no valid priesthood left at all, so they might as well stay at home rather than go to Mass. Thus sedevacantism can raise rather more problems than it seems to solve.

Such fruits suggest that sedevacantism may well not be the right solution to the serious problem set by all six Conciliar Popes, one after another, and culminating in the special horrors of Pope Francis. It may be a good moment to remember the fruitful solution of Archbishop Lefebvre (1905–1991), Traditionalism, of which he was the outstanding pioneer in its opposition today to the modernism of Vatican II.

Tradition is Catholicism, he said, and Catholicism is Tradition. “Jesus is the same, yesterday, today and for ever” (Heb. XIII, 8). Centuries of Protestantism and Liberalism have created a modern world which is so glamorous and seductive that in the end even the Vicars of Christ on earth have allowed themselves to be persuaded that Jesus needs to adapt himself to modern man, and not the other way round. But Jesus and His Church need no modernisation, all they need is to be presented as Catholic Tradition always used to do in times past. And the astonishing success of the Archbishop’s Society of St Pius X all over the world, at least until he died in 1991, proved that the Traditional version of Jesus and His Church can still flourish, despite modernity.

Then what did the Archbishop say about modernist Catholic Authority? He said that even Catholic Popes remain by themselves fallible men, unless they engage their infallible Authority, which they can only do on the four strict conditions clearly laid down in the solemn Definition of infallibility of 1870. If all four of those conditions are not present – and the Conciliar Popes never presented all four in their promotion of the Conciliar novelties – then Popes are as capable as any normal human being of making mistakes. And so all the modernist novelties of Vatican II in no way come under the protection of papal infallibility, which is highly restricted in its practical application.

But what about the Pope’s papal commands to abandon the Traditional rite of the Latin Mass? Are we not bound to obey him? No, we are not bound to obey him because it is not a lawful command, as Archbishop Lefebvre always said, and as the Catholic Church has always said. The Pope has no power from God to command just anything that comes into his head. The definition of law is that it is a command of reason for the common good made by those who are responsible for the common good. So if it is not for the common good, like any law pretending to legalise abortion, then it is no law at all.

Therefore when it comes to the sacrifice of the Mass, of which Padre Pio said that our planet earth can sooner do without the light of the sun than without that sacrifice, to replace its most venerable and dignified rite in Latin, centred on God, with a new rite in modern languages, doctrinally doubtful, without dignity, invented to centre on man, is so clearly opposed to the true common good of the Catholic Church that it cannot possibly be the object of a true law of the Church. Therefore no such pretended law need be obeyed, however many times Pope Paul VI or Pope Francis or their successors may try to impose any such monstrosity.

Kyrie eleison.

ROMANS XI

ROMANS XI on July 27, 2024

God’s planning far surpasses human ways.

Let us not judge, but let us love and praise.

With Romans XI we come to the third and last of St Paul’s three full Chapters meant to explain to Gentiles how so many members of the Chosen Race of the Old Testament can be at that moment causing scandal by refusing the New Testament. On his own missionary journeys St Paul repeatedly met with violent opposition from the Chosen Race, so he knew very well how badly they can behave. See I Thess. II, 14–16, where he says they “displease God” and “oppose all men,” but “God’s wrath has come upon them at last.” St Paul would not have been surprised at all by their latest and cruellest “mowing of the lawn” in Gaza.

However, in Romans XI there is no trace of any such “anti-Semitism” (as the Chosen Race chooses to call it, by which they mean any opposition whatsoever to anything that anyone of their Race does or says). St Paul may well have guessed that any such evocation of their crimes would have turned the Gentile

readers of his Epistle only further away from understanding the infidelity of the Jews’ rejection of Christ. Instead he gives three major reasons why the Providence of God may have allowed that infidelity. Firstly (1–10), it is only partial; secondly (11–24) it is highly useful, and thirdly (28–32) it is only temporary. By lifting his readers to a much higher level than Jewish crimes, St Paul prepares the way to end his three Chapters, IX to XI, with a brief hymn to the glorious mystery of God’s unsearchable ways (33–36).

Thus God has not Himself rejected His people of the Old Testament, because in every generation there is a remnant of Jews saved by grace. St Paul himself is Jewish by blood, and when Jews truly convert to Christ, they can make excellent Catholics, because unlike Gentile converts, they are, so to speak, returning home. So a chosen minority of Jews reach their heavenly goal, even if a large majority are blinded (1–10).

Secondly, the infidelity of Jews is highly useful, because the Gentiles’ conversion is designed to provoke them to jealousy, and if their rejection of Christ opened the way for Gentiles to be saved in God’s Church, then their reversion to Christ at world’s end will be the resurrection of the Gentiles. Moreover, the basic Jewish vine-stock (e.g. Abraham, Isaac and Jacob) is still holy, even if many Jews have broken off it, and so let Gentile Christians, who are mere grafts onto that vine-stock, remember that they too can break off it, even if they can be re-grafted onto it. In any case, all Gentiles depend, as Christians, on that vine-stock for their Christianity (11–24).

And thirdly, the infidelity of the Jews to the Gospel of Christ and to the New Testament is only temporary, because at world’s end, when the Gospel has been preached to all the Gentiles, the remaining Jews will convert collectively, i.e. as a whole, albeit with exceptions. For indeed the Jews are still the chosen, gifted and called People of God. The Sacred Heart has never forgotten His own People, as He will show when He converts them just before the end of the world. In the meantime they disbelieve in Him in order to obtain the same mercy which He granted to the once disbelieving Gentiles (30–32).

And by way of conclusion for all three Chapters on the mystery of the Chosen Race of His Old Testament rejecting His New Testament, St Paul glorifies the marvellous and unfathomable ways of God. For 2000 years since the Incarnation Our Lord has not been understood by the large majority of His own People, and moreover, since “The higher they are, the harder they fall,” then not only did they reject Him, but the Chosen Race of God made themselves into the chosen instruments of Satan, as we have seen since last October in Gaza, in such wilful cruelty towards the Palestinians as to have been condemned all over the world. And did God exterminate them, or did St Paul rail against their enmity to God and man (I Thess. II, 16)? No, God made use of their inhumanity as a constant scourge to lay across the backs of unfaithful Catholics to bring these latter back to Him, and He inspires St Paul to discern what profit He draws from their enmity towards Him. Let us imitate St Paul, if we can.

Kyrie eleison

VIGANO COMMENTARY

VIGANO COMMENTARY on July 20, 2024

Tell not of so much gloom – I cannot cope!

The end of lalaland is one great hope.

Last week these “Comments” (July 13, # 887) gave a summary of Archbishop Vigano’s June 28 long justification of his decision not to respond to a Newchurch summons to appear before one of its courts to defend himself against a charge of schism. The summary took the form of 44 lines, one line for each of the 44 paragraphs of the original text, which gave to readers at least an overview of the entire content of the Archbishop’s text, but it hardly made any comment on what he wrote, except for the final couplet –

With some of the arguments one may not agree,

But here is a Catholic spirit, faithful and free.

In this week’s “Comments,” let us elaborate on last week’s rhyming verdict.

The first thing to notice about the original text is its wealth of arguments, not marshalled in any clearly recognisable sequence, but all bearing on the Archbishop’s central and most valuable message – the so-called “renewal” of Vatican II (1962–1965) wrought such a sea-change in the Catholic Church, that while appearances of the pre-conciliar Church could be maintained to deceive Catholics who were not on their guard, nevertheless the substance of the Catholic Church was so altered that it was no longer the true Church but a clever false church, so radically false that it had to be given a new name for Catholics to be no longer deceived. The Archbishop himself does not call it the Newchurch, but that is what these “Comments” will call it, for brevity and clarity.

Then the Archbishop’s main reason for refusing the summons of Rome is easy to express: between the Newchurch and the true Church there is such a contradiction (13) that while the true Church has such a divine Authority that it can demand from souls obedience on pain of eternal damnation (Mk. XVI, 16), on the contrary the Newchurch has no such authority because by all its false doctrines it has given up that Catholic Truth, the defence and protection of which is the very purpose of divine Catholic Authority. From the moment that Adam and Eve fell, mankind lived in a fallen world where God’s Truth no longer needed only to be presented in order to be accepted.

But by the time that the Word became flesh some 4000 years later, mankind had become so corrupt that to save any significant number of souls, Our Lord had to institute a hierarchy to impose the saving Truth: a Pope (Peter), bishops (Apostles), and disciples (priests). Men might still choose to disobey God’s own hierarchy and Truth, but His hierarchy would still, broadly, uphold it – until Luther let the corruption loose again, culminating in Vatican II, where Our Lord’s own hierarchy, broadly, abandoned God’s Truth. That split between God’s Truth and God’s Authority caused, sure enough, an unprecedented crisis in all Church history, beyond all human repair, where God alone will be able to restore His Papacy. But He will do that, to make possible one final triumph of the Catholic Church before the descent to the Antichrist.

Here is the basic reality of our situation in Church and world today. Archbishop Lefebvre recognised it, and by not underestimating the problem he did what was still possible for men to alleviate it. Archbishop Vigano mentions his example (2), and does what he can to follow it, by refusing, for example, to appear at the summons of apostate Rome, with a wealth of arguments to justify his refusal. One may disagree with some of his arguments, for instance on the vacant See in Rome. But those are details which pale in comparison with his grasp of the overall gravity of the crisis, nullifying the hierarchs’ authority. Here is the true faith of the Church’s martyrs down all the ages. May Archbishop Vigano’s courage and teaching open many more eyes for as long as God gives him life.