Eleison Comments

Flight-Seeing

Flight-Seeing on April 26, 2008

If anyone loves mountains, they should fly in day-time on a sunny day up the north-western coast of the United States and Canada, say from Seattle to Anchorage in Alaska. Beneath them stretch out, often on both sides of the airplane, the splendors of the lofty Northern Rockies in an uninterrupted series for hours on end, a spectacle no way to be compared with that provided by the mere half-hour crossing of these mountains between east and west.

And if, when such a traveller arrived in Anchorage, he still admired the long snow-capped horizon framing that city to the east, then he should try, as I did a few days ago, “flight-seeing.” I had never before heard the expression, but its meaning in Alaska is not difficult to guess – you get into a little four-seater airplane and go flying up amongst the glaciers and peaks for an hour and a half.

Not even mountaineers who conquer the peaks on foot can enjoy such an overview of the majestic scenery as flying provides. Clambering at first upwards like the trees, but then leaving them behind, one lifts above rocks and snow, then above more and more snow, amidst ever higher peaks, with an intimacy and freedom such as only flying can give. One is so effortlessly close to the majestic slopes dazzling in the sunshine that one could think one was their companion . . . but they remain silent, quite silent, as though mocking the mechanical fly that intrudes on their nobility.

For let no-one say they are dead! Local inhabitants who watch them year round comment on their constant change by way of mist and light and wind and cloud, and such change is surely effect rather than cause of their life, because the mountains present a prospect of infinitely more power than that of any of the fickle phenomena of weather at play amongst them.

Nor let anyone say the mountains are serene! With their zig-zag outlines, jagged crests, precipitous sides, they evoke, according to all sane geology, that cosmic upheaval which tore up the surface of the globe and gave us earth’s present mountain ranges, the tortured up-thrust of titanic masses of granite and rock, driven, crashing, crumpling into one another.

That upheaval was the Flood of Noah’s time, some 5,000 years ago. That Flood was the result of men’s “corrupting their ways” – Scripture’s own words. Earth’s mountains are then monuments of the grandeur of God, to be sure, but also of his wrath. Mankind has now again corrupted its ways, so . . .

Kyrie eleison.

Deadly Mush

Deadly Mush on April 19, 2008

I have never believed any of the Conciliar Popes not to be truly popes. Modern thinking turns minds into mush, and I have always held the Conciliar Popes to be too modern to be capable of the clear firm thinking in matters of Faith necessary to make them such clear firm heretics as could no longer hold their high office in the Church.

By no means everybody agrees with me when I say this, but I do believe Archbishop Lefebvre was making the same point in a different way when he said that these popes were liberals, but being liberals did not necessarily put them out of the Church. Here for example is what he said in an interview he gave in 1987:

“I think we must judge of today’s churchmen in Rome, and of all churchmen and bishops coming under their influence, in the same way that Popes Pius IX and Pius X judged of liberals and modernists. Pius IX condemned liberal Catholics, going so far as to say that they were “the Church’s worst enemies.” What worse could he say of them? Yet he did not say that all liberal Catholics were excommunicated, or were out of the Church or had to be refused Communion . . . Pius X in ‘Pascendi’ was just as severe on modernism, saying it was “where all heresies come together.” Could any movement be more severely condemned? Yet he never said that henceforth all modernists were excommunicated, out of the Church and to be refused Communion. In fact he only excommunicated a few of them. So, following Pius IX and Pius X, I think we should judge of these churchmen in Rome severely, but without concluding that they are necessarily out of the Church.”

Two objections immediately come to mind. Firstly, how can a liberal Catholic be worse than the formal heretic who flatly refuses the Faith which is the foundation of Catholic living and of eternal salvation? Answer, the enemy without can never do so much damage as the enemy within. Whereas the heretic puts himself out of the Church, the liberal Catholic stays within, from where the higher his office, the more he can harm the Church. Is not the very havoc wrought upon the Church by recent popes better accounted for by their being the enemy within rather than, as “sedevacantists” would have it, the enemy without?

But then – second objection – if the Church cannot excommunicate such damaging enemies within, what means does she still have to her to defend herself? Answer, that is perhaps the most serious reason of all for thinking that only a divine chastisement comparable to the Flood can clean out the present corruption in Church and world. Catholic Tradition is today’s Ark.

Kyrie eleison.

Documenting Distress

Documenting Distress on April 12, 2008

Commenting on last week’s „Eleison Comments” which were highly critical of the modern Revolutionary art movement known as Dadaism, a Catholic friend wrote to me, „I love Dadaism.” I am not sure of my friend’s reasons, but there is one lovable aspect to many a modern Revolutionary movement, even for Catholics, in fact primarily for Catholics!

This is because Catholics are best able to grasp how the key to the last 500 (or 700) years of the history of mankind has been its apostasy, its slow but steady turning away from God, in particular from his divine Son, Our Lord Jesus Christ. This eliminating of the true Messiah has left in men’s lives an enormous gap to be filled, a gap unknown before the Incarnation. Hence a variety of false messianisms in modern times.

Communism is an outstanding example. It is the messianism of materialism. For it may be just as materialistic as the bourgeois society it seeks to destroy, even more so; and it certainly has nothing better with which to replace the residual human values of that society. Yet Communists are driven by a quasi-messianic urge to create their horrible new world. It is as though they are saying, „Better no god than your false hypocritical »God«!” And to the extent that the God of the bourgeoisie is a false god, the Communist messianism rejecting it is not false. In this respect Communists may at least be credited with a messianic dimension. Similarly in the scream of protest of Rock musicians there is something just, however negative their protest proves finally to be.

Now Art, Literature, History, Culture, Music, each of them with a capital letter, are all worshipped as substitute religions by modern devotees who, because they have no present religion, pump up these by-products of true religion in the past to take its place. Hence the Dadaists’ refusal of „Art,” and their „re-definition” of art. „What is your Art?” they ask. „It is our godless god,” say the Art-worshippers.„Your godless god is a urinal!” snorts Dada.

Alas! How many Dadaists or Art-worshippers, or Rockers, or Communists, show any signs of looking for the real solution to that problem which they all share?

Kyrie eleison.

Documenting Disintegration

Documenting Disintegration on April 5, 2008

Modern art exhibitions should not interest me as much as they do, because there is really next to no hope of modern art as such putting Humpty Dumpty visually together again. But “Hope springs eternal in the human breast,” so on passing through London just now I went to see an Exhibition of Duchamp, Man Ray and Picabia, programmed as “three pioneering artists and friends whose meeting together during the first World War led to the creation of the New York Dada movement and changed the art world for ever.”

Alas, the programme sounded good, but the actual exhibits were as disappointing as ever. Born between 1887 and 1890, all three artists showed some conventional talent before they met up, but from the moment they worked together to achieve their common goal of breaking all artistic convention, the exhibits of this Exhibition betray their almost complete inability to put anything of value in place of what they broke.

From the Frenchman Duchamp, thinker of the group, typical and notorious is his 1917 exhibit entitled “Fountain,” consisting of nothing but an everyday porcelain urinal laid on its back. Some thinking! Art, said Duchamp, need neither be made by the artist himself, nor need it be visually appealing. Henceforth art could be anything ready-made, so long as it was designated by an “artist” as a work of “art.” Hence the twisted steel garbage designated as “statues” to be found in so many a modern city. The three friends had set out to change the definition of art. They seem to have succeeded!

Francis Picabia’s first wife said about Duchamp and her husband that they “displayed an extraordinary adherence to paradoxical, destructive principles in their blasphemies and inhumanities, which were directed not only against the old myths of art, but against all the foundations of life in general.”

As for Man Ray, in 1951 he was still saying that he wanted “to paint as much as possible unlike other painters, above all, to paint unlike myself – so that each succeeding work, or series of works, shall be entirely different from preceding works.”

Fundamental destruction, not excluding self-destruction, was the programme of all three – re-defined – “artists.” How can their programme have achieved that universal prestige and popularity which it enjoys today? – the Exhibition was well attended by devout spectators! Answer, because any civilization that turns away from God must turn in on itself, and then, by a just vengeance, turn on itself. Here is why millions of souls want modernism in their art – and in their religion.

Kyrie eleison.

Romans Measured

Romans Measured on March 29, 2008

From France I received earlier this month what seems to me a well-balanced assessment of who exactly today’s Roman churchmen are and what they are trying to achieve. Here are extracts:

” . . .The churchmen in Rome are battling with us (clergy and laity of the Society of St. Pius X) to bring us around to accepting their Conciliar religion. Cardinal Castrillon and even the Pope are convinced that we are mistaken, and that it is their duty by all means fair and borderline foul to get us to accept the essence of the Second Vatican Council, which has become their Credo. To this end they work on us with determination and patience, but also with authority, always “for our own good.”

“On our side, because we insist on sane thinking as an essential pre-condition to staying faithful to the irreformable doctrine that has been handed down to us, we find ourselves obliged to resist their pressure and so to disobey today’s Magisterium in order to obey the God who does not change. However . . . we must never forget that despite their courtesy and subjective kindness, these Romans are, objectively speaking, our enemies. Beneath the appearance of good they are motivated by a spirit that is not good. An old proverb says that if you sup with the Devil, you need a long spoon . . .”

The writer’s conclusion is also wise: “ . . .On our side we should be devoting all our energies and abilities to keeping our faithful informed, to strengthening them spiritually and to forming them doctrinally . . . by not doing this enough, we lose in men and resources every time Rome attacks. In the trials lying ahead of us, reinforcing the quality of our troops will have more effect than trying to amass large numbers of Catholics who do not understand the need to fight.”

“As Archbishop Lefebvre said on September 4, 1987, in Econe, “We must hold on, absolutely, through thick and thin . . . Rome, I declare, has lost the Faith, Rome has apostatized.” End of the writer’s quote.

Kyrie eleison.

Guideline Queries

Guideline Queries on March 22, 2008

A reader of “Eleison Comments” of two weeks ago had some reasonable questions. Here are some answers:

Q.1 If the Conciliar Church is proving defectible by its Conciliarism while the Society of St.Pius X is defectible by nature (not having the Church’s guarantees of indefectibility), then where is that indefectible Church?

A 1 Defectible plus defectible equals defectible. But defectible plus defectible plus God equals indefectible. In the Arian crisis of the fourth century, Pope Liberius was proving defectible by his support of Arian bishops while St. Athanasius enjoyed no guarantee of indefectibility. Yet the Lord God used both to carry the Church through until the Papacy came back to its Catholic senses. Even with the best of Popes, the Lord God alone is responsible for his Church’s indefectibility. In God’s good time he will rescue his popes from Conciliarism. Meanwhile the SSPX, amongst others, is playing the part of St. Athanasius, but even if the SSPX were to defect – God forbid! – it would be child’s play for the Lord God to raise other carriers of his Church’s indefectible Truth.

Q 2 Does the indefectible Church still exist outside the SSPX?

A 2 Of course it does. Catholic Authority and Catholic Truth, meant to be firmly united, were split by Vatican II, but the Authority continues through the line of popes (unless and until we have clear proof to the contrary, which we do not yet have, and may or may not ever have), while the Truth continues outstandingly (for the moment) through the SSPX. In God’s good time that Authority and Truth will be reunited. Meanwhile the SSPX’s function is to carry, and not betray, the Truth.

Q 3 But both the Conciliar Church is defectible, and the SSPX is defectible! I insist – how can the indefectible Church be continuing?

A 3 A river split into two streams still continues to flow. Normally the two streams rejoin. Certainly the stream of Catholic Authority and the stream of Catholic Truth will rejoin. Meanwhile the Lord God is obtaining the purification of his Church . . .

Q 4 Did not Archbishop Lefebvre sign on finally to all the supposedly heretical documents of Vatican II? Was he not then also a heretic? A 4 Firstly, the Archbishop always said that he never signed on to two of the worst documents, namely Gaudium et Spes and Dignitatis Humanae, and when people used to say that he did sign on to them, he replied that he himself should know what he did or did not sign on to.

Secondly, what more than anything characterizes the Council documents is their ambiguity (see the first Volumes of Prof. Doermann’s series on the theology of John-Paul II, and of Atila Guimaraes’ series on the Council). Countless propositions in those documents can be read in a Catholic or in a non-Catholic way. Whatever the Archbishop signed on to, he no doubt signed on to in its Catholic sense.

Q 5 But where, if anywhere, did the Archbishop clearly repudiate the non-Catholic sense of the Council’s ambiguities? A 5 In most everything he wrote and said about the Council, he was attacking the errors disguised within the ambiguities. However, for as long as a heretic is still being ambiguous, he may not yet be clearly heretical, and it is correspondingly difficult for him to be clearly “repudiated.” Precisely here is the deadly character of Vatican II. Whenever the defenders of Vatican II are attacked for their Neo-modernism, they can scuttle back within the Catholic sense of their ambiguities, and the liberalism in which the mass of us are today marinated enables them to get away with it. It would follow that God alone can clean up this mess in his Church.

Kyrie eleison.