Eleison Comments

These “Comments” have at least once warmly recommended readers to read the frequent articles of John HORVAT on the TFP website at tfp.org. This is because for countless adults today, God is the Great Unmentionable. He is not even to be named in polite society. On the contrary, while Horvat is often commenting on American politics, he is always doing so from the Catholic perspective of Almighty God.

In the words of one of the great Catholic thinkers of the 19^th century, Horvat sees, and says, that if God today is not ruling Creation by His presence, then He is ruling it by His absence.

This is because God created the world freely, out of love, and He loves in particular the creature whom He set up to rule Creation as His deputy, and that creature is man, who sub-rules by that faculty of reason and free-will which he alone possesses among all God’s material creatures. However, if man uses that free-will to turn away from God, which God can allow him to do, then God fully knows what man does not know, namely the horrible eternity he is deserving for himself by his spurning of God’s great love of him, and God cannot leave His beloved creature alone on the road to such a destruction. And here is why modern man, fleeing God, cannot help recognising that the love of God is still pursuing him, even if that recognition merely drives him to flee all the more: “Stop loving me! I do not want Your love!”

Thus Horvat reads (article of 11 November, 2021) a recent surprise election in the State of Virginia, by which the right-wing Republicans swept all three State-wide races and surprisingly took back the House of Delegates from the left-wing Democrats. Horvat says that whereas “moderate Republicans promise everything but deliver next to nothing,” it was the moral conservatives (“with their powerful pro-life voting bloc”) who won this surprise election by voting on moral issues of the so-called “Culture War”: on Critical Race Theory, radical sex education, gender ideology and procured abortion. Notice how closely these moral issues in fact involve and offend Almighty God. Horvat says that these issues win elections because if they are well presented, “they address deep problems inside the souls of countless Americans.” In other words, the “Culture War” frames the debate in terms of what is deepest and truest in us men, God’s natural law, even if He Himself is rarely mentioned. “God, bless America” – still.

But the left-wingers are intent on driving God out of His Creation. Correspondingly, they hate the “Culture War,” and want it never to be mentioned, nor its issues to be raised. The cultural warriors who do so are “deplorables” (said Hilary Clinton), with no legitimacy inside the liberals’ overwhelming liberal culture. It goes without saying that the vile media do all they can to stifle the conservatives and to stop them from framing the issues as cultural or moral, i.e. pointing towards God. They absolutely cannot handle Him, nor even His shadow. Man has taken God’s place, and nothing and nobody may be put forward as imposing on man any objective right and wrong. Therefore anyone attempting to do so will be discredited as a “racist” or “sexist,” or “fascist” or “anti-semite,” or by some other bigoted label of hatred.

And yet so little do liberals know themselves that they are fanatical believers in “anti-hate” legislation!

Horvat’s conclusion is entirely logical, and taken seriously, it could save America from ruin: “Above all, conservatives must confide in God to come to their help. Disguised behind the façade of a thousand skirmishes is an all-out war against God and His order. Those who champion His cause can expect His assistance.” Archbishop Viganò makes exactly the same point.

Mother of God, whenever I pray your most holy Rosary, please let me grasp that I am not “just praying,” but I am doing the very best I can to assist you in your tremendous battle for the salvation of men and of their nations, through your divine Son, Our Lord Jesus Christ.

Kyrie eleison.

Psychology “professors” at modern “universities” can emphatically not be relied on to talk good sense, but Dr. Mattias Desmet, Professor of Clinical Psychology at Ghent University, Belgium, may be an exception to that rule. He makes no mention of God, but on the Internet athttps://youtube/uLDpZ8daIVM he tells many human truths as to “Why so many people still buy into the Covid narrative.” It is not a problem of truth. It is, as Dr. Desmet explains, a problem of empty and anxious human beings latching onto a false fulfilment presented by the media. Read below a (partly adapted) summary of his own interview.

The majority of the world’s population have fallen under a kind of spell – a “mass formation” or mass hypnosis. Mass formation is a specific type of group formation that can emerge in society under certain conditions:

1. People experience a lack of social bond; a lack of social connectedness.

2. A large part of society feels a lack of meaning in the world.

3. A general anxiety exists in society, an anxiety without a specific focus. For example, in Belgium, which has a population of 11 million, around 300 million doses of anti-depressants are used each year.

4. There is frustration and aggression, but without direction in a specific aim or cause.

Under these conditions, people connect their general anxiety to a specific object of anxiety presented via the mass media. The media not only focus the nameless anxiety, for instance on Covid, but they also give a concrete strategy to deal with it (lockdowns, etc.). People start to participate together in the strategy to deal with the anxiety. A new way of being social emerges. For instance in England was seen for a while the absurd banging of saucepans in the street at 8pm on Thursdays to recognise the “heroes” of the National Health Service, “battling” with the supposedly “overwhelming threat” of Covid. But everybody could feel good in the new group, with a cosy feeling of solidarity in meaningful action:”Save our NHS.”

People within this mass formation (mass hypnosis) must all participate in the lock-downs, mask-wearing or vaccinations. If you do not participate then you are not showing solidarity with the new group. The Covid measures are designed to identify who is part of the new cult-like social group and nothing more. They are not backed by science, nor do they have any ability to defeat the “pandemic.” Covid is a psychological and not a biological crisis. The artificial focusing of the anxiety leads moreover to a very narrow field of attention. People are only aware of a small part of reality, on which the media narrative focuses their attention. Any arguments against the Covid narrative falling outside this small field of attention get little or no traction, because people are only able to view the “pandemic” through this small lens, as if nothing else mattered. The artificial narrative also enables insubstantial politicians to set themselves up as leaders once more. Prior to Covid they were losing their grip, but now they can resound through the media, which enable them to hypnotise the mass of the population.

And the truth? Forget it! It interferes with the narrative. But such artificial narratives do require an enemy. With Covid, that will be the unvaccinated, who will be to blame for all infections and deaths. They are to be marginalised, dehumanised – and vaccinated by force, if all else fails. Dear readers, if all else fails, pray the Rosary to empower the Mother of God to stop these servants of the Devil! She can.

If by “Resistance” we understand that loose grouping together of Catholic priests and lay-folk striving to maintain and to live by the faith and morals of traditional Catholicism prior to its essential dislocation by the modern world through the Second Vatican Council, then what are its prospects in the New Year just arriving? In appearance those prospects are not bright, because the Devil seems with the Covid-nonsense to be winning the battle for control of our world. In reality they are bright, because if the “Resistance” has survived so far, it can only be because God is granting to it minimal graces of survival in accordance with His promise to be with His Church to world’s end, and that promise still stands (Mt. XXVIII, 20).

But what are the principles by which the movement of “Resistance” (or “Fidelity”as it can also be known) came, and still comes, into existence? Most of the priests who would recognise themselves as belonging to the movement are former priests of the Society of St Pius X who disliked the policies it was officially adopting from around the General Chapter of 2012 onwards. These policies were characterised by a kind of benevolence towards the Church’s rulers in Rome, and towards the decisions of Vatican II shaping those rulers, that Archbishop Lefebvre, the Society’s Founder, had never shown towards either.

And what is wrong for Catholics to show benevolence towards the Church’s rulers? Is it not Catholics’ bounden duty to show respect and obedience towards the Church’s officials, in particular its Pope? Yes indeed, that is the normal rule, but there is one exception, and that is when the Catholic Faith is being endangered. Alas, it is seriously endangered by the most typical documents of Vatican II (1962–1965), e.g. Lumen Gentium, Unitatis Redintegratio, Gaudium et Spes and Dignitatis Humanae amongst others. And worse even than the grave but particular errors in these Conciliar documents, said the Archbishop near the end of his days, is the general subjectivism suffusing them all, in other words that mushing of the mind by which a man puts his subjective feelings in front of the objective truth. But if there is no objective truth, how can there be a true God? Vatican II opened the door wide to Pachamamma in the 20^th century.

But does not Pope (or at least seeming Pope) Bergoglio show a special benevolence towards the Society of St Pius X? That, says Archbishop Viganò (once Number 11 inside the Vatican), is only trickery on his part to lure the Society into abandoning that juridical status of independence from the official hierarchy of the Church which Archbishop Lefebvre so carefully ensured for his Society, but which its present leaders still seem to want to exchange for full official acceptance by the Church’s apparent Authority. Yet at this very moment those leaders must be admitting that it is only the Society’s unofficial status which protects it from the sledgehammer of Traditionis Custodes, now smashing all other Traditional communities which strive to preserve the true Mass but which still want to respect these Romans’ Truth-less Authority.

The safeguarding of that Truth which is the Catholic Faith, without which nobody can be saved (Heb. XI, 6), was the mission and the strength and the glory of the Archbishop and his original Society of St Pius X. The strength was undermined and the glory was tarnished over the last 10 years by even just the shadow of compromise with the unfaithful Church authorities, but the mission remained, and it remains through the New Year, indeed until the Lord God puts the Pope back on his feet. In the meantime the “Resistance” (so-called), like any faithful remnant down the ages, requires no large numbers, nor prestige, nor official approval, but, to save the stones of the street from having to cry out (cf. Lk. XIX, 40) it does require from its followers faithfulness to the true Faith, and it may well at some stage require martyrs.

And so if Catholics fasten their eyes on Heaven, and pray seriously, quietly, steadily, if at all possible 15 Mysteries of the Rosary every day, they cannot make a better use of 2022. Happy New Year!

Kyrie eleison.

After the first three chapters of the Book of Job set up the problem of apparently innocent souls suffering, in the next 34 chapters there emerged in a discussion between Job and four of his friends three solutions: Eliphaz, Baldad and Sophir said that suffering is always a punishment, Elihu said that it can also be a warning, Job himself said that it is an impenetrable mystery. But in the course of the discussion he had called in question more than once his Maker, by Whom his faith knew that the suffering had come upon him. And so while Job’s patience was admirable – “the Lord has given, the Lord has taken away, blessed be the Lord” (I, 21)– nevertheless it was not perfect. Job has given Almighty God questions to answer.

Here they are: why does God give life to souls longing bitterly for death (III, 20–21)? Why does He single out Job to maltreat him (X, 2–3)? Why does He hide His face from Job and treat him like an enemy (XIII, 23–24)? Why do those who know Him never see His days (XXIV, 1–2)? And finally, “Oh, that I had someone to hear me! (Here is my signature! Let the Almighty answer me (XXXI, 35)!) Job is a man “blameless and upright” (I, 1), but in his extreme suffering he is not above calling the Almighty to account. Job is clearly no plaster Saint, but a man of flesh and blood, with human reactions.

However, Almighty God does know Job’s virtue, and that it was only Job’s virtue that caused him to be so put to the trial by Satan, and so although He answers to nobody and need not give an answer to Job, nevertheless He will do so (XXXVIII-XLI), as soon as Job and his four friends have all had their say. Now God’s answer is not the answer that either Job or we ourselves might have expected, because the Lord God does not address any of Job’s questions directly. Instead He appeals to His own immeasurable majesty, infinitely above all merely human calculation, in some of the pages sublimest in all Scripture for His self-revelation, and which we would do well to keep by our side, until God’s own Chastisement puts an end to the Covid nonsense and to all the suffering that it will unleash.

“Alright, Job. You have questioned me. Now let me question you (XXXVIII, 2)! Where were you when I laid the foundations of the earth? Have you ever commanded the morning, or appointed the dawn? Do you tie the constellations together, or loosen the bonds of Orion? Do you even know the laws of the heavens? Do you give to the horse his strength? Is it at your orders that the eagle soars aloft? Can your arm match the arm of God, or can your voice thunder like His? If nobody dares provoke the crocodile, who do you think would dare take on Me? . . .

Under the hail of such questions and many more like them, Job has the wisdom to give way (XL, 3–5): “I am a nobody, what can I say? I have no more to say.” But he has been answered – God is infinitely above merely human thoughts – His thoughts are not ours, and our ways are not His (Is. LV, 8, 9). The questions of Job may not have been answered directly, but the thirst of Job for some answers has been drowned in the inscrutable majesty of God. And God goes on to warn Job against pride, as exemplified in two of God’s proudest creatures among His animals, the hippopotamus, Behemoth (XL, 15–24), and the crocodile, Leviathan (XLI). Job is humbled, and admits that his questions were out of place – “. . . . I have uttered what I did not understand, things too wonderful for me, which I did not know . . . therefore I despise myself and repent in dust and ashes” (LII, 2–5).

As a conclusion to all Job’s sufferings, God blames Job’s four friends for their ignorance and harshness towards Job, but to Job himself He gives back his family and prosperity and much more than before (XLII, 7–17). Blessed are those souls which will never question God’s purposes or plans through all the chaos and hurt to be let loose by the Covid nonsense over the next several years. We may not know what we are doing, but God has known since eternity what He is doing – getting us to Heaven!

Kyrie eleison.

Elmer Gantry is a classic film from the United States dating back to 1960, about a con-man pursuing an attractive revivalist preacher named Sister Falconer. In his pursuit of Sister he runs into a former victim of his charms who still loves him but is indignant that he is now pursuing another woman, so she says to him, “Tell me a good strong lie that I can believe, but hold me tight.” This quotation is so true to life that it was featured in these “Comments” nearly ten years ago, October 13 of 2012, #274, from where a reader remembered it, and re-applied it to the world of Covid.

What had struck her in 2021 was how seriously well-known people can be injured by the Covid jab, but if they then speak out, their fans turn against them! The pop singer Eric Clapton is one example. A more recent example is Kyle Warner, a popular mountain-bike rider from Idaho in the USA, who was seriously injured by the Covid jab, but appeared in earlier video clips to be taking his misfortune well. However, in a more recent clip he could be seen breaking down in tears, not so much because of the injury itself, as because of the hate coming at him from all sides for his telling his story and thereby making the jab look bad. What on earth is going on? Here is how the “Comments” reader was reminded of Elmer Gantry – she imagined the fans of today crying out to the puppet-masters in control of the politicians, doctors and media, all still fabricating the Covid scam, “Please deceive us! We love the rotten way of life that you give us! Please pretend you are not there, and we will pretend also!”

It is a point being continually made by these “Comments.” Ever since Luther pretended to be reforming, and not deforming, the Catholic Church, the hallmark of non-Catholic “Western civilisation” has been hypocrisy, because the Protestants have been pretending to want what God wants, but in reality they and their offspring, all alike – Puritans, Liberals, Socialists, Communists, etc. – have wanted what they wanted for themselves. During the whole process, behind various pretences of virtue has been the one reality of the advance of rot, no longer held in check by the one true Church. Finally the rot seeped even inside the Church, and that was Vatican II. In fact modernist bishops have been the worst hypocrites of all.

But let not the peoples, in the name of democracy, claim that they have been innocent, or that the rot, then or now, has all been their leaders’ fault, be it politicians or doctors or media. It is they that have wanted the free lunch from their politicians, the contraception and abortion from their doctors, and the whole scenario of lies from their media. And from here comes the Covid rot, not resisted but positively promoted by a mass of puppet politicians, delinquent doctors and vile media, all lying at every turn. Thus it is the peoples’ own fault when their world is turned upside down, when Fauci is made a hero and Kyle Warner into a villain. Here is the conclusion of the “Comments” of a decade ago –

“Tell me a good, strong lie I can believe, but hold me tight,” says the mistress that Elmer abandoned. Loving him still as she does, all she wants is to be deceived. Such is the world around us. All it asks is to be deceived. That is why we are living in a world of Satan’s lies. We do not want God. Now, life without Him cannot work – see Ps. 126, v.1, and just look around you – but we desperately want to believe that life works best of all without Him. In effect we say to our leaders, “We elected you to tell us good, strong lies, and to hold us tight in our godlessness. Please do a 9/11, a 7/7 (U.K.’s 9/11), or anything you like, just so long as we can go on believing in you as a substitute for God to look after us. The bigger the lie, the more we will believe it, but you must hold us tight. Tighten up our police states as much as you like, but you must keep out God.”

Is it any wonder we have the satanic world we have?

Kyrie eleison.

If we name the second and longest section of the Book of Job by that “patience” for which he is famous, it is because Chapters 4 to 37 consist of a dialogue between Job and four of his friends in which they mean to console him but in effect do little more than rub salt in his wounds. As Job says, some friends!

In the third section, Chapters 38 to 42, God Himself will intervene to deliver the true solution, which He alone could deliver with such authority, and which we are certainly in need of, to frame correctly in our minds the Covid-nonsense, the Chastisement coming closer and closer, and the end of the world.

Job is patient with his friends because the first three all insist that he must have sinned in order to have deserved the appalling suffering of his complete loss of property and health, and the fourth is only a little closer to the true explanation. However, in pursuit of the solution Job’s three older friends, Eliphaz and Baldad and Sophar, do enounce many valuable truths on the connection between sin and suffering. It is only that they misapply their good principles to the particular case of Job, as he knows and tells them.

Heaven knows, the sin of worldwide apostasy is more then enough to deserve the punishment of worldwide Communism descending upon us from Covid criminals such as Schwab, Gates, Fauci, and their hidden handlers, but it is not totally responsible, insofar as there are also innocents suffering.

Usually of course, suffering is closely connected with sin because it only came into the world with sin. Prior to the Fall, Adam and Eve could not have suffered because they were shielded from suffering of any kind by their supernatural gift of Original Justice, but once they sinned that was replaced by Original Sin, through which their nature lost its perfect balance and poise and from then on became deeply flawed. Hence the human nature underlying the flaw is still from God and it is still good, but its flawed condition came from Adam and Eve, and that is so grave that it can only be wiped out by the grace of Our Lord Jesus Christ. And even then God leaves our nature with the consequences of the Fall so that we have to fight with our flawed nature until we die, and so deserve Heaven. Thus if the Covid fraud causes over the next few years all the suffering it was designed to cause, let us never blame God, but rather His human enemies, making war on Him to drive Him out of His own Creation.

So from Chapters 4 to 31 Job’s three friends attempt in turn to persuade him that he has sinned – by impatience, presumption, despair, contradicting God’s justice, refusing to repent, vainglory, arrogance and so on. However, Job patiently refutes each of them in turn, because he is a “blameless and upright” man who knows that he may not be sinless, but he is not guilty as accused by them. Answering Baldad in Chapter 19, he makes a famous declaration of faith in the Redemption and resurrection, all the more remarkable for Job’s being a pagan with no access (that we know of) to the Revelation of the Old Testament: “I know that my Redeemer lives, and at last he will stand upon the earth, and after my skin has been thus destroyed, then from my flesh I shall see God.” With such faith in his mind and heart, no wonder he rejected the accusations of his “consolers.”

Such faith is neither a fairy tale nor self-deceit, but sheer truth, and it is this Catholic truth in our minds and hearts which can and will carry us serenely through a mass of trials and tribulations in the next few years. “Lord, I believe, help thou my unbelief” (Mk.IX, 24) Lord, grant to us Catholic victims of today’s seeping apostasy so to profit by any time now of relative calm that our faith will be strong enough then to carry us through any degree of intervening turbulence which You may allow ahead on our way to Heaven.

Elihu, chapters 32 to 37, is the fourth friend of Job to speak, younger than the previous three and indignant at their inability to confute Job. He does say fine things about the justice of God, whom Job is wrong to be questioning, and he does say that God uses suffering to keep souls out of Hell, but he has no direct answer to the problem of innocents suffering, answer which must come from God Himself (38–42).

Kyrie eleison.