Eleison Comments

Discussions’ Aftermath

Discussions’ Aftermath on June 18, 2011

As the doctrinal Discussions which were held from the autumn of 2009 to the spring of this year between the Society of St Pius X and Rome drop back into the past, the question naturally arises of future relations between the two. Among Catholics on both sides there is a wish for contacts to continue, but since such pious wishes for union easily give rise to illusions, it is necessary to keep one’s grip on reality if one is not to join the whole modern world in its anti-God fantasy.

Originally the Discussions were wanted not by the Society but by Rome, as it hoped to dissolve the Society’s notorious resistance to the Neo-modernism of Vatican II. The great obstacle was doctrine, because the Society is well protected inside the fortress of the Church’s age-old and unchanging doctrine. It had to be lured out of that fortress. Now for Neo-modernists, just as for Communists, any contact or dialogue with an adversary in a secure position was – and remains – better than none, because he can only lose by it while they can only gain. So Rome agreed even to doctrinal Discussions.

Alas for Rome, the Society’s four representatives believe clearly and held firm. As one of the four Roman theologians taking part in the Discussions was overheard to say afterwards, “We do not understand them and they do not understand us.” Of course. Unless the Romans abandoned their Neo-modernism or the Society priests betrayed the Truth, it was bound to be a relatively fruitless dialogue. But Rome cannot stand its own betrayal of the Truth being shown up by the paltry Society, so it is not likely to give up. That is why we already hear of an Ecclesia Dei spokesman telling that Rome will very soon offer an “Apostolic Ordinariat” to the Society. Of course such a quote may be merely a trial balloon to test reactions, but it is also a tempting idea. Unlike a Personal Prelature, an Apostolic Ordinariat is independent of the local bishops, and unlike an Apostolic Administration, such as Campos in Brazil, it is not confined to just one diocese. What more could the Society ask for?

It asks that Rome should come back to the Truth, because it knows, as do Communists and Neo-modernists, that any practical co-operation which would skirt around doctrinal disagreement leads eventually, for all kinds of human reasons, to absorbing the false doctrine of the enemies of the Faith, in other words to betraying the Truth. Here is why the Society’s Superior General has in public more than once repudiated any canonical agreement with Rome that would precede a doctrinal agreement. But the Discussions have served at least to demonstrate the depth of the doctrinal disagreement between the Society and Neo-modernist Rome. That is why Catholics should be prepared for the Society to refuse even the offer of an Apostolic Ordinariat, however well-intentioned the Roman authorities may be.

But why is doctrine so important? Because the Catholic Faith is a doctrine. But why is Faith so important? Because without it we cannot please God (Heb.XI,6). But why must it be the Catholic Faith? Will no other faith in God do? No, because God himself underwent the horror of the Cross to reveal to us the one true Faith. All other “faiths” contradict, more or less, that true Faith, with lies.

Four future numbers of “Eleison Comments” will show, with all due respect, how disoriented in this respect is the way of believing of the present Pope, however well-intentioned he may also be.

Kyrie eleison.

Men’s Limits

Men’s Limits on June 11, 2011

The discovery in early April, after a two-year hunt, of wreckage from the Air France Airbus which went down in mid-Atlantic on June 1, 2009, and the subsequent recovery of the aircraft’s flight recorders known as “black boxes,” have thrown an eerie light on the disaster, puzzling until now. What a drama! It seems that the Airbus 330–200 stalled at an altitude of 38,000 feet, and then for three and a half minutes tumbled straight down to crash into the ocean, causing everybody on board, 228 souls, to appear instantaneously before the judgment seat of God.

The initial problem for flight AF 447 could well have been nasty night-time weather high over the ocean two hours out from Rio de Janeiro in Brazil on the way to Paris. Conclusions from the evidence provided by the black boxes are not yet final, but the next problem may have been that the aircraft’s air speed indicators, deriving information from pitot tubes, gave false readings to the pilots. When the aircraft began to stall, instead of putting the nose down to gather the speed necessary for the aircraft to start flying again, it seems that the pilots turned up the engines, which is another way of dealing with a stall situation, but they also pulled the nose up. More automatic stall warnings followed until the plane finally stalled, and once it began to fall the pilots seem to have been powerless to prevent the crash.

Were they intent upon climbing above the storm instead of pitching down into it? Were they relying too much on their electronics, apparently more and more dominant in aircraft cockpits? Did they panic? (How understandable if they did!) One awaits the final results of Air France’s inquest as to the cause of the crash, but a few things in connection with it are certain.

We can any of us die at any moment, for a variety of causes. Will we at that moment of death have the time, grace and presence of mind to make an act of contrition sufficient to save our souls? A fear of imminent death can wipe out of the mind everything except the instinctive urge to survive. Now millions of intercontinental passengers are every year whisked safely over oceans by our brilliant flying machines, but these are puny things compared to the forces of nature. “Stop,” said the storm, “you are not such masters of the elements as you think.” And the passengers and crew, called violently back to reality from their in-flight movies and in-seat meals, must all have been gripped by a panic fear for most or all of the 210-second plunge to their death, as nature’s law of gravity took over from man’s ingenuity of flight.

Even after 672 days on the ocean-bed, the black boxes functioned perfectly, and now they are yielding up their secrets of the last minutes of flight AF 447. Clever idea! Clever design! But how many souls aboard that brilliant machine were ready to enter into eternity? And how many more might have been ready if only men devoted to the saving of their souls a small part of the intelligence and effort which they spend on their material machines? Mother of God, pray for us sinners that neither distraction nor panic may prevent us from putting and keeping our souls in order, “now and in the hour of our death.”

Kyrie eleison.

Reading Pagans

Reading Pagans on June 4, 2011

Some Catholic eyebrows may have been raised a while ago when “Eleison Comments” (EC 188) recommended the reading of the pagan Greeks to get a handle on the universe’s moral framework. Why not rather read Catholic authors? But the same great realities of life, suffering and death were faced by the Greek tragedians as are faced by the Catholic Doctors: why, as it seems, are we born on this earth, only to suffer and die, and by death be separated from everything we have learned to love? The question is basic, and can be agonizing.

The Catholic answer is clear and complete: an infinitely good God gives to each of us life, free-will and time enough, if we make the right use of the suffering exactly dosed by his Providence (Mt.X, 29–31), for us to choose to spend our eternity rather with him in Heaven than without him in Hell. The Greek answer is incomplete, but not wholly wide of the mark. Instead of God the Father, they have a Father-god, Zeus, and instead of Providence they have Fate (Moira).

Now whereas for Catholics Providence is inseparable from God, the Greeks separate Zeus from Fate so that they sometimes clash. That follows from the Greeks having a too human concept of their gods. Nevertheless they do conceive of Zeus as more or less benignly directing the universe and of Fate as being unchangeable, as is Providence within the true God (Summa Ia, 23, 8; 116,3), so that they are not wholly wrong. Moreover they have more respect for their mythical gods, and for the moral order guarded by them, than do a host of modern writers, who have no respect for any god at all, and who set out to negate any trace of a moral order.

But the Greeks have one advantage even over Catholic writers. When they present great truths, these are drawn from raw life and not just – so to speak – out of the Catechism. The same holds true for any non-Catholic witness to truths taught by the Church. Just as today’s Talmudic Jews, precisely because they reject Jesus Christ, render a special witness to him by guarding jealously in their synagogues the Hebrew text of that Old Testament which speaks of Our Lord from beginning to end, so the ancient Greeks give special witness to God and his Providence when, independently of the Catechism, they demonstrate the world’s moral order in action. In this way they prove that such natural truths are accessible not only to believers, rather they belong to the very fabric of life as lived by everyone, if only it is sanely understood.

Another advantage of the ancient classics in particular is that having preceded Christ, there cannot be in them a trace of that apostasy which mars, more or less, even pious writers coming out of Christendom after the Middle Ages. Natural truths are presented by the ancients with a certain innocence and freshness which can no longer be recovered. The waters are too muddied.

In fact it was the Church’s monasteries which ensured the survival of the manuscripts of the ancient classics in medieval times. Count on the true Catholic Church to save them once more in modern times from the new barbarians, liberals! For wherever the so-called “scholarship” of the liberals prevails today, it turns all classics to dust.

Kyrie eleison.

Men’s Authority

Men’s Authority on May 28, 2011

Two young men, uncertain of getting married, begged me the other day to write a manual on how men should be men. Theirs was a real cry of distress: “When should we be nice with women, and when should we be firm? We just don’t know any longer!” Yesteryear the answer to that question was common sense for many a man, but authority today has been so widely undermined by liberal propaganda that the problem of exercising it in marriage may be one reason why now numbers of young folk prefer simply to live together rather than get married. What follows is not a manual, but it may at least point our two musketeers in the right direction.

St. Paul says: “I bow my knees to the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ of whom all paternity in heaven and earth is named” (Eph. III, 14,15). In other words all fatherhood or authority amongst God’s creatures is modelled upon and derives from the fatherhood and authority of God himself. As Dostoevsky has one of his characters say, “If God does not exist, then I have no business being an army officer.” So it stands to reason that if men chase God out of their society, as he is being chased today out of the whole wide world, then all authority is radically undermined. In the individual, reason will be unable to govern the passions, in the family the father will be unable to control his household, and in the State democracy will come to seem the only legitimate form of government.

Now within the family, who, observing daily life, can deny that men are stronger than women in the use of reason, while women are stronger than men in intuition and emotion? Watch any sitcom if you doubt it. Now feelings have their rightful place in life and they are scorned, like one’s wife, at one’s peril, but they come and go, they are unstable and as such they are a guide, but not a reliable guide, to action. On the contrary if reason discerns what is objectively true and just, it is stabilized by the fact that objective truth and justice are above any individual or his feelings. Therefore reason may listen to feelings, but it must rule them. That is why men have, as men, a natural authority possessed only exceptionally by women, who have as a rule other qualities. That is why the man is naturally the head of the family and home, while the woman is naturally its heart.

But the liberalism which rules the modern world dissolves all sense of objective truth or justice. By so doing it deprives the reason of its object, and of its objective anchor in a reality above and independent of the reasoning subject. Reason being the prerogative of men, liberalism hits the men before it hits the women, whose feminine instincts are not dependent on reason. By the same token liberalism undercuts the authority of men which comes down from conforming to what is above them, ultimately divine Truth and Justice, and it makes all use of authority become arbitrary.

Therefore, young men, in all your dealings with men or women, seek to be true and just, and turn to God for the help necessary to discern truth and justice amidst so much untruth and injustice and arbitrary misuse of authority all around us today. Then act upon what you discern, and you will re-build your manly authority from above, in a world undercutting it from below. In brief, “Seek ye first the kingdom of God, and his justice, and all these things shall be added unto you” (Mt. VI, 33).

Kyrie eleison.

Two Repentances

Two Repentances on May 21, 2011

A reader of “Eleison Comments” asked me several months ago what made the difference between the repentance of Judas Iscariot flinging his 30 pieces of silver at the feet of the Temple authorities (Mt.XXVII,3), and that of Peter weeping bitterly at the crowing of the cock (Mt. XXVI,75). His question is a good excuse to quote pages from The Poem of the Man-God by Maria Valtorta (1897–1961). Our Lord (if it is indeed him – “In things uncertain, liberty”) here comments on the vision he has just granted her of the last hours of Judas Iscariot. The Italian text is slightly adapted:—

“Yes, the vision is horrendous, but not useless. Too many people think that what Judas did was not all that grave. Some even go so far as to say that it was meritorious, because without him the Redemption would not have happened and so he was justified in the eyes of God. In truth I tell you that if Hell had not already been in existence, perfectly equipped with torments, it would have been created even more horrendous in eternity for Judas, because amongst damned sinners he is the damnedest of them all, nor will his sentence ever be eased through all eternity.

“It is true that he did show remorse for his betrayal, and it could have saved him, had he turned his remorse into repentance. But he did not want to repent, and so in addition to his first crime of betrayal, on which – such is my loving weakness – I could have had mercy, he went on to blaspheme and to resist every impulse of grace which was pleading with him through each trace and memory of me that in his last desperate chase around Jerusalem he ran into, including the encounter with my Mother and her gentle words. He resisted everything. He wanted to resist. Just as he had wanted to betray me. As he wanted to curse me. As he wanted to kill himself. Where a man’s will is set – that is what counts. For good or ill.

“When somebody falls without really wanting to, I forgive him. Take Peter. He denied me. Why? He could not himself tell exactly why. Was he a coward? No. My Peter was no coward. In the Garden of Gethsemane he defied the whole pack of Temple guards to cut off Malchus’ ear in defence of me, at the risk of being killed himself for doing so. Then he fled. With no set will to do so. Then he denied me three times, but again, with no set will to do so. For the rest of his life he succeeded in staying on the blood-stained way of the Cross, my way, until he died on the cross himself. He succeeded in witnessing to me in grand style until he was killed for his unflinching faith. I defend my Peter. His running away and his denials were the last moments of his human weakness. But the set will of his higher nature was not behind those actions. Weighed down by his human weakness, it was asleep. As soon as it awoke, it did not want to remain in sin, it wanted to be perfect. I immediately forgave him. Judas’ will was set in the opposite direction . . .”

At the end of the Poem of the Man-God Our Lord (if it is him – I myself believe it is) dictates to Maria Valtorta the seven reasons for his granting this long series of visions of his life to the modern world. The first reason was to make real again in people’s minds the Church’s basic doctrines, ravaged by modernism. Sounds about right? The seventh reason was – “to make known the mystery of Judas,” how a soul so highly gifted by God could so fall.

Kyrie eleison.

Apples Rotting

Apples Rotting on May 14, 2011

In two ways a rotten apple may cast a little light in the darkness of today’s eclipsed Church. Firstly, we do not wait for every part of an apple to be rotten before we call it rotten as a whole, yet parts of it are still not rotten. In answer then to the question whether the apple is rotten, we must make a double distinction: as a whole, yes; in these parts, yes; in those parts, no. And secondly, while apple is not rot and rot is not apple, yet the rot is inseparable from its apple and cannot exist without it. Let us apply the first part of this common sense to the Novus Ordo Mass and the “Conciliar church,” the second part to the “Conciliar church” and the Papacy.

As for the New Mass, it is rotten as a whole by its Conciliar man-centredness, but while some parts are clearly not Catholic (e.g. the Offertory), other parts are Catholic (e.g. the

Kyrie eleison.). Because it is rotten as a whole and slowly makes Catholics into Protestants, it is not fit to be attended, but that part which is the Consecration may be Catholic and valid. So one can say of the Novus Ordo Mass neither that it is valid so it can be attended, nor that it cannot be attended so it is invalid. In truth it may be valid in its essential part, but that is not a sufficient reason to expose one’s faith to the danger of attending it as a whole.

Similarly, today’s Church is rotten as a whole insofar as Conciliarism is widespread throughout it, but that does not mean that every single part of the Church is rotten with Conciliarism. So it is as wrong to condemn any part still Catholic because of the Conciliar whole, as it is wrong to excuse the Conciliar whole because of those parts still Catholic. To fit one’s mind to the reality, one must distinguish both between the different parts, and between the whole and the parts.

And if we apply to today’s Church also the second part of the comparison with a rotten apple, we can say that it is genuinely useful to speak of two churches, the “Conciliar church” and the Catholic Church, because Conciliarism is to be found in real life all through the Church, although in their pure state Conciliarism and Catholicism exclude one another like apple and rot. But they are not in real life separable any more than are the rot from its apple or any parasite from its host. In real life there is only one Church, the Catholic Church, suffering today all over from the Conciliar rot.

Therefore as to a Conciliar Pope, it is a genuinely useful way of speaking to say that he is one head of two churches, because by his words and actions, sometimes Catholic, sometimes Conciliar, he places himself all the time at the head of both the Catholic Church and its Conciliar rot. But that is not to say that he is the head of two churches separate in reality. It is to say that he is head of both the Catholicism and the Conciliarism in the one real Catholic Church presently disfigured all over by the Conciliar rot.

And why in Heaven’s name are our Church leaders so enamoured of the Conciliar rot? Because of the modern longing for liberty. That is another story. But meanwhile we must pray with might and main for Benedict XVI that he may see once more the difference between apple and rot!

Kyrie eleison.