Eleison Comments

State Religion – II

State Religion – II on December 10, 2011

According to the religion of liberalism – it cannot be said too often that liberalism serves as a substitute religion – it is absolute heresy to declare that every State on earth should support and protect the Catholic religion. Yet if God exists, if Jesus Christ is God, if any natural society of human beings, such as the State, is a creature of God, and if Jesus Christ founded the Catholic Church as his one and only instrument for the saving of men from the eternal fires of Hell, then unless a State wants to be an enemy of mankind, it is bound to favour and protect the Catholic Church. But there are objections to this conclusion. Let us look at three of the most common:—

First objection: Our Lord himself said to Pontius Pilate (Jn. XVIII, 36) that his Kingdom was not of this world. But the State is of this world. Therefore the State should have nothing to do with his Kingdom or his Church.

Solution: Our Lord was telling Pilate that his Kingdom and the State are distinct but he was not saying that they should be separate. A man’s soul is distinct from his body, but to separate them is the death of the man. Parents are distinct from their children, but to separate them (as Child Agencies today are liable to do) is the death of the family. Church and State are as distinct from one another as life on earth is distinct from eternal life, but to separate them is to put a gulf between the first and the second, and it is to increase greatly the number of citizens who will fall into Hell.

Second objection: The Catholic religion is true. But Truth can be left to make its own way. Therefore the Catholic religion needs no coercive power of the State to help it, such as the suppression in public of the practice of all other religions. Solution: In itself, indeed “The truth is mighty and will prevail,” as the Latins said, but amongst us men it will not prevail easily, because of original sin. Were all human beings (except Our Lord and Our Lady) not afflicted ever since the Fall with the four wounds of Ignorance, Malice, Weakness and Concupiscence , then much less would get in the way of truth prevailing, and Thomas Jefferson might be right in proclaiming that truth needs only to be exposed in the market-place to prevail. But Catholics know what the Church teaches, namely that man remains even after baptism subject to the downward drag of original sin, so that to find that truth without which he cannot save his soul, he needs all reasonable help from his State. That reasonable help excludes the State’s trying to force anyone to be Catholic, but it includes the State’s keeping dangerous anti-truths out of Jefferson’s market-place.

Third objection: Great power can be greatly misused. Now the union of Church and State is very powerful for them both. Therefore it can do great harm – just see how the Conciliar Church and the secular New World Order are empowering one another! Solution: “Misuse cannot stop use,” said the Latins. Should Our Lord not have given us the Holy Eucharist on the grounds that it can be gravely misused? The Conciliar Church re-uniting with the liberal State is a powerful misuse of the union of Church and State, but it proves the wrongness of liberalism, not the wrongness of the union of Catholic State with Catholic Church.

Kyrie eleison.

Accursed Liberals

Accursed Liberals on December 3, 2011

Liberalism is a frightful disease, consigning to eternal Hell millions upon millions of souls. It “liberates” the mind from objective truth and the heart (will and affections) from objective good. The subject reigns supreme. It is man in the place of God, with man allowing to God only as much importance as man chooses to allow him, and that is normally not much. Almighty God is put on a leash, so to speak, like an obedient little puppy dog! In fact the “God” of the liberals is a mockery of the true God. But “God is not mocked” (Gal.VI, 7). Liberals are punished already in this life by becoming false crusaders, true tyrants, and effeminate men.

A classic example of the false crusader is provided by the revolutionary priests in Latin America, according to Archbishop Lefebvre. He used to say that priests losing the Faith under the influence of the modernizing movement in the Church made the most terrible of revolutionaries, because to the false crusade of Communism they would bring all the force of the true crusade for the salvation of souls, for which they had been trained, but which they no longer believed in.

The true crusade being for God, for Jesus Christ, for eternal salvation, then when it is no longer believed in, it leaves a correspondingly huge gap in people’s lives, which they attempt to fill by crusading for anything and everything: for a ban on tobacco (but freedom for marihuana and heroin); for a ban on capital punishment (but freedom to execute efficacious right-wingers); for a ban on tyrants (but freedom to bomb any country into “democracy”); for the sacredness of man (but freedom to abort the human baby in the womb) – the list can go on and on. The contradictions just highlighted are perfectly consistent in the liberals’ crusade for a total new world order to replace the Christian world order. They pretend they are not fighting Christ, but the pretence is wearing thin.

Liberals also become, logically, true tyrants. Since they have “liberated” themselves from any God or Truth or Law above them, then there remains only the authority of their own minds and wills to impose on their fellow human beings whatever it may be. For example, having lost all sense of any Tradition limiting his authority, Paul VI forced upon the Catholic Church in 1969 his New Order of Mass, to fit the New World Order, regardless of the fact that only two years before a significant number of bishops had rejected a substantially similar experimental rite of Mass. What did he care for the opinions of anyone beneath him, unless they were liberals like himself? They did not know what was good for them. He did.

Logically again, liberals become effeminate, because they cannot help taking everything personally. Yet any sane opposition to their authoritarianism is based on that Truth or Law above all human beings which the liberals are flouting. That is how Archbishop Lefebvre resisted the liberalism of Paul VI, but Paul VI could only think that the Archbishop wanted to take his place as Pope. He was incapable of understanding that there was a far higher Authority than his own, on which the Archbishop in all tranquillity was leaning. Who needs to worry that the Lord God will ever fail?

Sacred Heart of Jesus, grant us to deserve the good leaders who can come only from you.

Kyrie eleison.

State Religion – I

State Religion – I on November 26, 2011

What part should the State play in protecting or promoting the Catholic religion? Any Catholic who knows that Catholicism is the one true religion of the one true God can only answer that the State, being also a creature of that God, is bound to serve as best it can his one true religion. On the other hand any liberal who believes that the State is incompetent to tell which is the true religion because, for instance, religion is in any case the individual’s business, will answer that the State must protect the right of all its citizens to practise the religion of their choice, or none at all. Let us look at the Catholic arguments.

Man comes from God. His nature comes from God. Man is by nature social, so his socialness comes from God. But the whole man, not just part of him (First Commandment), owes worship to God. So the socialness of man owes worship to God. But the State is nothing other than the society formed by the socialness of all its citizens joining together in their body politic. Therefore the State owes worship to God. But amongst all different worships necessarily contradicting one another (otherwise they would not be different), maybe all are more or less false but certainly one alone can be fully true. So if there is such a worship, fully true and recognizable as such, that is the worship which every State, as State, owes to God. But Catholicism is that worship. Therefore every State, as State, owes Catholic worship to God, including even today’s England or Israel or Saudi Arabia!

But an essential part of worship is to render to God the service of which one is capable. Of what service is the State capable? Of great service! Man being social by nature, his society has a great influence on how he feels, thinks and believes. And a State’s laws have a decisive influence on moulding its citizens’ society. For instance, if abortion or pornography are made legal, many citizens will come to think that there is little or nothing wrong with them. Therefore every State has in principle a duty by its laws to protect and promote Catholic faith and morals.

Such is the clear principle. But does that principle mean that every non-Catholic should be rounded up by the police and burnt at the stake? Obviously not, because the purpose of worshipping and serving God is to give him glory and to save souls. But inconsiderate action on the part of the State will have the opposite effect, namely of discrediting Catholicism and alienating souls. Therefore the Church teaches that even a Catholic State has the right to abstain in practice from taking action against a false religion when taking that action would cause a still greater evil, or hinder a greater good. But every State’s duty in principle to protect Catholic faith and morals remains intact.

Does that mean forcing Catholicism on the citizens? Not at all, because Catholic belief is not something that can be forced – “Nobody believes against his will” (St Augustine). What it does mean is that in a Catholic State where taking such action may or should not be counter-productive, the public practice of all religions other than Catholicism may or should be prohibited. This logical conclusion was denied by Vatican II, because Vatican II was liberal. Yet it was common practice in Catholic States before the Council, and it will have helped many souls to be saved.

Kyrie eleison.

Financial Solutions

Financial Solutions on November 19, 2011

Numbers of commentators on economic questions are presently writing or saying that the world’s financial system is on the brink of collapse. None of them are sure of the timing, but many of them predict that it will be a major collapse. Yet before the onset of the financial crisis in 2008, few people saw it coming because they were comfortable in a way of life that seemed well established and for ever moving forward. However, if these commentators are right, it is about to come off its hinges.

We should all of us be thinking what went wrong and how it should be put right. Here below are a series of practical proposals, adapted from a recent article on the website Burning Platform. One need not agree with each of them to begin envisaging alternatives to our present broken system. There are political and financial proposals. Let us begin with the latter:—

*Nationalize those banks which by being “Too Big to Fail” can hold the State to ransom. Let any consequent losses fall on the people responsible or involved, not on the taxpayer. *Re-institute (in the USA) the Glass-Steagall Act to stop banks from ever becoming so big again. *Re-institute mark to marketing accounting rules, so that banks can no longer pretend that their assets are worth much more than they are worth in the market-place. *Regulate the derivatives market so that likewise no financial entity can become so big that it can threaten to crash the entire system if it goes under (as happened in the USA with AIG). *Simplify the present highly cumbersome system of income tax, or replace it altogether with a consumer tax, and eliminate corporate tax breaks. Notice how such proposals may be explicitly financial, but they are implicitly political, because to be put into practice they would need a significant change in the political way of thinking of the people and especially of the leaders. Finance depends on politics. Here are the more obviously political proposals, which may be disputed, but they at least point in the right direction:—

*To combat the corruption of too comfortable politicians, impose term limits. To combat the corruption of elections by special interests, cut out all lobbying and lobbyists. *To cut down the power of the central bank, take away its control of the nation’s money supply. *Re-organize the States’ welfare benefits, today so draining the States’ finances that tomorrow they will be able to benefit nobody. *Re-instruct the people to go without, and to accept a lower standard of living, so that instead of spending society into oblivion, they build it by saving. *Do what can be done to replace suburban sprawl by more self-sufficient communities. *Renounce world empire so as to cut down the enormous military spending of the USA, for instance by bringing thousands of troops home from their bases all over the world.

Here again, for such proposals to be put into practice, they require great changes in the people’s way of thinking, especially in that of the leaders. Political decisions depend upon what people value more, or most. Why are we alive? To enjoy on earth, or to be truly happy for eternity? Is that an either-or question? Is there an eternity? Thus politics depend on religion, or on the lack of it. Will today even a financial crash bring anyone to their senses?

Kyrie eleison.

Tomato Stakes – II

Tomato Stakes – II on November 12, 2011

When “Eleison Comments” quoted (Sept. 10, 217) the Russian proverb likening woman and man to a tomato-plant and the stake around which that plant clings and climbs to bear fruit, it used the comparison to expound on the nature and role of woman. A woman reader then asked how it applies to men. Alas, our crazy age is trying to wipe out all these basics of human nature.

On God’s design for man and woman, profoundly different but sublimely complementary, there is of course much more to be said than a mere comparison from the garden can say. At every Catholic wedding Mass, the Epistle compares the relations between husband and wife to those between Christ and his Church. Worthy of note in this passage (Ephesians V, 22–33) is how St Paul lays out at length the consequent duties of the husband, briefly those of the wife. Already we may suspect that today’s men are greatly responsible for the loss of sanity between contemporary man and woman, but let us leave the supernatural mystery for another occasion and return to the garden, because it is above all the natural basics that are being attacked today by the enemies of God and man.

For a tomato-stake to serve a tomato-plant it needs two things: it must stand tall and it must stand firm. If it does not stand tall, the plant cannot climb, and if it does not stand firm the plant cannot cling, or wrap itself around the stake. The firmness, one might say, depends on a man’s wrapping himself around his work, while the tallness depends upon his reaching for God, no less.

As for the firmness, in all times and places where human nature has not been twisted out of all recognition, the man’s life revolves around his work while the woman’s life revolves around her family, starting with her man. If the man makes the woman the centre of his life, it is as though two tomato plants were clinging together – both will finish in the mud, unless the woman takes on the part of the man, which she was never meant to do, and which she should at least never wish to do. A wise woman chooses for husband precisely a man who has found his work and loves it, so that while he is firmly wrapped around it, she can wrap herself around him.

As for the tallness, just as the stake must point to the sky, so a man must reach for Heaven. Leaders need a vision with which to inspire and lead. Archbishop Lefebvre had a vision of the restoration of the true Church. Similarly when the faith of Cardinal Pie (1815–1880) saw unmanliness in the men of the 19th century all around him, he attributed it to their lack of faith. Where there is no faith, he said, there are no convictions. No convictions, no firmness of character. No firmness of character, no men. St Paul was thinking along the same lines when he said, “The head of every man is Christ; and the head of the woman is the man; and the head of Christ is God” (I Cor.XI, 3). Therefore to recover his manliness, let a man turn to God, put himself in order beneath him, and it will be that much easier for a wife to put herself in order beneath her man, and the children beneath both of them.

But “beneath” is not to be understood as any kind of tyranny, either of husband over wife, or of parents over children. The stake is there for the tomato. It was a wise Jesuit who said that the best thing a man can do for his children is to love their mother. Men do not run on love as women do, so they can easily fail to understand how women need to love and to be loved. In fact, a teaspoonful of affection, and she is good for another hundred miles. The Holy Ghost says it rather more elegantly: “Husbands, love your wives and be not bitter towards them” (Col.III, 19).

Kyrie eleison.

Conspiracy Theories

Conspiracy Theories on November 5, 2011

Following on the recent “Eleison Comments” on deicide (EC 222), some readers may hope that “Eleison Comments” will often mention the part played by Jews in world affairs, but they risk being disappointed. In 225 issues that have appeared so far, I doubt whether the Jews have been mentioned by name in much more than half a dozen. For, whatever problem they may or may not represent, they are certainly not the primary problem. The primary problem is the godlessness of modern man, which I hope most readers find is the central concern of “Eleison Comments.”

Conspiracy theories, like that of the Jews conspiring to dominate the world, are plentiful, but there are two exaggerations between which it is wise but not easy to hold the right balance. Most people follow the media in holding that all conspiracy theories are nonsense and the only people who believe in them are “conspiracy nuts.” On the other hand a small minority of people, but with strong convictions, hold that all world events are to be explained by some conspiracy or other, especially a Jewish conspiracy. The essential truth was best told by a famous Church writer 1800 years ago.

Tertullian (160–220) said that the Catholic Faith and Jewish power are like the two pans of a pair of scales: as Catholic Faith goes up, so Jewish power goes down, and as Catholic Faith goes down, so Jewish power goes up. But the Faith overtops the power. That is why the primary problem is not the Jews, but the increase or decrease of the Faith amongst men. That is why conspiracies do exist, they have an important part to play and they are not to be merely scorned, but the central problem is men turning away from the true God in his one true Church. In brief – and here is the crucial point – the Gentiles have only themselves to blame if Jewish power is today so great.

Therefore whoever begins to see what notably Disraeli and Woodrow Wilson hinted at but could hardly say openly, namely that there is a dark power behind the scenes directing world events, let them not lose their balance in cursing the Illuminati or the Jews or the Freemasons or whoever, but let them realize the wisdom of the words of Pius X: “Let every man do his duty, and all will be well.” That is because our first duty is towards God, as the First Commandment indicates, so that if we all did our duty and made our way back to God, it would be mere child’s play for him to undo that present power of his various enemies which he alone let them have in the first place by not intervening to prevent it.

Thus before Our Lady appeared at Fatima in 1917, the anti-Catholics had brought the government of Portugal completely under their control, but when virtually the entire Portuguese people prayed and did penance as Our Lady had asked, then she simply dissolved the anti-Catholics’ power in a bloodless revolution. Portugal became, in the godless 20th century with Communism triumphing everywhere, the showcase of a Catholic State.

The most intelligent of God’s enemies are well aware that they are serving him as a scourge to be laid across the backs of his unfaithful people. If only God’s friends would understand how they are being scourged by his enemies to help all souls to turn to him and so get to Heaven, then conspiracy theories would all drop into place: neither more, nor less, important than they really are.

Kyrie eleison.