Eleison Comments

Turning Point

Turning Point on March 10, 2012

Speaking in the USA last month on Rome-SSPX relations, the Society of St Pius X’s Superior General said that some practical agreement between the two might be possible if Rome would accept the SSPX as it is, and he quoted the Archbishop as having often said that such an arrangement would be acceptable. However, Bishop Fellay did add that the last time that the Archbishop said this was in 1987. This little addition is highly significant, and it deserves to be dwelt on, especially for a younger generation that may be unfamiliar with the historic drama of the Episcopal Consecrations of 1988.

In fact the drama of dramas, without which the SSPX would never even have come into existence, was the Second Vatican Council (1962–1965), at which the large majority of the world’s Catholic bishops signed on to that “up-dating” of the Church by which they split their Catholic authority from the truth of Catholic Tradition. From that point on, Catholics had to choose between Authority and Truth. To this day, if they choose Authority, they must long for Truth, and if they choose Truth, they still yearn for union with Authority. Archbishop Lefebvre chose Truth, which is why he founded the SSPX in 1970 to defend it, but for as long as possible he did all in his power to heal its split with Authority by striving to obtain Rome’s approval for his Society. That is why Bishop Fellay is right to say that until 1987 the Archbishop repeatedly wished and worked for some practical agreement with Rome.

However, by 1987 the Archbishop was 82 years old. He foresaw that without its own bishops, the SSPX’s stand for Tradition must come to an end. It was becoming urgent to obtain from Rome at least one bishop, but Rome stalled, surely because it too was well aware that the SSPX without its own bishop would die a lingering death. The resolute stalling of then Cardinal Ratzinger in May of 1988 made it clear to the Archbishop that neo-modernist Rome had no intention of protecting or approving of Catholic Tradition. So the time for diplomacy was over, and he went ahead with the Episcopal Consecrations. From then on, he said, it was to be doctrine or nothing. From then on the absolutely necessary prelude to any contacts between Rome and the SSPX, he said, would be Rome’s profession of Faith in the great anti-liberal documents of Catholic Tradition, e.g. Pascendi, Quanta Cura, etc.

And that is why, as Bishop Fellay implied on February 2, never again until his death in 1991 was the great Archbishop heard to say that some practical agreement might be possible or desirable. Himself he had gone as far as he could to obtain from Authority the minimum requirements of Truth. He even once suggested that he had in May of 1988 gone too far. But from the Consecrations onwards he never wavered or compromised, and he urged his Society to take the same line.

Has the situation changed since then? Has Rome returned to the profession of the Faith of all time? One might think so when Bishop Fellay informs us in the same sermon that Rome has modified its harsh position of September 14, and declares itself now willing to accept the SSPX as is. But one need only recall Assisi III and the Newbeatification of John-Paul II to suspect that behind the Roman churchmen’s new-found benevolence towards the SSPX lies in all likelihood a reliance on the euphoria of re-established and prolonged mutual contact to dilute, wash out and eventually dissolve the SSPX’s so far obstinate resistance to their Newchurch. Alas.

“Our help is in the name of the Lord.”

Kyrie eleison.

Good News

Good News on March 3, 2012

Many if not all of you readers will have heard by now of last week’s good news from Germany: on Ash Wednesday the Appeals Court of Lower Bavaria in Nuremberg quashed the Regensburg Regional Court’s condemnation of me on 11 July of last year for “racial incitement.” Then I was condemned for having, in November of 2008, on German soil, in an interview to Swedish television, taken a politically incorrect view of certain historical events differing from the view commonly held, but now the Appeals Court has decreed in addition that the Bavarian State must pay my trial costs so far. All honour to my defence lawyer, Prof. Dr. Edgar Weiler, whose arguments the judges made their own, and to Fr. Schmidberger who introduced me to him, and to Bishop Fellay who approved of him.

However, I am not yet free and clear insofar as the Appeal judges made their decision on procedural grounds. Here is their conclusion: “If an indictment describes behaviour of the accused not punishable (as yet), and leaves open what concrete circumstances supposedly render him liable to punishment, then by not listing the inner and outer facts of the case the indictment is failing in its function, laid out above, of defining the action for which the accused is being put on trial. Case dismissed.”

So in theory, the Regensburg Prosecutor’s office could correct its procedure and start the prosecution all over again. However, in practice they may well hesitate, because the Appeal judges called on them to specify who exactly came to know of the remarks, by what means they came to know of them, how exactly those remarks were apt to disturb the peace in Germany and finally how I was supposed to have approved of the remarks being made known there.

Now the prosecution might easily show that the whole wide world, let alone Germany, was hammered for a month with the remarks by all the world’s media (mainly in order to force Benedict XVI to distance himself from Catholic Tradition), but it would not be so easy to prove the disturbance of the peace in Germany. Also the prosecutors would have real difficulty in proving that I wanted my remarks to be made public in Germany, given that in the last minute of the interview (accessible on Youtube) I expressly wished the contrary. So it is in God’s hands whether the prosecution will continue, or not.

Meanwhile, dear readers, do not suppose that I have ever suffered too heavily from these trials in Germany, any more than I have needed to take too tragically my corresponding three-year exile within the SSPX. That exile has been if anything too comfortable, and these trials have ended, for the moment at least, in their complete termination. Let me then thank all of you that in the course of these three years have prayed for me. I know there are many of you, and I am grateful to every one of you. In return I celebrated in January a novena of Masses for your intentions, because surely much greater trials lie in wait for all of us.

Kyrie eleison.

Benedict’s Ecumenism I

Benedict’s Ecumenism I on February 25, 2012

A valuable study of conciliar ecumenism appeared in Germany a few years ago, written by a certain Dr. Wolfgang Schüler. In “Benedict XVI and How the Church Views Itself,” he argues that the ecumenism let loose by Vatican II transformed the Church’s understanding of itself, and he proves by a series of textual quotations that Joseph Ratzinger as priest, Cardinal and Pope has consistently promoted this transformation, from the time of the Council down to today. Nor can he be ashamed of having done so.

In logical order – it will take more than one “Eleison Comments” – let us look at the true Church’s view of itself, and then with the help of Dr Schüler, at how that view was changed by the Council and how Benedict XVI has consistently promoted that change. Finally let us draw the conclusions that emerge for Catholics wishing to keep the true Faith.

The true Catholic Church has always seen itself as an organic whole, a society one, holy, catholic and apostolic, consisting of human beings united by the Faith, the sacraments and the Roman hierarchy. This Church is so much one, that no piece can be broken off or taken away without its ceasing to be Catholic (cf. Jn. XV, 4–6). For instance, that Faith which is the prime constituent of the Catholic believer cannot be held piecemeal, but must be held either altogether (at least implicitly) or not at all. This is because it is on the authority of God revealing the dogmas of Catholic Faith that I believe them, so that if I disbelieve only one amongst many dogmas, I am rejecting his authority behind them all, in which case even if I believe all the other dogmas, my belief is resting no longer on God’s authority but only on my own choice.

In fact the word “heretic” comes from the Greek word for “to choose” (hairein), so because a heretic’s belief is henceforth merely his own choice, he has lost the supernatural virtue of faith, so that even if he rejects only one dogma of Faith, he is no longer Catholic. A famous quote of Augustine runs: “In much you are with me, in little you are not with me, but because of that little in which you are not with me, the much in which you are with me is of no use to you.”

For instance a Protestant may believe in God, he may even believe in the divinity of the man Jesus of Nazareth, but if he does not believe in the Real Presence of God, body, blood, soul and divinity, beneath the appearances of bread and wine after their consecration at Mass, then he has a profoundly different and deficient concept of the love of Jesus Christ and of the God in whom he believes. Can one then say that the true Protestant and the true Catholic believe in the same God? Vatican II says one can, and on the basis of supposedly more or less shared beliefs between Catholics and all non-Catholics, it builds its ecumenism. On the contrary Dr Schüler illustrates by a series of comparisons that what may look like the same belief, when it forms part of two different creeds, is not really the same at all. Here is one illustration: oxygen molecules mixed with nitrogen are the selfsame molecules as when compounded with hydrogen, but they are as different in the two cases as the air we breathe (O + 4N) from the water we drink (H20)! Stay tuned.

Kyrie eleison.

Angelism – II

Angelism – II on February 18, 2012

Alert readers of these “Comments” may have picked up on an apparent contradiction. On the one hand the “Comments” have repeatedly condemned anything modern in the arts (e.g. EC 114, 120, 144, 157, etc.). On the other hand last week the Anglo-American poet T.S.Eliot was called an “arch-modernist,” and praised for launching a new style of poetry more true to modern times, certainly chaotic.

As the “Comments” have often said, modernity in the arts is characterized by disharmony and ugliness, because modern man chooses more and more to live without or against the God who has planted order and beauty throughout his creation. This beauty and order are now so buried beneath the pomps and works of godless man that it is easy for artists to believe they are no longer there. If then their art is to be true to what they perceive of their surroundings and society, only an exceptional modern artist will convey anything of the divine order underlying the disordered surface of modern life. Most modern artists have given up on order and, like their customers, wallow in the disorder.

But Eliot was born and reared in the late 19th century when society was still relatively ordered, and he received in the USA a good classical education when only a few secret villains yet dreamt of replacing education with training in inhuman subjects. So Eliot may have had little or no access in his youth to true religion, but he was well introduced to its by-products since the Middle Ages, the classics of Western music and literature. Sensing and seeking in them an order missing around him, Eliot was thus able to grasp the deep-down disorder of the rising 20th century, a disorder which merely burst out in the first World War (1914–1918). Hence the “Waste Land” of 1922.

But in that poem he is far from wallowing in the disorder. On the contrary he clearly hates it, showing how empty it is of human warmth and value. So the “Waste Land” may bear little trace of Western religion, but it does finish on scraps of Eastern religion, and as Scruton says, Eliot was certainly tracking the religious depths of the problem. In fact a few years later Eliot nearly became a Catholic, but he was scared off by Pius XI’s condemnation in 1926 of the “Action française,” a condemnation in which he recognized more of the problem and not its solution. So out of gratitude to England for all it had given him of traditional order, he settled for a solution less than complete, combining Anglicanism with high culture, and a Rosary always in his pocket. However God does write straight with crooked lines. How many souls in search of order would have stayed away from Shakespeare or Eliot if they thought that either of them, by being fully Catholic, had answers only pre-fabricated, not true to life.

That is sad, but it is so. Now souls may well be deceiving themselves in one way or another if they shy away from Catholic authors or artists on the grounds that these are untrue to real life, but it is up to Catholics to give them no such excuse. Let us Catholics show by our example that we do not have minds made cosy by artificial solutions necessarily false to the depths of the modern problem. We are not angels, but earthy creatures invited to Heaven if we will pick up our modern cross and follow Our Lord Jesus Christ. Such followers can alone remake the Church, and the world!

Kyrie eleison.

Deadly Angelism

Deadly Angelism on February 11, 2012

Discerning what made T.S.Eliot (1888–1965) “indisputably the greatest poet writing in English in the 20th century,” a conservative English writer of our own day, Roger Scruton, has some interesting things to suggest to Catholics hanging on to their Faith by their fingertips in these early years of the 21st century – briefly, in the pain is the solution! If we are being crucified by the world around us, that is the Cross we are meant to be carrying.

Eliot was in poetry an arch-modernist. As Scruton says, “He overthrew the 19th century in literature and inaugurated the age of free verse, alienation and experiment.” One may well question whether Eliot’s final combination of high culture and Anglicanism is a sufficient solution to the problems he was tackling, but who can deny that with his famous poem, the “Waste Land” of 1922, he blazed the trail for contemporary English poetry? The enormous influence of his poems demonstrated at least that Eliot had his finger on the pulse of the times. He is a modern man, and he tackled head on the problem of modern times, summed up by Scruton as “fragmentation, heresy and unbelief.”

However, the “Waste Land” could not be the masterpiece that it is if it did not make some sense out of the chaos. It is in fact a brilliant portrait in a mere 434 lines of the shattered European “civilisation” that emerged from the ruins of World War I (1914 -1918). And how did Eliot manage to do that? Because as Scruton says, Eliot the arch-modernist was also an arch-conservative. Eliot had soaked himself in the great poets of the past, notably Dante and Shakespeare, but also in more modern masters such as Baudelaire and Wagner, and it is clear from the “Waste Land” that it is Eliot’s grasp of the order of the past that enabled him to get a handle on the disorder of the present.

Scruton comments that if then Eliot blew away the great romantic tradition of 19th century English poetry, it is because that romanticism no longer corresponded to the reality of his age. “He believed that his contemporaries’ use of worn-out poetic diction and lilting rhythms betrayed a serious moral weakness: a failure to observe life as it really is, a failure to feel what must be felt towards the experience that is inescapably ours. And this failure is not confined, Eliot believed, to literature, but runs through the whole of modern life.” The search for a new literary idiom on Eliot’s part was therefore part of a larger search – “for the reality of modern experience.”

Now have we not seen, and do we not see, the same “serious moral weakness” inside the Church? One may call “Fiftiesism” that weakness of the Church of the 1950’s which was the direct father of the disaster of Vatican II in the 1960’s. What was it if not a refusal to look squarely at the modern world for what it is? A pretence that everything was nice, and everybody was nice? A pretence that if I just wrap myself up in an angelist sentimentality, then the problems of the Church in the Revolutionary world will just float away? And what is now the pretence that Rome really wants Catholic Tradition if not the same essential refusal of modern reality? As Eliot taught us that sentimentality is the death of true poetry, so Archbishop Lefebvre showed us that it is the death of true Catholicism. The arch-conservative Archbishop was the truest of modern Catholics.

Catholics, today’s reality may be crucifying us in any one of its many corrupt ways, but rejoice, again, says St Paul, rejoice, because in our own acceptance of our modern Cross today is our only salvation, and the only future for Catholicism

Kyrie eleison.

Delinquent Finance – II

Delinquent Finance – II on February 4, 2012

Delinquent finance has today a religious significance because it is playing a major part in the enslaving of the entire world by the conscious or unconscious enemies of God, the smartest of whom have to be well aware that their ultimate purpose is to send every single soul down to Hell. However, before we present any other piece of their financial machinery, it is necessary to understand the full delinquency of fractional reserve banking, first introduced in the “Eleison Comments” of October 29, last year.

Fractional reserve banking means that a bank need only hold in reserve, ready to be paid out to customers, a small fraction of the money they put into circulation. It arose in Europe in the late Middle Ages when bankers observed that if they took in as deposits, say, 100 ounces of gold and gave out 100 slips of paper certifying that the owner of the certificate could claim so much gold from the bank, then almost never at any one time would more than, say, ten customers ever bring in a certificate to claim back a deposit of gold. And as long as the people had confidence that the bank could and would always have gold to give in return for certificates, then these pieces of paper could happily serve as money, and as such they would circulate amongst the people.

However, the bankers realized meanwhile that in the normal run of business, they needed to hold in reserve only ten ounces of gold for 100 certificates, or, if they held 100 ounces of gold deposited with the bank, then they could issue 1000 paper certificates. Of these, 900 would have nothing at the bank to back them. They would be “funny money,” created by the bank out of thin air, but that would not matter so long as not more than a proportion of one customer out of ten wanted to cash in his paper for a piece of gold.

If they did, then the bank would not have the gold for all the certificates, and either it rapidly borrowed some gold from elsewhere to hand out, or the people risked realizing what a confidence trick had been played on them. If their confidence in the bank then vanished, everybody would want their money back at once – bank runs are only made possible by fractional reserve banking – and large numbers of customers would be left holding in their hands nothing but worthless pieces of paper. The bank would of course be bankrupt, and one could hope it would disappear altogether.

Thus wherever there is fractional reserve banking, the bank is intrinsically fragile, and it is, ultimately, playing a confidence trick on its customers. Extrinsically, it may protect itself by having a guarantee of support in case of need from, often, a central bank, but that guarantee is only as sure as the guarantor, and in the meantime it gives a dangerous power to any central bank. Thereby hangs another tale of financial delinquency, but that of compound interest must come first.

Power is at stake, and ultimately souls. Let nobody say these questions have nothing to do with religion. Think of the Golden Calf.

Kyrie eleison.