Eleison Comments

Fatal Turn – I

Fatal Turn – I on August 16, 2008

Man, says Vatican II (Gaudium et Spes), is the only creature that God wants for its own sake. Typically for Vatican II, this statement has two possible meanings, one orthodox and the other profoundly revolutionary. Unfortunately for the “conservatives” who try to maintain that the Council was Catholic, it is the revolutionary meaning that clearly corresponds to the key doctrine of another Council document, Dignitatis Humanae, and is therefore the Council’s true meaning.

Amongst all the material creatures on this earth, man alone is rational, i.e. endowed with faculties capable of knowing and loving God. All the rest of material creation serves only as a trampoline for man to bounce his short life on, until either he jumps to Heaven or crashes into Hell, and as soon as the last soul appointed by God to make that choice has done so, then all material creation will be consumed by fire, says Scripture (II Peter), because it will have served its purpose. In this sense it is true that God wills all creatures for man, and man alone for himself.

But that God wants man for man’s own sake is absolutely false in relation to God because God cannot want any creature, even man, for anything other than for the sake of God himself. God is Self-Being, Self-Good, totally Self-Sufficient, totally Self-Perfect. He can be in no want outside of His Divine Self-Being, because that would be in Him a need, a lack, an imperfection. That does not exclude his wanting to create creatures other than himself – look around! – but it does exclude his wanting them ultimately for anything other than for his own Goodness. Penultimately, i.e. prior to ultimately, he may want them for their own sake, for instance man to share in his Bliss, but ultimately he can only want them for his own Goodness, otherwise he would be needing them to perfect him – blasphemy!

St. Thomas Aquinas explains this ultimate and penultimate willing of God by a comparison with sweet and sour medicine, Ultimately I take the medicine, sweet or sour, only for my health, but if the medicine is sweet then penultimately I can be taking it also for its sweet taste. Ultimately God can want nothing but his own Goodness. Only penultimately can he want any creature for its own sake, e.g. man, to share in the Divine Bliss.

Does the distinction seem subtle? In the present case it is all the difference between man being centred on God, as the true Catholic religion knows, or God being centred on man, which is what the false religion of Vatican II is promoting – the “turn towards man.” Stay tuned for the proof from Dignitatis Humanae that the centring of God on man is the Council’s true meaning.

Kyrie eleison.

La-La Landslide – II

La-La Landslide – II on August 9, 2008

On November 17 of last year Eleison Comments said that the Great Warning prophesied at Garabandal might take place in February or March of this year. That did not happen. One reader asks me why.

The reason is simple. It was not yet the time fixed by Almighty God. When is that time? I do not know. However, I still believe that Garabandal is a sleeping volcano, and I believe it may easily erupt in 2009, because my main reason for taking seriously a few pointers to 2008 was the instability and precariousness of the world situation, which is more unstable and precarious than ever.

The capitalism launched in England by the founding in 1694 of the first Central Bank of a nation is collapsing around our ears. The hurting capitalists who just recently would blast any government that interfered with free enterprise, are now themselves begging the US government to bail out their banks. So capitalism, having made itself “too big to fail,” is now, sure enough, mutating into government control, which, being atheistic and materialistic, amounts to communism!

What will happen then in the next few years, only God knows. But it is easy to imagine inside the USA martial law becoming necessary to maintain a semblance of law and order, and outside the USA the Third World War, which is coming and will be terrible. It may well come soon, because for years now the vile media have been beating the drums of war for an attack on Iran, and as the people become more and more discontented with the collapse of money inside the United States, the temptation for the politicians to distract them with a war outside may become virtually irresistible.

There is much evidence that both collapse and war have long been planned by enemies of God to give them control of the entire world. The only light in which one can grasp the full problem and its correct solution, is the light of God and of our Catholic religion. God is not mocked. Read the Old Testament prophets, especially Jeremiah, and pray up to or over 15 Mysteries a day of the Holy Rosary.

Kyrie eleison.

La-La Landslide – I

La-La Landslide – I on August 2, 2008

Who said politics have nothing to do with religion, and religion has nothing to do with politics? The Lord God does not agree! There are few better places to find out what he thinks than in the Psalms of the Old Testament! Here is an official translation (Douay Rheims) of Psalm 81:

1. God hath stood in the congregation of gods: and being in the midst of them he judgeth gods. 2. How long will you judge unjustly: and accept the persons of the wicked? 3. Judge for the needy and fatherless: do justice to the humble and the poor. 4. Rescue the poor; and deliver the needy out of the hand of the sinner. 5. They have not known nor understood: they walk on in darkness: all the foundations of the earth shall be moved. 6. I have said: You are gods and all of you the sons of the most High. 7. But you like men shall die: and shall fall like one of the princes. 8. Arise, O God, judge thou the earth: for thou shalt inherit among all the nations.

And here is how the Psalm might be rendered today:—

The Lord God stands right in the middle of the politicians, banksters and Lodges, and he stands in judgment upon all their doings! “How long are the pack of you going to go on misleading the world, and looking primarily after your own interests? Look after the poor, and stop designing and applying laws to destroy the family and create the fatherless! Stop just looking after the rich, and cancel the vile money system by which you have enslaved the world!” But the banksters paid no attention, and the politicians went on their blind way. Their whole system is going to collapse! I the Lord God have reminded them: “I gave you your high responsibilities, and I am your Father, but you will nevertheless die (to be judged by me), like even the mightiest of men!”

O Lord, enough of our poor world’s madness and wickedness! Step in, and reclaim your rightful heritage as King of Kings and Lord of Lords!

Kyrie eleison.

Airport Tyranny

Airport Tyranny on July 26, 2008

The United States’ T.S.A. – Transportation Security Agency – “bugs the heck out of me,” as Americans say. I cannot understand why citizens of the “home of the brave and land of the free” put up with it, and why they did not run it out of town long ago. But then I am afraid I can understand after all . . .

At airports, which is where I myself run into the Thousands Standing Around (T.S.A.), they take the form of agents appointed to interrogate passengers flying to the United States, and to check their baggage, presumably in order to make sure that they are not “terrorists.” When I flew from Frankfurt to Chicago a few weeks ago, one of them asked me what I had been doing in Germany. I dared to wonder of what concern that could be to the United States Government.

“If you have a problem with that, take it to the Government,” came the reply, “but if you don’t want to spend hours here, you had best answer.” Then came a series of questions: “Why were you in Germany? . . . Where were you? . . . How did you get from there to here? . . . Have you a ticket to prove it?” I could hardly believe my ears, yet I observed the mass of passengers apparently having no problem with this kind of treatment.

In fact they even seem to enjoy being interrogated, and then body-checked by machines more and more intrusive, if one wants to fly. I have to suppose their attitude is that at least somebody takes them seriously. But I want to yell at them, “Wake up! Can you not see that 9/11 was a Global Fraud?” But of course I would be wasting my breath on the mass of passengers, and I could be getting myself flagged by the T.S.A. as a Terror Propagandist!

Yet only a few years ago, before 9/11, such intrusion on U.S. citizens’ privacy and freedom would have been completely unacceptable. As it is, this ready compliance of passengers suggests to me that they are grateful for being protected from global “terrorists.” Do I exaggerate if I further suspect that being so examined at airports is even welcome to them as coming from their godlike Government, a ritual of their secular State religion? What other religion do most of them have?

Kyrie eleison.

Dangerous Prosperity

Dangerous Prosperity on July 19, 2008

Since the end of World War II in 1945, material prosperity and comfort have not ceased to advance in many parts of the world. Alas, this prosperity is not without its dangers, as Moses warned the Israelites some 3,500 years ago. Here is one such passage which deserves today to be quoted in full (Deuteronomy VIII, 11–20). It is easily applied to our own times:

11 Take heed, and beware lest at any time thou forget the Lord thy God, and neglect his commandments and judgments and ceremonies, which I command thee this day:

12 Lest after thou hast eaten and art filled, hast built goodly houses and dwelt in them,

13 And shalt have herds of oxen and flocks of sheep, and plenty of gold and silver, and of all things,

14 Thy heart be lifted up, and thou remember not the Lord thy God, who brought thee out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of bondage:

15 And was thy leader in the great and terrible wilderness, wherein there was the serpent burning with his breath, and the scorpion and the dipsas, and no waters at all: who brought forth streams out of the hardest rock,

16 And fed thee in the wilderness with manna which thy fathers knew not. And after he had afflicted and proved thee, at the last he had mercy on thee,

17 Lest thou should say in thy heart: my own might and the strength of my own hand have achieved all these things for me.

18 But remember the Lord thy God, that he hath given thee strength, that he might fulfil his covenant, concerning which he swore to thy fathers, as this present day sheweth.

19 But if thou forget the Lord thy God, and follow strange gods, and serve and adore them, behold now I foretell thee that thou shalt utterly perish.

20 As the nations, which the Lord destroyed at thy entrance (into the Holy Land), so shall you also perish, if you be disobedient to the voice of the Lord your God.

To keep one’s head on straight amidst confusion which only grows worse, it can certainly help to visit (prayerfully) the Old Testament. Being the Word of God, it always gives us God’s own perspective on things.

Kyrie eleison.

Bishops Agree

Bishops Agree on July 12, 2008

Many friends of the Society of St. Pius X wonder what position towards an agreement with Rome is taken by Bishop Alfonso de Galarreta. He is one of the Society’s four bishops, but what he thinks and says is not so often quoted, at least in English, a language which he may understand but which he prefers not to have to speak.

At the Society’s mother-house in Ecône, Switzerland, it was he who this year conducted the annual ceremony of ordinations to the diaconate and priesthood. Sections of his sermon are available on the Internet at christus.imperat, for instance. Here are two paragraphs, the first concerning the Society’s episcopal consecrations of June 30, 1988, because this year was their 20th anniversary; the second concerning Cardinal Castrillón’s “ultimatum” of June 4 and 5, one month ago.

From the truth no longer being preached, but merely looked for (as though one did not know it), there followed, said the bishop, “the importance and need for those consecrations to ensure the survival of the Catholic priesthood. We are proud of the consecrations, not as being a revolt against the Pope, but as being in reality the safeguard of the Catholic priesthood. We are also proud of the figure of Archbishop Lefebvre. We are not “Lefebvrists,” but we adhere to his way of thinking because it is Catholic. We are ashamed neither of the Church of Our Lord Jesus Christ, nor of the unchanging Catholic Church, nor therefore of Archbishop Lefebvre.”

Further on, as to the Cardinal’s “ultimatum,” the bishop said that calling it an ultimatum was going too far. He went on, “We saw it rather as being meant to scare us, to put pressure on us to come to a purely practical (not doctrinal) agreement (with Rome). This is the way they want to make us go, but it is a dead end, and we will not go that way. We cannot undertake to betray our professing of the Faith, nor can we get drawn into an exercise in demolition. Our reply to the Holy Father is therefore to follow the steps laid down (complete liberation of the Tridentine rite of Mass and nullification of the “excommunications” of 1988) as preliminaries to a doctrinal encounter. Rome will react either with a slowing down or complete stop of contacts, or with a fresh condemnation – one wonders exactly what form that might take – or with a lifting of the ‘excommunications’.”

Firstly the Faith, then Rome – all four Society bishops follow substantially the Archbishop´s line of thinking, “because it is Catholic.” “Sooner die than betray,” he used to say.

Kyrie eleison.