Eleison Comments

Valid Bishops?

Valid Bishops? on October 31, 2009

Remarkable confirmation of the Society of St. Pius X’s balanced position on the validity of the Newchurch sacraments appeared last week in the bulletin of a fighting Gaul, “Courrier de Tychique.” From a “reliable source” it appears there that Freemasonry, ancient enemy of the Church, planned for the Conciliar Revolution to invalidate the Catholic sacraments, not by alteration of their Form, rendering them automatically invalid, but rather by an ambiguity of their Rite as a whole, undermining in the long run the Minister’s necessary sacramental Intention.

The “reliable source” is a Frenchman who heard directly from a venerable old priest some of what Cardinal Lienart on his deathbed confessed to the priest. No doubt fearing Hell, the Cardinal begged the priest to reveal it to the world, and thus released him from the Confessional seal. The priest was thenceforth discreet in public, but in private he was more forthcoming as to what the Cardinal revealed to him of Freemasonry’s three-point plan for the destruction of the Church. Whether or not he entered Freemasonry at the precocious age of 17, the Cardinal rendered it supreme service when only two days after the opening of Vatican II he wrenched the Council off course by demanding irregularly that the carefully prepared Traditional documents be rejected altogether.

According to the Cardinal, Freemasonry’s first objective at the Council was to break the Mass by so altering the rite as to undermine in the long run the celebrant’s Intention: “to do what the Church does.” Gradually the Rite was to induce priests and laity alike to take the Mass rather for a “memorial” or “sacred meal” than for a propitiatory sacrifice. The second objective was to break the Apostolic Succession by a new Rite of Consecration that would eventually undermine the bishops’ power of Orders, both by a new Form not automatically invalidating but ambiguous enough to sow doubt, and above all by a new Rite which as a whole would eventually dissolve the consecrating bishop’s sacramental Intention. This would have the advantage of breaking the Apostolic Succession so gently that nobody would even notice. Is this not exactly what many believing Catholics are now afraid of?

Howsoever it may be with the “reliable source,” in any case today’s Newchurch Rites of Mass and Episcopal Consecration correspond exactly to the Masonic plan as unveiled by the Cardinal. Ever since these new Rites were introduced in the late 1960’s and early 1970’s, many serious Catholics have refused to believe that they could be used validly. Alas, they are not automatically invalid (how much simpler if they were!). They are worse! Their sacramental Form is Catholic enough to persuade many a celebrant that they can be validly used, but they are designed as a whole to be so ambiguous and so suggestive of a non-Catholic interpretation as to invalidate the sacrament over time by corrupting the Intention of any celebrant either too “obedient” or insufficiently watching and praying.

Rites thus valid enough to get themselves accepted by nearly all Catholics in the short term, but ambiguous enough to invalidate the sacraments in the long term, constitute a trap satanically subtle. To avoid it, Catholics must on the one hand shun all contact with these Rites, but on the other hand they must not discredit their sound Catholic instincts by exaggerated theological accusations which depart from sound Catholic doctrine. It is not always an easy balance to keep.

Kyrie eleison.

“Tristan” Chord

“Tristan” Chord on October 24, 2009

Remarkable confirmation of the Society of St. Pius X’s balanced position on the validity of the Newchurch sacraments appeared last week in the bulletin of a fighting Gaul, “Courrier de Tychique.” From a “reliable source” it appears there that Freemasonry, ancient enemy of the Church, planned for the Conciliar Revolution to invalidate the Catholic sacraments, not by alteration of their Form, rendering them automatically invalid, but rather by an ambiguity of their Rite as a whole, undermining in the long run the Minister’s necessary sacramental Intention.

The “reliable source” is a Frenchman who heard directly from a venerable old priest some of what Cardinal Lienart on his deathbed confessed to the priest. No doubt fearing Hell, the Cardinal begged the priest to reveal it to the world, and thus released him from the Confessional seal. The priest was thenceforth discreet in public, but in private he was more forthcoming as to what the Cardinal revealed to him of Freemasonry’s three-point plan for the destruction of the Church. Whether or not he entered Freemasonry at the precocious age of 17, the Cardinal rendered it supreme service when only two days after the opening of Vatican II he wrenched the Council off course by demanding irregularly that the carefully prepared Traditional documents be rejected altogether.

According to the Cardinal, Freemasonry’s first objective at the Council was to break the Mass by so altering the rite as to undermine in the long run the celebrant’s Intention: “to do what the Church does.” Gradually the Rite was to induce priests and laity alike to take the Mass rather for a “memorial” or “sacred meal” than for a propitiatory sacrifice. The second objective was to break the Apostolic Succession by a new Rite of Consecration that would eventually undermine the bishops’ power of Orders, both by a new Form not automatically invalidating but ambiguous enough to sow doubt, and above all by a new Rite which as a whole would eventually dissolve the consecrating bishop’s sacramental Intention. This would have the advantage of breaking the Apostolic Succession so gently that nobody would even notice. Is this not exactly what many believing Catholics are now afraid of?

Howsoever it may be with the “reliable source,” in any case today’s Newchurch Rites of Mass and Episcopal Consecration correspond exactly to the Masonic plan as unveiled by the Cardinal. Ever since these new Rites were introduced in the late 1960’s and early 1970’s, many serious Catholics have refused to believe that they could be used validly. Alas, they are not automatically invalid (how much simpler if they were!). They are worse! Their sacramental Form is Catholic enough to persuade many a celebrant that they can be validly used, but they are designed as a whole to be so ambiguous and so suggestive of a non-Catholic interpretation as to invalidate the sacrament over time by corrupting the Intention of any celebrant either too “obedient” or insufficiently watching and praying.

Rites thus valid enough to get themselves accepted by nearly all Catholics in the short term, but ambiguous enough to invalidate the sacraments in the long term, constitute a trap satanically subtle. To avoid it, Catholics must on the one hand shun all contact with these Rites, but on the other hand they must not discredit their sound Catholic instincts by exaggerated theological accusations which depart from sound Catholic doctrine. It is not always an easy balance to keep.

Kyrie eleison.

“Tristan” Production

“Tristan” Production on October 17, 2009

After an absence from London’s Royal Opera House of some 40 years, it was delightful to be offered by friends last week a ticket to Wagner’s “Tristan and Isolde.” It did make a delightful evening, but oh dear! – the modern production! The classics of yesteryear are one thing. Their production on stage today can be quite another!

A classic like “Tristan and Isolde,” which was staged for the first time in 1865, becomes a classic because it succeeds in expressing human problems and solutions that belong to all the ages. Never for instance have the passions of romantic love between man and woman been so skilfully and powerfully expressed as in the music-drama of “Tristan.” But every time a classic drama is put on stage, its production can obviously belong only to the time of its staging. So the classic depends in itself on the author, but in its production on the producer, and on how he understands the classic he is producing.

Now Wagner can be called the father of modern music, especially through the revolution wrought by the chromatic harmonies of “Tristan,” constantly shifting. Nobody can say Wagner is not modern. Yet what the current production of “Tristan” at Covent Garden shows is the huge distance even between Wagner’s time and our own. This producer had either no understanding or no regard for Wagner’s text, as two little examples may show. In Act III when Kurwenal is meant to be looking out to sea for Isolde’s ship, he is shown watching Tristan all the time. On the contrary when Isolde finally rushes in to find Tristan dying, Wagner’s text has her of course scanning him for the least sign of life, but this producer has her on the floor with her back turned to him! This flagrant violation of the original text, and of common sense, ran through the production from beginning to end.

What did the producer think he was doing? I would like to know. Either he had no common sense, or if he had any, he set out deliberately to defy it. Worse, the Royal Opera House probably paid him a royal sum to do so, because it will have judged that today’s audiences would enjoy the defiance. One is reminded of Picasso saying that he knew his art was nonsense, but he also knew that it was what people wanted. Indeed last week’s audience, which should have been hooting such nonsense off the stage, instead watched docilely and applauded warmly. In Wagner’s own country today, unless I am mistaken, classic productions of his operas are rare.

One is bound to ask, what is happening to common sense? Where are today’s audiences going? How can a people long survive which takes pleasure, for example, in lovers turning their backs on one another at the moment of death? Objection: it is only theatre. Reply: theatre holds up the mirror to society. Conclusion: society today either has no common sense, or what little it still has, it is trampling on. Since common sense is the sense of reality, such a society cannot survive.

Kyrie eleison.

Faithless Europe

Faithless Europe on October 10, 2009

Poor Ireland! Poor Europe! Only 16 months ago the people of Ireland in a nation-wide referendum voted against the Treaty of Lisbon (2007), which would have drawn them more tightly into the European Union (EU), but this was not the popular decision that the politicians of Ireland and Europe wanted. So these made a few concessions, imposed a new referendum and got last week the vote they needed. Now the way is clear for a massive reform to stream-line decision-making in Brussels, and to increase the European Commission’s central power at the expense of each member State’s ability to veto its decisions.

What over a third of all eligible Irish voters seem to have chosen last week was surely the material prosperity and consumerism unknown in Ireland before they joined the EU in 1973. Contrast Dr Salazar, the devout Catholic leader of Portugal from 1932 to 1968. Knowing that life, politics and even economics are not just about cheap flights to golden beaches, he preferred for his country “poverty, but independence,” primarily from the international banksters. Their vile media promptly branded him as a “fascist dictator,” but the Portuguese people happily followed him, because it was the revival of their Catholic piety by Fatima (1917) which had brought Salazar to power in the first place.

Yet only 16 years after he died, Portugal joined the EU. Truly the onward march of God’s enemies in today’s world seems inexorable. Any attempt to resist them cuts more and more the figure of a sandcastle resisting the incoming tide. If it is well built, like Salazar’s Portugal, it lasts for a few moments, but give it a few more moments and it too vanishes beneath the waves washing over it. So all Europe is getting itself locked into the godless New World Order, for football and beaches!

Poor Europe! If anybody wants to know what is really going on inside the ever mightier European government in Brussels, “behind the gloss and the tinsel and the avalanche of publications telling us how wonderful and indispensable the EU is,” they should order from info@stewardspress.co.uk the short and well-written “Brussels Laid Bare” by Mrs Marta Andreasen, Member of the European Parliament (MEP). Hired by the EU to work from January of 2002 as Chief Accountant responsible for the entire EU budget, she tells how she immediately ran up against such wholesale maladministration of EU finances that, professionally, she could not “go along to get along.” She was rapidly isolated and discredited, and within five months she was sacked for having tried to do her job properly.

From first-hand experience she writes that Brussels is an extra layer of government “lawless, corrupt, mistaken, undemocratic, bureaucratic, over-regulated and, ultimately, unworkable.” This she attributes to there being in the EU virtually no accountability. Does it not occur to her that the EU may have hidden masters for whom corrupt servants are much easier to manipulate? There is no trace of any such suspicion in her book. She professes her resolve to fight on as an MEP. Alas, faithless Europe no longer deserves her kind, but if she does fight on, in one way or another she will be washed over, even suicided if necessary . . .

Kyrie eleison.

Mass Error

Mass Error on October 3, 2009

An interesting criticism of the Society of St. Pius X, mainly false but slightly true, was made by Cardinal Castrillon Hoyos in an interview which he gave ten days ago to a South German newspaper (text available on the Internet). He said that the SSPX leaders whom he met in 2000 gave him the impression of being fixated on the New Mass as though it were “the source of all evil in the world.”

Obviously the reform of the Latin liturgy of the Mass which followed on Vatican II (1962–1965) is not responsible for all evil in the world, but it is responsible for a great deal of the evil in the modern world. Firstly, the Roman Catholic religion is the one and only religion instituted by the one true God when he once, and only once, took human nature, becoming the God-man Jesus Christ, 2000 years ago. Secondly, Jesus Christ’s bloody self-sacrifice on the Cross, alone capable of placating the just wrath of God inflamed by today’s global apostasy, maintains that placation only through that sacrifice’s unbloody re-presentation in the true sacrifice of the Mass. Thirdly, the ancient Latin rite of that Mass, essential parts of which reach back to the beginnings of the Church, was significantly changed after Vatican II by Paul VI, in a manner which he himself told his friend Jean Guitton was designed to please the Protestants.

But all Protestants take their name from their protesting against Catholicism. That is why the rite of Mass reformed “in the spirit of Vatican II” severely dominishes the expression of essential Catholic truths: in order, 1/ Transubstantiation of the bread and wine, making 2/ the Sacrifice of the Mass, constituting in turn 3/ the sacrificing Priesthood, all by 4/ the intercession of the Blessed Mother of God. In fact the complete ancient Latin liturgy is the complete expression of Catholic doctrine.

If then it is primarily by attending Mass and not by reading books or by attending lectures that the great number of practising Catholics absorb these doctrines and live them out in real life, and if it is by so doing that they act as the light of the world against error and as the salt of the earth against corruption, then it is small wonder if today’s world is in such confusion and immorality. “Let us destroy the Mass, and we will destroy the Church,” said Luther. “The world can sooner do without the light of the sun than without the Sacrifice of the Mass,” said Padre Pio.

That is why Archbishop Lefebvre’s first priority in founding the SSPX was to save the ancient Latin rite of Mass. Thank God, it is slowly but surely making its way back into the mainstream Church (which it will not do under the Antichrist). But now his Society must save the full doctrinal underpinning of that Mass from the victims and perpetrators of Vatican II, still firmly ensconced in Rome. We must pray hard for the “doctrinal discussions” due to open this month between Rome and the SSPX.

Kyrie eleison.

 . . .And If Ever . . .

 . . .And If Ever . . . on September 26, 2009

 . . .And if ever any discussions to be held between Rome and the Society of St Pius X did seem to be arriving at a non-doctrinal “practical agreement” between them, then all Catholics wishing to save their souls would have to study the “agreement” closely – especially the fine print – to see who would in future be appointing the leader or leaders, and their successors, in the Rome-approved SSPX.

He might be given whatever title pleased either party: “Superior General” or “Personal Prelate” or “Lord High Executioner” (a personage of noble rank and title) – the name would be of no importance. Crucial would be, who was to make the decisions, and who would appoint whoever would make the decisions? Would he be appointed by the Pope or by the Congregation of the Clergy, or by any Roman official, or would he continue to be appointed independently of Rome from within the SSPX as now, by a 12-yearly election through some 40 leading SSPX priests (next election in 2018)? Yet what would the “agreement” have gotten Rome if it had not gotten them control over appointing the SSPX leadership?

The history of the Catholic Church is littered with examples of the struggle between the friends and enemies of God – normally Church and State respectively, but no longer! – for control of the appointment of Catholic bishops. For as any intelligent friend or enemy of the Church well knows, the bishops are the key to its future. As Archbishop Lefebvre used to say, in defiance of all today’s democratic nonsense, it is the bishops who form the Catholic people and not the people who form the bishops.

A classic example of this struggle is the Napoleonic Concordat of 1801 by which the newly Freemasonic French State made sure that it acquired a significant degree of control over the choice of bishops in the Church in France. Promptly all pre-Revolutionary bishops were sacked who were still too Catholic, and the Church was then securely on its way to Vatican II. Similarly when in 1905 the Freemasons broke off the union of the French State with the Church, the better to persecute it, the heroic Pope Pius X profited by his unwanted new independence of that State to appoint, and himself consecrate, a mere handful of nine bishops, but their virile Catholicism so scared the Freemasons that as soon as Pius X was dead, they hastened back to renegotiate a certain reunion of Church and State, if only they could recover control of the appointment of French bishops – and Vatican II was back on track.

The pattern was repeated in 1988 when the heroic faith and courage of Archbishop Lefebvre alone saved the SSPX by his consecrating of four bishops independently of the explicit disapproval of Conciliar Rome. The same Conciliar foxes might now “give away the store” in order to regain control of the SSPX’s four “ugly ducklings,” and their potentially independent successors – ducklings make a dainty morsel for hungry foxes! God bless Fr Schmidberger and Bishop Fellay, and all their successors who will maintain that Catholic independence for as long as Rome is out of its Catholic mind!

Kyrie eleison.