Eleison Comments

Difficult Discussions – I

Difficult Discussions – I on April 18, 2009

From Bishop Tissier de Mallerais speaking in Paris we hear that terms have been fixed for the doctrinal discussions due to take place between the Society of St. Pius X and the Church authorities in Rome. The discussions are to be in writing, which is wise, insofar as there is less room for passion and more time for careful thinking. Also they will not be made public, a provision which at best eliminates “grand-standing” by either party, otherwise known as playing to the gallery, because there will be no gallery present.

From Rome we hear that the impetus towards a Rome-SSPX understanding which was generated by the Pope’s January “re-incommunication” of the four SSPX bishops, was seriously slowed down by the distrust generated by the media uproar of January-February, which is what that uproar was designed to achieve. Yet subjectively speaking, there is certainly still good will on the part of the Pope towards the SSPX, and there is no lack of good will on the part of the SSPX towards the person of the Holy Father.

The problem for these discussions is that, objectively speaking, as on either side there may be some reluctance to admit, we are in the presence of an irreconcilable clash between the religion of God and the religion of man. Vatican II mixed the two together, which was too much of the religion of man by half. Let us then say that Benedict XVI wishes to combine Vatican II with Catholic Tradition. That is still too much of the religion of man by a quarter. Let us now suppose that the SSPX and Benedict XVI were to agree to come half-way towards each other. That would still represent one eighth of the religion of man mixed with seven eighths of the religion of God, which for the purposes of Almighty God would still be one eighth too much.

For just as it takes a disproportionately small amount of water mixed with a tank full of gasoline (or petrol) to stop a car engine dead, so it takes only a small admixture of idolatry to stop dead the true religion of God. The Lord God himself tells us that he is a jealous God (Exod. XX, 5; etc.), and will not endure any false gods beside him. To anybody in the SSPX who might be tempted to worship with the neo-modernists, as to any neo-modernist who might wish to share worship with the Catholics, the Old Testament prophet Elias would say as he said to the hesitating Israelites, “How long do you halt between the two sides? If the Lord be God, follow him: but if Baal, then follow him.” Scripture then says, “The people did not answer him a word” (III Kings, XVIII, 21).

Subjectively, the Israelites wanted to have it both ways. Objectively, that was impossible. For ourselves too.

Kyrie eleison.

Birdsong

Birdsong on April 11, 2009

One thing I got right in the return from Argentina to England, and that is the timing: after enjoying the warm summer in the South, I arrived in balmy days of late February in the North, where an early spring was already under way. Now the trees are flowering, one after another, and the birds are singing. And how they do sing, in solo or in concert, forming a barely interrupted stream of cheer, chirping, trilling, piping, whistling!

To let loose their song they seem to choose a perch in a tree where they can hardly be seen, but how they can be heard! One wonders, how can such little flight-weight creatures let out so much sound? And who for? Just to find a mate? But I am told they sing here all year round. “Be quiet,” said St. Ignatius of Loyola to a little wayside flower – “I know Who you are talking about.”

The sweetheart of a Roman poet had a sparrow for a pet, and through her Catullus felt all its charm. Here in free translation is the poem he wrote when it died:

All hearts that love a lover, grieve!

My girl-friend’s lost her bird.

Her darling birdie is dead. To lose

Her eyes she’d have preferred.

As sweet child clings to mother, from

My girl it would not stray,

But hopping round her lap, would chirp.

To her alone all day.

But now it’s in death’s dark, from where

None to return has power.

O cursed dark of Hell, whatever

Is pretty, you devour!

So pretty a bird you’ve taken now!

Poor little birdie – dead.

‘Tis all your fault, my girl so wept,

Her eyes are swollen red.

Catullus was a contemporary of Julius Caesar, whom he knew. It is not without its charm to realize how Ancient Rome was human as well as heroic.

Kyrie eleison.

Christ’s Suffering

Christ’s Suffering on April 4, 2009

The eve of Palm Sunday is surely a good moment to consider with St. Thomas Aquinas (IIIa, Q46, art.5,6) how Christ’s suffering surpassed all other sufferings. Of course Christ could not suffer in his impassible divine nature, but he had chosen his perfect human nature, conceived by the Holy Ghost and born of the Virgin Mary, to provide him with an incomparably sensitive instrument of suffering, in body and soul, to redeem us all and to save us from Hell if we wish.

As for Christ’s body, every part of it, from thorn-crowned head to nailed feet, was tormented in his Passion, culminating in the excruciating pains of death on the Cross, three hours racked between cramp from pushing up on nailed feet to breathe, and breathlessness or suffocation from slumping down on nailed hands to relieve the cramp. Crucifixion was positively designed to be excruciating – both words derive from the Latin for “cross” (crux, crucis).

As for Christ’s soul with its far greater range of perception than that of mere bodily senses, however perfect, St. Thomas names three heads of suffering. Firstly, by infused knowledge, Christ saw all sins of all men of all time, and chose to pay by his self-sacrifice for all those sins in general. In other words he used his superhuman gifts not to avoid suffering but to suffer the more. Yet at the same time he wished to suffer not just by a divine reckoning according to which a mere pin-prick of the Divine Person would have been payment infinite and more than enough, but by a human reckoning, as though he alone were to undergo umpteen executions to pay for umpteen criminals!

Secondly, by normal human knowledge, Christ suffered in his soul from observing all the kinds of people contributing to his Passion: Jew and Gentile, man and woman (e.g. the serving-girl mocking Peter), leaders and people, friend and foe. In particular, says St. Thomas, Christ suffered in his soul from being hated by his own people, then still God’s Chosen People, and – worst of all – from being abandoned and betrayed by his very own Apostles. Thirdly, like any man, Christ suffered in his soul from having to die, and the more innocent and perfect his life had been, the more keenly he suffered its loss and the injustice of its loss.

Now what other human being, or mass of human beings, have lived a perfect and innocent life; have chosen to lay it down by a death anything like as terrible as crucifixion; have been able to see all sins of all men and wish to pay for them; finally have observed abandonment all around them to the point of feeling deserted even by God (“lama, lama, sabactani”)? Were there six million such men, still they could not claim that their sacrifice was motivated by anything like the charity of Christ, with his overwhelming divine and human love for every one of us poor sinners. So their sacrifice would still not be remotely comparable to His.

Kyrie eleison.

Busted Compromising

Busted Compromising on March 28, 2009

Between the crisis of the Church, still compounding, and the economic crash now, as Americans say, “barrelling down the pike,” there is an interesting parallel to be drawn. Only those who think religion and economics have nothing to do with one another need be surprised. Both are seated in the same human beings and societies.

In both cases, according as, say over the last 300 years, man has moved further and further away from God, so he has made more and more compromises with the Truth and Laws of God and nature. But the nature of God and man and things cannot be changed, so that the moment comes when the compromising stretches too far from reality, and breaks down. That moment is today.

In economics, the founding of the Bank of England in 1694 was a major step on the way towards modern finance: central banks taking control of the money supply and therefore of the real government of the nations, by progressively replacing real deposits as the foundation of credit with fictitious credit as the foundation of “deposits.” Fake finance became global in the 20th century, and is being crashed in the 21st century to give to the money-men final control of world government. Alas, the sense of economic realities may have been lost too far back in the past for even real suffering and real riots to wrest that control from those who are masters of the mass of minds by their vile media.

In the Church, the steady diminution of the Faith over the 17th and 18th centuries gave rise to Concordats in the 19th and 20th centuries, by which the Church would renounce certain of her natural privileges in order to establish her most important rights by at least a contractual agreement with States where those privileges were no longer believed in. So it came to seem that instead of the human resting on the divine, the divine rested on the human, with the result that Catholic dogma may have remained for the 19th century anchored in God’s Truth, but when with the 20th century’s modernism and Vatican II the same shift towards man took over even Catholic doctrine, then the Church’s very structures immediately began to fall in ruins, today still piling up.

In both economics and religion, the remedy can only be to go in time forward by going back to healthy basics, and by giving up on trying to extend the series of unhealthy compromises with a world that has run itself onto the rocks. However, whereas in economics the enemies of mankind may win, in religion we have God’s own promise (Mt. XVI, 18–20) that they will not prevail over the Catholic Church. So we prepare to suffer, but we pray, especially for the Pope, with an unshakable trust in God.

Kyrie eleison.

Don’t Cry

Don’t Cry on March 14, 2009

“Don’t cry for me , Argentina,” nor let readers of “Eleison Comments” coming from any other part of the world cry for me, because you may have thought that the last two months have been difficult for the Eleison Commentator, but actually his condition is, as usual, rather better than he deserves. “Use each man according to his deserts,” says Hamlet, “and who should ‘scape whipping?”

When the media onslaught broke out some two months ago with the Pope for its main target, I was myself well protected inside the Seminary of La Reja. Journalists prowled round and around, but they did not get through. I only regret having had to leave La Reja and Argentina in circumstances that left me no chance of correctly taking leave of many Latin American colleagues and friends. Let priests, seminarians and layfolk in Argentina all accept here the expression of my real gratitude for the five and a half happy years that I spent in their midst. Let everyone praying for me also accept my sincere gratitude. I will celebrate from tomorrow a novena of Masses for all your intentions.

For the Society of St Pius X did not let me down either when I landed in England. The District Superior in England had contacted the right friend of ours in London for there to be a little police escort sufficient to see me straight through the pack of “gentlemen of the Press” lying in wait for me, and ever since then I have been waited on hand and foot in the Society’s house in London. No work. No responsibilities. Who could complain?

Moreover the rest-cure looks like it is going to be prolonged. In a recent interview with the German weekly “Der Spiegel,” the Society’s Superior General is quoted to have said amongst other things, perhaps under pressure coming through the media – who missed their next onslaught on the Pope travelling to Africa, because he objected to artificial means of birth control? – “If Bishop Williamson is silent, if he stays out of sight, that would really be better for everyone . . . I hope that he drops out of public life for a long while . . . He has hurt the Society and damaged our reputation. We are definitely distancing ourselves from him . . . “

Therefore the future is in God’s hands. I wish I could say that I object to being reduced to silence, but if the alternative is being reduced to saying only those things that the “gentlemen of the Press” do not object to, then I think I prefer the silence. As far back as 1985, the year of publication for “Iota Unum,” Romano Amerio’s famous analysis of Vatican II changes, the Italian Professor was anticipating that a time might come when there would be only silence left . . .

Kyrie eleison.

Coriolanus Ouverture

Coriolanus Ouverture on March 7, 2009

Several of Beethoven’s most popular masterpieces give musical expression to a tremendous struggle within the human soul. Some, like the Third and Fifth Symphonies, finish in a blaze of heroic glory. The famous “Appassionata” Piano Sonata finishes in a storm of heroic destruction. The “Coriolanus Ouverture,” dating from the same peak of Beethoven’s creativity, ends in the hero’s undoing.

Beethoven loved reading Plutarch, whose parallel lives of great men of Greece and Rome have been called “a school for heroes.” Coriolanus was a conquering but proud General of the early Roman Republic who, considering himself at one point insufficiently appreciated by his fellow-Romans, offered his services to their enemy, the Volsci, and with a Volscian army advanced on Rome to tear it to pieces. Roman leaders, senators, friends and family begged him in turn to spare his own country. In vain. Only the pleading of his own mother at last broke down his anger. Sparing Rome, he doomed himself to exile and death amongst the Volsci.

Beethoven wrote his “Coriolanus Ouverture” to introduce the theatrical presentation not of the last of Shakespeare’s great tragedies, but of a play with the same title by a contemporary dramatist, H.J.v.Collin. The Ouverture is not programme music insofar as it stands on its own, purely as a drama of the soul in Sonata form, regardless of the story which inspired it. Nevertheless, it is easy to read the music in connection with that episode of Roman history:—

The Exposition’s first Subject in two parts would portray the General’s anger (bars 1–14) and his agitation (15–27), developed angrily (29–50), but running straight into the smooth and lyrical second Subject (52–77), which it is easy to visualize as the tender pleading of a strong and sure Roman matron. Anger returns (84–95), to fade into a little falling motif (96–100), which will quietly monopolize the Development (101–152) – mother winning the argument by gently wearing her son down? With the Recapitulation (152–229) the General’s anger breaks out again, more violent than ever (167–176), only to run into the pleading, also more insistent than before (178–206) – with Beethoven, a Recapitulation is liable to sharpen rather than soften the conflict which enlivened the Exposition!

The Coda, or tail of the piece (230–314), begins with mother again winning the argument (230–240), stalled by her lyrical pleading (242–254). A final confrontation (255–269) and argument (270–275) conclude in a last outburst of the General’s wrath (276–285), only this time it breaks down in a series of falling and quietening chords (286–294) for just the first phrase of the General’s agitation to re-appear four times (297, 299, 300, 306), each time slower and more subdued than the last, until the Ouverture dies away in silence. The General and his wrath are undone. Rome is saved!

Catholics, if you do not wish to tear Rome to pieces, listen to your Mother! Non-Catholics, if you do not wish to help to tear your country to pieces, listen to the Blessed Virgin Mary, Mother of us all, from the foot of the Cross!

Kyrie eleison.