Eleison Comments

Intelligent Paganism

Intelligent Paganism on November 22, 2008

Of the famous Roman satirist, Juvenal (67–130 A.D?), there are two especially known quotes: “Bread and circuses,” and “A healthy mind in a healthy body.” The context of this second quote is truly interesting. Here is the whole passage from the Tenth Satire, in a free translation:

“Should men then pray for nothing? Take my advice,

And let the gods themselves judge what is nice

For us and our affairs, since they will heed

Not what we like, but what we truly need.

Dearer to them than to himself is man

Who driven by vain desire, blind worry, can

Beg for this kind of child, that kind of wife

When the gods alone can shape a happy life.

“But beg if you must for something at each shrine

Where you feel bound to offer guts of swine,

Pray to the gods for this – a healthy mind

In a healthy body. Pray that death may find

Your spirit unperturbed, not wishing to live

Any more than Mother Nature wants to give,

A spirit ready to bear all kinds of pain,

Forsaking anger, free from desire of gain,

Preferring heavy and noble work to all

The pleasures available at the local mall.

All this lies in your power – your own virtue

Is the only path to a happy life for you.

Whoever has good sense will never be stuck –

‘Tis we who place in Heaven a god of luck.”

What is remarkable here is how the pagan Juvenal says so many things that the Christian writers say. For instance, how we men are loved from above more than we love ourselves, how the powers above know better than we do what we need, and will only give us what we really need. Also how virtue is the only path to happiness, and how it depends upon ourselves to live wisely, and not upon our stars, or whatever.

There are at least two lessons to be drawn by Christians from the Roman satirist’s wisdom. Firstly, grace is in line with the nature that God gave us, and does not come down, like on a parachute with a machine-gun, to get nature into line. When the pagan writer without grace can see so many spiritual truths from nature alone, it proves that nature and grace are aligned, even if grace is infinitely far above nature, and nature has no claim at all upon it. Too many Catholics see the grace of our religion as a kind of policeman with a truncheon to beat us into shape. Similarly law (good law) is a friend and not an enemy of nature!

A second lesson might be that the pre-Christian pagans, like Juvenal, have rather more grip on reality than the post-Christian pagans of our own time. Apostates of today are washing out both grace and nature, in such a way that they would never utter the good sense that Juvenal here utters.

Kyrie eleison.

Masterly Confusion

Masterly Confusion on November 15, 2008

Ever since Vatican II (1962–1965), a number of intelligent and serious Catholic souls have striven to prove that the changes made to the Latin Church’s sacramental rites by Pope Paul VI in particular render these rites automatically invalid. One might reply, if only it were that simple! But simplicity is no substitute for truth.

Here is how one such soul seeks to prove that the new rite of priestly Ordination is automatically invalid, and his argument is not without value:

Major: Wherever the words of a sacramental Form, essential to the validity of the sacrament, are significantly changed, or wherever the same words are being given in context a significantly different meaning, the Form, and with it the sacrament, can only be invalid.

Minor: Now the words themselves of the new Form of priestly Ordination have not been significantly changed, but in the context of the new rite taken as a whole, the same word of “priest” is being given a significantly different meaning, in accordance with the Council’s total revolutionizing of the Catholic priesthood.

Conclusion: Therefore never can a priest be validly ordained with the new rite.

In this argument, there is no problem with the Major, which is Catholic doctrine. As for the Minor, it is true that the words of the Form have remained essentially intact. It is also true that the whole drift of Vatican II and the post-Conciliar reforms is towards an emptying out of the Catholic priesthood, as of the whole Catholic religion, to replace it with a religion of man. But the argument above, to arrive at its conclusion, would have to prove that Conciliar documents and reforms in themselves positively exclude the Catholic priesthood and religion, because so long as the new rite can be taken not to exclude the true priesthood, it can still be used validly to ordain a true priest.

Alas (for purposes of clarity), the will of Paul VI as seen in all his reforms (and now of Benedict XVI) is so to introduce the new religion of man alongside the Catholic religion of God as to include and not exclude the latter! Now any sane mind cannot stand the idea of 2 and 2 being 5 in such a way as not to exclude their being 4. But Conciliar minds are not sane. They want to apostatize while still remaining Catholic! Thus the new rite of Ordination may omit many features of the Catholic ordination, but it introduces nothing that positively excludes a true ordination. If only it did! Then it could no longer deceive so many souls into thinking that it presents no problem for Catholics. Here is the problem: the drift of the text is to invalidate the true priesthood (2+2=5), but the text may still be used validly (2+2=4)! Sister Lucy of Fatima called it “Diabolical disorientation.”

Kyrie eleison.

Sinister Fashions

Sinister Fashions on November 8, 2008

There reached me today an interesting letter from a German wife and mother in her early 50’s, who was born and bred in Communist Czechoslovakia, but who by motherhood and the grace of God found her way out of the modern scene and back to traditional values, to the Catholic Faith in particular. Now she is planning to help write a book about her experiences and conclusions. Here are two paragraphs from her letter:

“Thanks to my previous career as a photographic model, I came to know what goes on behind the scenes of fashion design. It is shattering to realize how trends in fashion are forced on women with one deliberate end in view – the destruction of their femininity and the stripping away of their dignity as women.

“Every year from Paris and Milan to London, fashion-designers put on display ready-to-wear clothing in which any ‘fashion-conscious’ woman is presented almost exclusively as a male or a woman of the street. One glance at a fashion-magazine like Vogue is enough for one to sense the all-embracing dictatorship of fashion, which brooks no resistance from behind its twisted mask of sensuality and provocation.” Strong words!

The womanliness of woman, tied to her natural destiny as mother, is so deep-seated in human nature that it is one of the last bastions to come under assault by the enemies of mankind. If the good German lady follows up their trail behind the scenes, she will stumble upon that massive plot against God and man which reaches back many centuries, and of which today’s onslaught on womanhood is all the more furious for being, as the plotters sense, one of the last battles they must win to achieve their final victory, as they think.

In this relentless war, one pressing need is to fight on today’s battlefields and not only on yesterday’s. Mother of virgins, Mother of mothers, obtain for the projected book to enable many souls to see how to take some first steps off the road to eternal damnation.

Kyrie eleison.

Money-Men Supreme?

Money-Men Supreme? on November 1, 2008

There is a fascination in reading commentaries on the ever-evolving crisis of global finance. How much more do the commentators tell than they say, of a natural order being violated and taking its revenge! Yet nobody seems to know how the crisis will play out – except the master violators?

To get a glimpse of that natural order, it may be necessary to step back a few centuries. Let us briefly for our purposes define (1) religion as man’s relations to his God, (2) politics as his social relations to his fellow-men, (3) economics as the art of distributing goods between producers and consumers, and (4) finance as the art of handling money. Then the natural order is that as money exists to facilitate the exchange of goods essential to any society, so finance should serve economics. And as the State is ultimately responsible for the well-being of all its citizens, especially those most in need of protection (Leo XIII, “Rerum Novarum”), so the material goods of economics should come under the common good of politics. But politics can only adjust and ensure the common good of all men in any society if it is properly understood what man is here on earth for, and so politics should come under the true religion.

However, modern times, especially since Protestantism, have step by step turned this natural order upside down. England is a clear example. Firstly, politics in the persons of Henry VIII and Elizabeth I, etc., virtually stamped out the true religion of God in England. Then within a hundred years the Bank of England was founded, the world’s first central bank, and the English government and people were off in pursuit of economics and the wealth of nations. But having made free enterprise sacrosanct meant freedom for the major money-men to gobble up the minor money-men, and so free enterprise capitalism turned progressively into the finance capitalism now reigning supreme, not only in England but all over the world.

Thus what we can observe today is both politics and economics vainly struggling against this overthrow of their natural priority over finance. To clean up the mess created by the financiers through derivatives in particular, the politicians are resorting to huge bailouts by the State, in a desperate effort to keep money circulating. On the contrary old-fashioned economists are appealing for a return to free enterprise, as though the mass of today’s citizens do not want to be nannied by the State.

But when the most decent of politicians and economists themselves believe in little but money, how can they possibly get their necks out of the noose prepared for them by the Masters of Money? These most likely think – by means of a slipknot around Vatican finances? – that they have the Lord God himself on a leash! Little, literally, do they know. Poor things!

Kyrie eleison.

John XXIII Missal

John XXIII Missal on October 25, 2008

The Society of St. Pius X gets attacked, but so long as it is attacked about equally from modernist left and from sedevacantizing right, it need not worry too much – it is probably doing something right. However, equality here is not to be measured by quantity alone – attacks from the right make up in venom for what they lack in numbers! Presently the SSPX is again being attacked for its use of the Tridentine Missal of 1962, as opposed to that of 1955, or 1945, or 1905 – you name it! Three comments:

Firstly, as Archbishop always used to explain, the “Missal of John XXIII,” so called because it was promulgated under his reign in 1962, was actually fully prepared before 1958, under Pope Pius XII, no darling of modernists. Moreover the Archbishop personally knew the Benedictine liturgist who did the preparing, and the Archbishop testified that the Benedictine he knew was no modernist either.

Secondly, as always needs to be repeated, if the Archbishop chose the 1962 Missal for his Society of St. Pius X, it was because on the one hand that Missal contains nothing against the Faith, whereas the Novus Ordo Missal of 1969 is heavily protestantized and the 1967 missal was already being de-catholicized; on the other hand the Pope is master of the liturgy in the Catholic Church, which is why the 1962 missal was the last fully orthodox rite of Mass to have been also lawfully promulgated by a reigning pope, and as such the Archbishop chose it, by a reasoned judgment and not by personal taste. Previous rites were superseded. Following rites were not Catholic.

Thirdly, the difference between, let us say, the “John XXIII” and the Pius X missals lies in the former’s omission of many a detail from the latter, but in essence the two missals are the same – otherwise how could it be so easy to celebrate a “John XXIII” Mass from a Pius X missal? Now in no situation can I overestimate the importance of detail without underestimating that of essentials. If then by my furious refusal of the “John XXIII Missal” I declare that in the details omitted by “John XXXII” the essence of the Tridentine Missal has been betrayed, I am in actions, not words, albeit unawares, so downgrading the essence of the Tridentine missal, for instance the unchanged Canon and Consecration, that by my exaggeration of the relative importance of details, I am, funnily enough, paving the way for souls to lose sight of the absolute importance of essentials, and I am helping souls to quit the Tridentine Mass altogether! It will not have been the first time that unbalanced exaggerations on the right have driven souls to the left!

Divine Lord, please bring soon your lawful Vicar back to his fully Catholic senses!

Kyrie eleison.

Giga-Shenanigans

Giga-Shenanigans on October 18, 2008

Without pretending to be any kind of an expert on matters financial or economic, I have for over a year now been following with a keen interest the evolution of the financial crisis that burst upon the global scene in the summer of last year, 2007. One could guess that it would have an impact on all of our daily lives, and also it seemed to be the beginning of that massive reality check which a number of us have long since seen coming.

As to our daily lives, a recent article on CREDIT CARDS made good sense. It said, get rid of them! The crisis consists essentially in mountains of debt, piled up over tens, even hundreds, of years, and which must be paid back or defaulted on. Now credit cards are an all too easy way of running up debt, and the rates of interest to be paid on them are often sheer usury. Unless one is very disciplined in their use, they should be torn apart and thrown away, and debit cards should be used in their place, if necessary. St. Paul says, owe nothing to any man, except charity (Romans XIII, 8). The Old Testament says, the debtor is slave of the creditor (Proverbs, XXII, 7).

As for the grander question of a global reality check, many things are not clear in what is happening, because the hidden paymasters of the media make sure that we never get the complete truth on their television or in their newspapers. What their lies will not twist, their half-truths and omissions will conceal. They are an “operation of error” (II Thess, II, 10).

However, a few things seem clear. Firstly, the recent 700 billion dollar “bailout” in the USA is a mere drop in the bucket compared with the problem to be bailed out – a mountain-range of 1.4 quadrillion (thousand thousand thousand thousand million) dollars’ worth of worthless debt hanging upon “derivatives” (highly complicated financial instruments of many kinds, whose value derives from other assets). Secondly, only by fantasy and greed can so many money-men over the last 20 years have chosen to deal, or let themselves be tricked into dealing, in such worthless paper, that its collapse now threatens the global economy.

But it is absurd to imagine that the world’s top money-men did not foresee the danger. The evidence abounds that they deliberately created the danger, so that to avoid losing all our goodies in a global collapse we would come begging to them to impose on us their global police-state. We have worshipped Mammon. Now Mammon is poised to enslave us.

Kyrie eleison.