Eleison Comments

Cassocks Weighed

Cassocks Weighed on March 12, 2011

To affirm, as did last week’s “Eleison Comments” (190, March 5), that whoever possesses the fullness of Catholic Truth is in the driving-seat of the Catholic Church, may seem a statement at best risky, at worst untrue. After all, 1/ who is in the driving-seat of the Church if not the drivers – the Church authorities – put there by Our Lord? 2/ Since when did Our Lord design his Church to be led by any claimant to the Truth? 3/ Is not the direction of the Church being entrusted to any claimant of Truth a recipe for chaos in the Church?

The best answer is in Scripture. When St Paul preached the true Gospel of Jesus Christ to the peoples of Galatia (think of today’s Turkey), they accepted the Gospel with rejoicing and great fruit (Gal. II, 14–15; III, 5). But soon after he left them to preach elsewhere, enemies of God came amongst them to preach salvation not by faith in Jesus Christ but by the works of the Old Law, notably circumcision (V, 2, 11). By falling for this perversion of the true Gospel (I, 6; III,1), the Galatians provoked from St Paul the glorious Epistle to the Galatians.Here are some key verses from Chapter I:—

“(verse 6) I wonder that you are so soon removed from him that called you into the grace of Christ, unto another gospel. (v.7) Which is not another, only there are some that trouble you, and would pervert the Gospel of Christ. (v.8) But though we, or an angel from Heaven, preach a gospel to you besides that which we have preached to you, let him be anathema. (v.9) As we said before, so now I say again: if anyone preach to you a gospel, besides that which you have received, let him be anathema.” (“Anathema” means, utterly condemned and excommunicated.)

Now it is obvious that any angel appearing to the Galatians would appear with all the authority of a true messenger from Heaven. And if St. Paul himself were to return amongst them, he would appear with all the authority of his prior evangelizing amongst them as Doctor of the Gentiles. In either case the appearances of authority could hardly be stronger. Yet St. Paul says, and repeats, that the Galatians would have to put, as one might say, content before cassock, so that if he were ever to change the content of his preaching, they were not to believe a word of it, whatever the colour of his cassock upon his return!

In answer therefore to the three objections laid out at the start, let us say: 1/ Our Lord puts, ultimately, Truth-tellers and not cassocks in the driving-seat of the Church. 2/ These drivers will be Truth-tellers and not just Truth-claimants. Claims do not make the Truth, but Truth makes its telling (this is what few modern people can grasp). 3/ The Truth being one, then all Truth-tellers will be united in the Truth, and the only chaos will come from souls that reject or pervert that Truth.

The greatness of Archbishop Lefebvre lay in his discerning that Vatican II was sliding into “another” gospel than that of Jesus Christ or St. Paul, a gospel of justification by the works of modern man, and that even white cassocks were not to be followed if they preached it. Is today’s white cassock any different?

Kyrie eleison.

Future Discussions

Future Discussions on March 5, 2011

To the relief of some, to the disappointment of others, it looks as though the doctrinal Discussions held over the last year and a half between theologians of Rome and representatives of the Society of St Pius X will after all come to an end this spring, because the main subjects of discussion will by then have been covered, without any real prospect of agreement opening up. Such is the conclusion tentatively to be drawn from remarks of the Society’s Superior General, Bishop Fellay, made in the course of an interview he gave on February 2.

Now let anyone disappointed be sure that there are Romans and important priests of the SSPX who will hardly give up their efforts to build a bridge between the churchmen of Vatican II and the churchmen of Catholic Tradition. But howsoever it be with such strivings to unite all Catholics of good will, strivings that ebb and flow, yesterday, today and tomorrow, Our Lord’s words are an anchorage: “Heaven and earth will pass away, but my words will not pass away” (Mt. XXIV, 35). For on his life the Church’s life is modelled, and in his life there was an ebb and flow of human strivings and sufferings, culminating in the dreadful crucifixion, but while he felt every human urge to shy away from the crucifying will of his Father – “Father, if it be possible, let this chalice pass from me . . .” – still his human mind and heart were anchored in that divine will – “ . . .nevertheless, not as I will, but as thou wilt” (Mt.XXVI, 39).

So the same unchanging divine will that directed and anchored Our Lord’s human mind and will, must anchor also the life of his Church. So Popes, Councils, religious Congregations and Societies may come and go, but in order to be Catholic they must submit to that divine will to which Our Lord submitted, and they must tell the exact same truths that Our Lord transmitted from his Father to his Church. Like no other institution upon earth, the Catholic Church is so built around Truth that its survival is proportional to its fidelity to that Truth. It is because the Conciliar Church is putting human interests in the place of divine Truth, that it is disintegrating, and any Catholic Congregation or Society that would do the same will likewise fall apart.

It follows that whoever is faithful to the fullness of revealed Truth is in effect – not in principle, but in practice – in the driving-seat of the Church (See “Letters from the Rector” Vol. IV, p.164). Furthermore, whoever has that Truth and pretends he is not in the driving-seat would be what Our Lord would have called himself, had he denied his Father, “a liar” (Jn.VIII, 55). That is because any messenger disowning the divineness of his divine message is no true lover of his fellow-men, as he and they may like to think, but he has for his father the Father of Lies (Jn.VIII, 44).

There is a Truth, even if most people can barely recognize it. The right and ability of the Romans to govern the Church depends on their being faithful to that Truth. The right and ability of the SSPX to stand up to unfaithful Romans depends on the SSPX’s own faithfulness to the Truth. For now the SSPX has been faithful, so for now the SSPX will survive, but may Rome, by returning to the Truth, make that survival unnecessary!

Kyrie eleison.

Crisis Advice

Crisis Advice on February 26, 2011

The Catherine Austin Fitts referred to in last week’s “Eleison Comments” as quoting a Washington insider boasting how the modern world is run on fantasy, was herself a Washington insider, having been Assistant Secretary of Housing in the administration of George Bush Senior. She knows what she is talking about.In the same interview she had other interesting remarks to make, in particular the advice she would give to the average American concerned about his economic future and who wants to preserve his wealth and quality of life. She said (see www.321gold.com, Feb 2, “We are victims of a Financial Coup d’Etat”):—

“Your time and attention count. Stop listening to or associating with people or institutions that have a vested interest in centralization. Start by turning off your TV. Shift your deposits, purchases, and donations to people and companies that you can trust. Lower your overhead. Use your time to build as many skills as possible that can help you do more for yourself and barter with those around you. Invest in tangibles, including precious metals. Do not allow yourself to be drained by what I call the “slow burn.” Finally, build your understanding and ability to engage in spiritual warfare. The financial corruption is a symptom of a much deeper and very invasive moral and cultural problem. Organize your life to serve whom and what you love.

“Protect your health. The food and water supply is slowly being controlled and poisoned. Taking steps to assure local sources of fresh food and water is essential for your health. So is educating yourself on steps you can take to detox your body and build your immune system. The rise of environmental and electromagnetic pollution calls for a level of effort to maintain physical energy and strength that was unthinkable a decade ago.”

In the same line of thinking and on the same web-site (Jan. 17, “Waiting for a Hero” by Larry Laborde) is another paragraph of highly practical advice for anyone who can see trouble coming:—

“So what should the average citizen of these great United States do at this point? Avoid municipal bonds like the plague. They will default first. Avoid long term US bonds as well. Short term US notes (6 months or less) are probably OK for now but keep your finger on the sell trigger. Cut back on all expenses and raise cash. Live BELOW your means. Save cash and hedge that cash with precious metals. Keep your cash in local credit unions or locally owned banks. Check their ratings and make sure you are saving in the safest institutions in your area. Cut up those credit cards and quit using them. Pay cash for your purchases. Keep 2 months of cash on hand in an emergency fund. Invest your precious metals 50% in gold and 50% in silver. Invest in physical precious metals when possible. For small investors a good investment is to simply purchase 6 months of non-perishable supplies that they normally use every day. They will probably cost 5 to 10% more in 6 months (not a bad return). Plant a garden or support a local farmer (or both).”

In brief, wake up! To wake up, readers, start by turning off the television set. Live not beyond your means, but well within them. Save cash, invest locally and invest in precious metals. Get at least mentally out of the rat race, and get mentally from the virtual back to the real. Stop using credit cards. Lay in some food supplies, but be careful what you eat and drink. Wake up to the enemies of mankind poisoning food and water in pursuit of global control, part of a war on mankind which is fundamentally spiritual. Catholics, get your Faith on to a war footing!

Kyrie eleison.

Unbelievable Hubris

Unbelievable Hubris on February 19, 2011

Prophets of doom do not make themselves popular, but if they are ministers of God, they must tell the truth. Now some people say that such ministers should not concern themselves with politics or economics. But supposing politics have become a substitute religion, necessarily a false religion, as they put man in the place of God? And supposing economics (or finance) are about to make many people go hungry? Are ministers of God not allowed to ask, with Aristotle, how people are going to lead a virtuous life if they will be lacking in the basic necessities of life? Is the virtuous life not the business of such ministers?

Therefore I make no apology for quoting a remarkable paragraph from a reporter of the prestigious Wall Street Journal who relates how in the summer of 2006 he was rebuked by a senior adviser of then President Bush for having written an article critical of a former communications director in the White House. He says that at the time he did not fully comprehend what the adviser was saying to him, but afterwards he saw it as getting to the very heart of the Bush presidency. Here are the adviser’s own words, as quoted by the reporter:—

People like the reporter, the adviser said to him, are “in what we call the reality-based community, meaning people who believe like you that solutions emerge from your judicious study of discernible reality.” The reporter should forget about yesterday’s principles of respecting reality. “That’s not the way the world works anymore. We’re an empire now, and when we act, we create our own reality – judiciously, as you will – then we’ll act again, creating other new realities, which you can study too, and that’s how things will sort out. We’re history’s actors . . . and you, all of you, will be left to just study what we do.” (See www.321 gold, Feb 2, “We are Victims of a Financial Coup d’Etat,” by Catherine Fitts.)

This is not me moralizing about how the modern world runs on fantasy. This is a Washington insider of insiders, positively boasting of how the modern world is run on fantasy. Do not his words correspond exactly to the fabrications, for instance, of 9/11 and Saddam Hussein’s “weapons of mass destruction,” “created” to justify policies otherwise impossible to justify? The arrogance of such a scorn for reality, and for people respecting reality, is breath-taking.

The classical Greeks were pagans with no knowledge of the revealed God, but they had a clear grasp of that reality which is the moral framework of his universe, governed, as they saw it, by the gods. Any man, even hero, who defied that framework, like the Bush adviser, was guilty of “hubris,” or of rearing up above his proper human station, and he would be crushed accordingly by the gods. Catholics, if you think that grace does away with nature, you had best re-learn from the pagans of olden times those lessons of nature which are more than ever needed today. Study Xerxes in Aeschylus’ Persae, Creon in Sophocles’ Antigone, Pentheus in Euripides’ Bacchae. Pray the Holy Rosary for sure, but also read the famous classics, plant potatoes and pay down debt, say I!

Kyrie eleison.

Remarkable Film

Remarkable Film on February 12, 2011

It is easy to see how the recently released French film, “Of Gods and Men,” gained top prize at the prestigious Cannes Film Festival in France last year. It recreates real events of 1996, the last months in the life of a Cistercian monastery in post-colonial Algeria, where the eight monks were finally taken out and killed by unknown assassins. The film is beautifully directed, acted and photographed. Of particular interest to Catholics familiar with Tradition will be the film’s religion and – from a religious point of view – the politics.

Perhaps most remarkable of all is the film’s true sense of religion, given that it is the Conciliar religion being portrayed. Doctrinally, there are for instance ecumenical moments of excessive respect for the Koran. Liturgically, the words and music chanted in the simple but noble monastery church are of modern man, subjective and sentimental. Yet the scenes regularly showing the monks at prayer are so genuinely religious as to be altogether surprising in our secular age. This, one says to oneself, is what monasteries are about!

What can one say? As for the film’s directing and acting, just as modern Britons can still most convincingly represent the Victorian age because the British Empire is close enough in their history to be still in their bloodstream, so the French actors of this film must make marvellous monks on screen because Catholic monasticism has been such an important part of their heritage. But above all, as Our Lord says (Mt.XV,18,19), it is what is in the heart of a man that matters. Much the best of all is heartful Tradition, but this film is there to remind us Traditionalists that heartful Conciliarism may yet please God better than Tradition losing heart.

The politics portrayed in the film are of particular interest in view of the current Islamic uprising in various Arab countries. The monks in the film, as no doubt happened in real life, are caught politically between the Devil and the deep blue sea. On the one side their non-Islamic lives are obviously threatened by the Islamic rebels killing anybody in the way of a political take-over of Algeria for Islam. On the other side the post-colonial Algerian government is highly suspicious of the monks aiding and abetting the rebels by, for instance, practising on their wounded the Church’s corporal works of mercy, and it invites the monks to leave the country. To this day some people think that they were executed by the Algerian government. God knows.

What can one say? Certainly heartfelt Catholicism is far superior to heartfelt Islam, which is an anti-Christian, simplistic and brutal sect. But if the heart is drained out of Catholicism, as it was by Vatican II, so that in real life, anywhere in the world, Catholic monks and priests are liable to be giving not only medical but also moral support to anti-Catholic revolutionaries – in fact, as Archbishop Lefebvre used to say, modernist priests make the most terrible of revolutionaries! – can one be surprised if any established government objects to Conciliar priests’ undermining of law and order? Islam is only rising because the true Catholic Church is still falling.

How much depends upon the few souls holding to Catholic Tradition!

Kyrie eleison.

Contamination

Contamination on February 5, 2011

If liberalism in its broadest sense be defined as the liberation of man from God (see last week’s “Eleison Comments”), then the liberal Catholicism of the 19th century arising out of the French Revolution (1789) was, broadly, the successful liberating of politics from God, while the liberal Modernism of the early 20th century was the unsuccessful attempt to liberate the Catholic Church from God, attempt scotched by St. Pius X. However, that attempt succeeded half a century later way beyond even most liberals’ dreams, at the Second Vatican Council. Here below is another recent testimony I received, from Italy, observing how liberal Traditionalism is now at work to liberate Catholic Tradition from God (if only we had half the Devil’s perseverance!):—

“After the unchaining of the Tridentine Mass by Benedict XVI’s Motu Proprio of 2007, a great quantity of Catholics came closer to Tradition, but their quality varied widely. As was inevitable, the increase in numbers brought towards Tradition many Catholics who had never been convinced of its importance, and whose idea of Tradition was still basically subjective, meaning it is optional for Catholics and not obligatory. In this respect even if Benedict did say some useful things in his charter speech of December 22, 2005, its effect was disastrous.

“Confidence in the Pope then made any critical thinking about the modern liturgy, catechesis or doctrine take second place. To draw distinctions or to clear up confusion made one widely unpopular. However, the announcement of Assisi III dealt a sharp blow to this broad and very fluffy spectrum of Tradition, and Catholics had to make up their minds. Contrasts came out into the open, and the first divisions emerged.

“Benedict XVI has succeeded in infecting the promising potential of young Catholics connected or close to Tradition, and he has succeeded in creating divisions. Much of that potential is now ruined, even if one may put one’s hope in God that many other youngsters will come to talk and behave in a properly Catholic way. So just how many Catholics will embrace whole-heartedly the Church’s just cause? We shall have to wait for the dust to settle, and for men of good will and fresh vigour to make their appearance.

“Witnessing to Tradition calls more than ever for clear and firm statements. Hesitating or vacillating only does damage. Meanwhile let us fight on, sharpening the tone wherever called for, and openly pointing out the evils of Benedict XVI’s Conciliar Newchurch. Public opinion in Italy is far from concerning itself with the Church’s true problems. Catholics here have learned for centuries to believe that what the Pope says is Gospel. They are children of our age.”

Surely this testimony suggests that the marginalization of Econe by the mainstream Church in 1975, and its outright condemnation with the “excommunications” of 1988, each helped to save Catholic Tradition from contamination. Will the Lord God for the same purpose need to permit another such division and marginalization? We devoutly hope not!

Kyrie eleison.