Eleison Comments

False Anti-Semitism

False Anti-Semitism on March 1, 2008

When “Eleison Comments” last week argued that insofar as Pope Benedict XVI’s Good Friday prayer change worked against the eternal salvation of Jews, he had proved himself – no doubt unintentionally – to be a true anti-semite, ie enemy of Jews purely as Jews, a number of readers apparently agreed. I congratulate them, because they had to be thinking with their Catholic minds instead of merely emoting with their (objectively) vile media. Let us think a little further.

Obviously, the basic principles apply to all men and not just to Jews: to wish them eternal salvation is to love them truly, because it is to wish them the greatest good of all, namely everlasting happiness in Heaven, through and with Our Lord Jesus Christ. To wish them welfare or prosperity merely in this little life on earth is to love them much less, especially if that worldly success would get in the way of their eternal salvation, as it all too easily can do – Mt.XIX, 24.

But fewer and fewer people today believe in life everlasting or in Our Lord, and so naturally the perspective of such people is different. If I urge upon them eternal life, or if I do what I prudently can to obstruct their campaigning against Our Lord, then I will seem to them to be their enemy when I am in fact their best friend. It is all a question of perspective, but it is not a question of opinion: the eternal perspective is true, while the anti-Christian perspective is objectively and absolutely false.

Now ever since the Jews were responsible for the crucifying of Our Lord Jesus Christ – “His blood be upon us and upon our children,” Mt.XXVII,25 – they have as a race and as a religion, always with noble exceptions, continued to reject him down to our day. Thus St. Paul observed that they not only “killed the Lord Jesus and the prophets,” but they also prohibited St. Paul himself from “speaking to the Gentiles so as to save them.” In brief, their behavior was such that “they please not God and are adversaries to men” (I Thess. II, 14–16). Closer to our own time, it is a matter of historical record that the designing and launching of, for instance, Communism, to wrest mankind away from God and to replace his Heaven with a man-made paradise, was largely their achievement.

So they persecuted St. Paul at every turn (see Acts of the Apostles) as being one of their arch-enemies, when in fact nobody loved them more truly or laboured more for their real well-being than did St. Paul (cf. Rom. IX,1–5). Similarly today, they will call an “anti-semite” anybody who gets in the way of any godlessness of theirs, when in fact all people labouring for their salvation, as for the salvation of Gentiles, are their best friends.

St Paul, pray for us!

Kyrie eleison.

True Anti-Semitism

True Anti-Semitism on February 23, 2008

Most people seeing how Pope Benedict XVI has changed the Church’s Good Friday prayer for the Jews will think he has been their friend, because the change was in a direction demanded by spokesmen of theirs, who made themselves heard. However, for any Catholic who has the Catholic Faith, Benedict XVI has been in this not their friend but their enemy.

The difference is quite simply the difference between our brief life here below, and life everlasting: For purposes of this life, lasting for each of us, let us say, 70 years, he has been their friend, because by, for instance, taking out of the 1962 text the references to the Jews’ “blindness,” “darkness” and “the veil over their hearts,” he has softened the Church’s solemn criticism of their condition. On the other hand by the same softening he will also have diminished Catholics’ awareness of how especially Jews need the charity of Catholics’ prayers.

For indeed from Adam to world’s end, faith in the one and only Redeemer, to come or having come, can alone save any soul from eternal damnation, unless that soul lives without serious sin and is honestly ignorant of the Redeemer. But honest ignorance presents a particular difficulty for the Jews who had all the privileges of the Old Testament to prepare them for the coming of their Messiah, Jesus Christ, and who ever since have had to put “the veil over their hearts” in order not to recognize him in the multiple prophecies of their Old Testament, notably Isaiah, Chapter LIII.

Therefore the recent Good Friday liturgy change, by diminishing Catholics’ awareness of that real “veil,” etc, has done a disservice to Jews’ eternal salvation. In this respect of the Catholic Faith, Benedict XVI has, objectively, shown himself to be against the Jews purely as Jews. Is there any other possible true definition of the expression “anti-semite”?

Sacred Heart of Jesus, between now and world’s end, grant to your Church many martyrs to die for the eternal salvation of your racial kinsmen, beloved by you!

Kyrie eleison.

Unravellijng Fast

Unravellijng Fast on February 16, 2008

The state of the nations is such, being also now precipitated by the ever worsening financial crisis in the United States, that I said to an American friend who has known people in high places, “Do you know anybody intelligent in government who would be asking serious questions about what is going on? I would be interested in their answers!”

“Nobody,” he replied. “In my experience they are immensely arrogant, contemptuous of the people and so far out of touch with reality, that they cannot be calling in question their handling of things. Besides, for any of them to talk to you, you would need the Masonic hand-shake.”

Another friend, also having some acquaintance with the ruling mentality, agreed. “For the longest time,” he said, “they have been easing out, or moving out, anybody liable to question their system. Minds inclined to serious thought are now car mechanics in Arizona . . . . The inflation is unspeakable in the stores. Food shortages are foreseeable. If everything breaks down . . . .it will be horrible. The people are just beginning to wake up.”

In fact, without God, the Masonic governments must be making plans for population control: either a foreign war – WWIII? – to distract the people from their woes at home; or the National Guard(s), food rationing and concentration camps for all “dissidents.”

With God, here are two timely prayers from the Lenten liturgy:— from Thursday after Ash Wednesday, “Spare, O Lord, spare thy people, that whereas they are deservedly chastised, they may find relief in thy tender mercy . . .” And from the Friday after Ash Wednesday, “O Lord, preserve thy people, and in thy mercy cleanse them from all their sins: for no adversity shall harm them if no wickedness holds sway over them . . .”

Kyrie eleison.

Nationalism’s Impotency

Nationalism’s Impotency on February 9, 2008

Nationalism alone cannot save nations. Only God can save nations. This is sad because many nationalists today, young and old, are good men who love their country, and wish to save its history, identity and culture from being washed out by internationalism. They recognize globalism as the enemy, but at best they do not see, at worst they do not want to see, what the Psalmist said long ago:—

“Unless the Lord builds the house, those who build it labor in vain.

Unless the Lord watches over the city, the watchman stays awake in vain.” (Ps. CXXVI,1–2)

In Paris two weeks ago, I met just such a watchman. He is a French journalist who published recently a booklet entitled “Inquiry into the Future of the National Movement,” with which he sympathizes. The booklet consists of interviews which he held with 16 leading French nationalists (not a pejorative term), and it concludes with his own summary of the situation. Amongst other things he writes what must be familiar to many a national movement today:—

“Looking back objectively at the 35-year record of the “Front National,” one is bound to admit that despite the movement’s merits, the commitment of its members and the courage of its leaders, it has succeeded in stopping nothing: neither the foreign invasion of France, nor the passing of laws cutting back freedom, nor the dismantling of our sovereignty, nor the giving away of our frontiers, nor the giving up of our currency, nor the destruction of our agricultural and industrial infra-structure, nor the promulgation of laws opposed to family and to natural morality . . .”

Dear watchman, until the French people turn back to Our Lord, you nationalists are trying to make bricks without straw. Any nation is doomed where in the public domain the Lord God has been allowed to become the Great Unmentionable. May he have mercy upon all of our apostate nations.

Kyrie eleison.

Peak Oil

Peak Oil on February 2, 2008

Today’s Western way of life, imitated now all over the world, is under sentence of death. One may or may not believe in Almighty God, in sin, in God’s justice or warnings or punishments upon sin, but it is impossible to believe that planet earth’s resources of oil can or will sustain indefinitely a way of life consuming 84 million barrels of oil a day, and every day thirsting for more.

A while after oil-wells have been discovered, their production reaches a peak, and then steadily and inexorably declines. In the USA, discovery of oil peaked in 1930, and production peaked in 1970, a period coinciding with the USA’s greatest economic power. As its own oil declined, so the USA changed from being the world’s greatest oil exporter and creditor nation to being its greatest importer and debtor nation. Global oil discovery peaked in 1964, global oil production is peaking anywhere from now to around 2015, and from then on it must decline. There are few new oil fields. Three times more oil is now consumed each year than is discovered. 53 countries are past their producing peak.

Over the last 150 years since rock-oil (petr-oleum) began replacing whale-oil in the USA, rock-oil has become an incomparable source of dense and cheap energy, versatile and powerful. As such it has been the engine of global economic growth, and there is no replacement in sight. What will happen to the West’s industry, agriculture, transportation, military forces and even electricity when there is no more oil? It has been central to developing the “freedom” of Western ways. The imminent necessity for these to change radically is a theme no democratic politician cares to touch.

Yet the governments know. That is why it makes complete sense that 9/11 was organized to make possible (amongst other things) the invasion of countries where military bases could be built amongst, and all around, the present most important sources of world oil. Such governments seem to envisage no alternative to oil, but the writing is on the wall – the party will soon be over!

Any individual, nation or world that builds on anything other than on the Gospel is building on sand, said Our Lord, and he might have added, even sand soaked in oil.

Kyrie eleison.

1984 Attracts

1984 Attracts on January 26, 2008

When in a small publication of the Society of St. Pius X in England – circulation about 500 – an article recently appeared describing the police-state fast closing in on Great Britain, the British authorities complained to SSPX headquarters in Switzerland! It gives one to reflect . . . .

As people have today less and less religion, so they have less and less reason to control themselves. If I believe neither in God nor in any moral law, nor in any after-life, eternally rewarding or punishing my observance or non-observance of that law, why should I put any brake upon satisfying my selfish desires in this life? But a society of such egoists must turn into a jungle of human beasts devouring one another.

Therefore where the people have neither faith nor internal self-discipline, they must welcome any external discipline enabling their society to survive, e.g. (or i.e.) a police-state. As seminaries close, so prisons must open. Today, prisons can hardly be built fast enough.

Now in any such dissociety of course there will be villains fabricating reasons to impose and extend the police-state for their own nefarious purposes. 9/11 is a classic example. However, even in the case of 9/11 there might have been amongst the authorities some honest men who said, “Lies and fabrications are nasty, but how else can one govern a modern population?” Alas, they would have had a point!

So the police-state may be a bad substitute for godliness, but where the people are godless, such a State may appear to be the only way to hold a society together, and whoever opposes the police-state will then appear to be anti-social. In this respect the defenders of modern police-states may mean well, and not deserve blame.

However, let them have no part in tomorrow’s persecution of Christians towards which today’s police-states are being steered! The Catholic Faith upheld by the SSPX is not in fact their problem, but it is, of their real problem, the true solution.

Kyrie eleison.