Eleison Comments

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.

Carrot Again

Carrot Again on July 5, 2008

So it looks as though I guessed right last week. On the one hand the Society of St. Pius X did not comply with the June 5 “ultimatum” of Cardinal Castrillón as the Cardinal might have wished. It replied instead with a letter of Archbishop Lefebvre to Pope Paul VI in which in 1975 the Archbishop explained why he was defending Tradition, yet with no disrespect intended towards the Church authorities in Rome. Once again, the Society may have raised a few anxieties, but it has not “given away the store”

On the other hand, the Cardinal did not proceed to any further official exorcism of the Society, but – reportedly – declared that he had never intended his text of June 5 to be an “ultimatum.” And so the situation returns to where it was before. I think we may expect the past pattern to go on repeating itself. The loving son will continue to try to get close to his leprous mother, the leprous mother will continue to try to hug him, the loving son will continue to jump back, then try to get close again, and so on.

What confusion! A distinguished Italian journalist cannot understand the Society’s rejecting Rome’s “generous advances.” Reportedly Pope Benedict XVI and Cardinal Castrillón have both been sincerely hurt by recent statements coming from the Society about Rome or about Romans suffering from leprosy. “What? Lepers? Us???” “Ay, there’s the rub,” as Hamlet said. Leprosy is an Old Testament figure of heresy, and Vatican II is not only heresy, it is a total new religion.

A Catholic is a Catholic primarily by his faith. He chooses with his mind to adhere to a series of true propositions which are supernatural, i.e. beyond the reach of his merely natural mind. His will is therefore needed to push his mind to submit to these truths above it. But these truths are not merely wishful thinking. They are revealed by God, transmitted by the Church, and may not be tampered with. Did or did not Vatican II tamper with them? Hamlet again: “That is the question.”

The leader of the Traditional Redemptorists based in the Orkney Islands north of Scotland, who has just led as many of them as will follow him back into the embrace of Conciliar Rome, writes ecstatically of how “sweet” it “tastes” to be once more in “peaceful and undisputed communion” with the Vicar of Christ. Good luck, dear Father, with avoiding the leprosy! But at least you must be giving some consolation to Cardinal Castrillón! What confusion!

Kyrie eleison.

Stick Again

Stick Again on June 28, 2008

Rumors abound once more: before the end of June, in other words in a few days’ time, either the Society of St. Pius X will begin to give way to Rome’s demands to conform to Vatican II and the New Mass, or Rome will declare to Church and world that the Society and its followers are in formal schism and out of the Church.

As to rumors of the Society taking any action that would imperil the defence of the Faith, I think they are to be wholly discounted. On May 5 of 1988 in particular, Archbishop Lefebvre went as far as the Faith would allow him, and even a little bit further, to come to terms with the Church authorities, but their terms finally persuaded him that they could no longer be trusted to look after the Church’s immutable Tradition, which is why he went ahead with the episcopal consecrations of 20 years ago.

Similarly, ever since the Society’s Jubilee Pilgrimage to Rome in 2000, the Society has gone as far as it could to correspond to the goodwill gestures of Cardinal Castrillon, and even a little bit further, but in eight years it has never given to the Cardinal that abandonment of the Society’s stand on Tradition that he wanted. On the contrary, the latest Letter to Friends and Benefactors of the Society’s Superior General reiterated firmly that stand, which is surely where the rumors come from of the Cardinal losing patience with his eight years of carrot, and of his turning once more to the stick.

Catholics should in no way be frightened by any threat of being declared formally, i.e. properly and officially, in schism, or out of the Church. Proper Catholic officialdom would judge, like Our Lord tells us to judge (Jn. VII,24), by reality and not by appearances. The reality is obvious: it is the Conciliar “Renovation” and not Catholic Tradition that has broken with the Catholic Church.

However, when in the next few days the Society makes no gesture towards Rome sufficient for Rome’s purpose of dissolving the resistance of Catholic Tradition, I am for my part not at all sure that Rome will really go ahead with any declaration of formal schism. Maybe after eight, or 20, or 38 years of the Society’s resistance they really are losing patience, but does not all past experience tell them that each time they use the stick, it stiffens rather than dissolves that resistance?

And if they did go ahead with such a declaration, Catholics should rejoice, because after several years of some ambiguity there would once more be some clarity! Twenty years ago, all Society Superiors gathered in Econe rejoiced in the “excommunication” of their bishops. Would not the same thing happen this time round if Rome also cast priests and laity into its outer darkness? Not that any of us would rejoice in Rome’s self-abasement . . .

Kyrie eleison.

Truth Exclusive

Truth Exclusive on June 21, 2008

At a public conference I gave recently (not in Germany), a liberal of a venerable aspect and age doubted whether human beings are really that valuable. I deliberately sharpened the reply: “Place all the horses on earth in one pan of a pair of scales, and in the other pan one wretched but human beggar, which pan weighs heavier?” Instead of answering the question he said, “That´s religion, that´s not common sense.” At which point I became a little angry . . .

It was not so much his love of horses that was upsetting. After all, the horse is a noble and useful animal, and all the horses of the world are certainly worth a great deal. Nor was it even his implicit scorn of religion that was disturbing. After all billions of human beings alive today see no reason to take seriously what they understand to be religion. What was terrible was the heresy of heresies underlying his hippophiliac answer, namely the assumption that one truth can contradict another.

Of course liberalism is now as common as daisies (or dandelions), so the good man was most likely unaware of the objective enormity of what he had said. But what he had clearly implied was that there is one truth for common sense and another truth for religion. In other words truth is not one, nor absolutely exclusive of error, but there are different truths for different people at different times, above all in different domains, and they can flatly contradict one another without any problem. Thus what is true for common sense can be false for religion, and vice versa.

This disbelief in the oneness of truth, or in its attainability by human beings, is, if it is a conscious denial, the crime of crimes, and if it is an unconscious assimilation of the disbelief in truth so widely shared today, it is the loss of losses. To starve the mind of that truth for which it is made is a crime as infinitely greater than starving stomachs of food, as eternal life is infinitely greater than this little life we have on earth, 70 years or so. This is because disbelief in exclusive truth, or in its possibility, cripples thinking at its very root, turns minds into mush, and ultimately crumbles the indispensable natural foundations of that supernatural Faith without which we cannot save our souls (Heb. XI, 6).

The venerable lover of horses came up after question time to smooth things over: “I only meant to say that the question in that sharpened form is not common sense,” he said. It was much to be feared that he had little idea of all that he has lost.

Kyrie eleison.

Tail’s Moral

Tail’s Moral on June 14, 2008

On a recent transatlantic flight I saw displayed on the TV screens in the aeroplane’s main cabin something I had never seen before: the constantly changing view over the front of the aeroplane as seen from a TV camera mounted outside at the back, no doubt high on the tailfin. It was an interesting perspective . . .

Of course the camera could only show always in the same position the forward fuselage and roots of the wings, it could not even show the flaps moving at the back of the wings to manoeuvre the monster bird up to its cruising height. Nevertheless as the machine picked its way between the clouds, how ungainly its movements seemed, when compared for instance with those of a seagull soaring on the wind and swooping over the surf with its entire body flexing at every moment in a variety of all instinctive ways!

However, one could not at the same time help admiring the enormous power being deployed by the monster bird as it forced so much weight upwards through the clouds against the pull of gravity. At least for now, oil alone has a sufficient ratio of energy to weight to make powered flight possible. But the ever expanding airports all over the world, veritable palaces of glass, steel and concrete, tell of the ever increasing number of flights, and such an increase can only mean the limited supply of fossil fuels being burnt up faster and faster. “Here today, gone tomorrow,” are not those palaces doomed?

For over the last 150 odd years the industrial way of life whereby a welfare beggar of today can live as comfortably as a king of yesterday, has made itself more and more dependent on oil, and it has spread all over the world. India and China represent two giant populations demanding today their share in this “progress.” But everything has its price, even “progress.”

As oil makes for material comfort by taking out the need for many a physical effort, so the strain shifts from the muscles to the nerves, and so there tends to fade out that sense of reality which came with the discipline of labouring by the sweat of one’s brow for food, warmth and clothing. More strain, less discipline, more unreality – disaster may be upon us even long before the oil runs out.

Kyrie eleison.