Eleison Comments

An American friar, by name Brother Alexis Bugnolo, paints a dramatic picture of our near future in a video-clip which many readers may already have seen, but which all can profit to know, not because everything will necessarily happen exactly as he foresees, but because something like it must happen, given the forces in play already around us. In the last century the sins of mankind were enough to “let loose the dogs of war” in two major World Wars. Since 1945 the dogs of war have done a lot of barking, but they have done no biting to compare with 1914–1918 or 1939–1945. Yet from the revolutionary 1960s onwards mankind as a whole has surely sinned far more gravely than ever before by the way in which it has turned its back on God. So how much heavier than ever before must be the punishment by war? Brother Bugnolo gives us a glimpse in this adapted summary of his video-clip –

The makers of the various Covid “vaccines” know science and they are not stupid, so they knew perfectly well that their “vaccines” could kill. In fact – let us face reality – they were designed to kill, if not immediately, then at least within a few years, so that mankind still alive would be much easier to enslave and control. And by now somewhere around 40% of the world’s population have received at least one dose of an anti- Covid “vaccine.” A genuine expert (and not one fabricated by the media), the French virologist and Nobel Prize winner Luc Montagnier has called mass vaccination against the coronavirus “unthinkable,” and a historical blunder that is “creating the variants” and leading to deaths from the disease. He states that variants of viruses can occur naturally, but now it is artificial vaccination that is driving the process –The new variants are a production, and they result from the ‘vaccination.’ You see it in each country, it’s the same: and in every country deaths follow the ‘vaccination.’

In the next two years we risk seeing large numbers of deaths among the vaccinated, so that we had better start now preparing ourselves spiritually for this. Some people are going to be shocked by the scale of death – they are going to lose their minds. Others, now believers, are also going to lose their faith. They will ask,“Where is God?” and, “Why does God not prevent this?” However, when a man throws himself off a cliff, is God obliged to suspend the laws of gravity to prevent him from dying? The man chose freely to kill himself. God will not normally interfere with a man’s use of the free-will that God gives him. In fact by allowing the Covid-nonsense, God is catering to the suicidal death-wish intrinsic to a post-Christendom rejecting Christ. Yet anyone with a brain has had enough time to examine the scamdemic and see that it was false. As Christians we are obliged to test everything to see if it is true or not, and to hold fast only to what is good (I Thess. V, 21). If we ignore this, and run off to get the injection just so we can go travelling, then we are idiots and cowards – we are not living according to the truth.

Thus, the false peace in which we are living now is like the Summer of 1914, before the outbreak of the First World War. No one then had any idea that in the next three or four years around 16 million people would be killed. That was a summer in which people still enjoyed travelling around Europe in peace. In fact, if almost all the Covid controls are disappearing for now, at least in the northern hemisphere, it is as if we have been given this Summer to deceive us. They want us to think that nothing is wrong. They know that deaths will soon start to occur as a result of the injections. And as for those of us who have not been injected, there will still be serious disruption of the economy and of national and local security. There will not be enough ambulances or undertakers to take away the dead – many of them will have had the injection, so may be dead themselves. As Christians we will have to step forward and fill the gap. So, everyone should buy a hazmat (hazardous materials) suit – it is highly likely that you will be asked to help carry the dead to the grave.

One may well disagree with Brother as to the hazmat suit, but it is less easy to disagree with his overall vision.

Kyrie eleison

At the end of last month at Courtalain in France, 15 Superiors of Traditional Catholic Communities, but in good standing with Rome, issued a joint statement in anticipation of their meeting with Pope Francis a few days later, because of their reasonable fear of losing their dearly bought good standing with Rome. For indeed on July 16 he issued his Motu Proprio Traditionis Custodes in which he had used all his apparent Authority to stop any further use in the Church of the Traditional rite of Mass. Had he next summoned themselves to Rome early in September in order to take away their good standing with Rome? After harshly banning the Latin Mass it would be entirely logical for him to ban the Communities using that Mass. And so a few days before their appointment with the Pope they met together to consider their danger, and at the end of their meeting they issued a joint Statement of their position, on which the best comment comes from a fabulist of 2,600 years ago. Here is a brief summary of their Statement –

We 15 Superiors who sign below wish above all to emphasize our love of the Church and our fidelity to the Pope. But since his recent condemnation of the Latin Mass, we are feeling suspected, marginalised and banished. Far from pretending as Traditionalists to be the true Church, we depend on the Pope of Rome and the diocesan bishops for our salvation and faith. We loyally submit to their Authority and to their teaching, including that of Vatican II and its aftermath. Please forgive us if any party spirit or pride has come among us. We beg for a humane, personal trusting dialogue where we can tell our tale of woe, in particular of how we have relied on promises of Rome to build up our Communities. Above all, please let us have a truly human and merciful dialogue. We do contribute to the diversity of that liturgy which is at the heart of the Church. And Pope Francis himself says that all souls must be reached out to, to help each of them to find their own way of belonging to Mother Church.

And here is the fable of Aesop (620–564 B.C.), called “The Wolf and the Lamb” –

A stray Lamb stood drinking early one morning on the bank of a woodland stream. That very same morning a hungry Wolf came by farther up the stream, hunting for something to eat. He soon got his eyes on the Lamb. As a rule Mr. Wolf snapped up such delicious morsels without making any bones about it, but this Lamb looked so very helpless and innocent that the Wolf felt he ought to have some kind of an excuse for taking its life.

“How dare you paddle around in my stream and stir up all the mud!” he shouted fiercely. “You deserve to be punished severely for your rashness!”

“But, your highness,” replied the trembling Lamb, “do not be angry! I cannot possibly muddy the water you are drinking up there. Remember, you are upstream and I am downstream.”

“You do muddy it!” retorted the Wolf savagely. “And besides, I have heard that you told lies about me last year!” “How could I have done so?” pleaded the Lamb. “I wasn’t born until this year.”

“If it wasn’t you, it was your brother!”

“I have no brothers.”

“Well, then,” snarled the Wolf, “It was someone in your family anyway. But no matter who it was, I do not intend to be talked out of my breakfast.”

And without more words the Wolf seized the poor Lamb and carried her off to the forest.

Kyrie eleison.

Doug Casey is a highly successful investor in the USA with many years’ experience of making money behind him. He has not only a knowledge of finance, which keeps his feet on the ground, but also a certain all-round culture which he must owe to some education in the humanities. In what he writes, he barely mentions religion, but he does combine the best money-men’s realism with knowledge of human nature. He is by no means infallible, but his world-views are interesting. Here is one of them, adapted and summarised from last July 7, entitled “Why most people outsource their thinking to the “Experts.”

Thanks to the internet and modern technology, people now have easy access to a mass of information on almost any topic, yet they seem to be doing less critical thinking than ever. This is surely because technology, such as the internet, is intrinsically mechanical and entirely predictable, whereas human beings are not machines but spiritual beings with a free-will, not predictable but requiring wisdom for its handling. To that free-will technology is entirely alien, but whereas wisdom requires personal thought which can entail painful effort, the solutions of Google are as effortless as they are instantaneous. That is why, if thinking for myself costs too much effort, I may well turn to my inhuman computer for an answer.

But in the place of a wisdom which sifts, a computer can offer me only a mass of unsifted information, at which point, be it a question of finance, economics, politics or many another domain, I am liable to call for “experts” to tell me what to think. However, most experts today have had only a narrow technical formation and not yesterday’s broad human education. So instead of a philosopher’s bird’s eye-view of my problem, I meet with a technician’s worm’s eye-view. And the more and more the data necessary to run a society of today become technical and complicated, the fewer and fewer become the philosophers, in the true sense of the word, and the more and more credentials from modern “universities” become useless. A “college degree” often means today merely taking on in youth a debt barely payable for the rest of my days, in exchange for no better than a camouflage of my mediocrity. In search of genuine solutions, I may then turn to celebrities, because I assume that famous people know something, but while they are good-looking and present well, in reality they know little to nothing. Back to the fabrication of “experts.”

The Covid-nonsense only accelerated these trends. Throughout the hysteria most people believed like robots the “health experts,” and they attacked the wise men who used their minds to bring forth logical information and data which challenged the established narrative. So the media and the Establishment selected a set of credentialed health experts, promoted them, and told the public that they know what they’re talking about, e.g. Anthony Fauci, who is now elevated from nowhere to near-dictatorial control. On the contrary, people that have written numerous peer-reviewed papers and done serious lab work, count for nothing because they disagree with Czar Fauci. Thus “health experts” now rank amongst our rulers, because telling people that they’re going to die, to their loved ones’ peril, is a powerful motivator to get them to do as they’re told.

This is all leading towards a many-tentacled police state. The people who run the State have control of the money supply, the economy, the education system, the media and the medical system. The same rulers have long since emasculated true religion. It is being replaced by updated versions of Marxism (which was always a secular religion, even though it claimed to be “scientific”), like Greenism and Wokeism (both, substitute religions). Our rulers have mounted a war on many fronts – they will blame the collapse of the economy on Covid, and as the depression drags on, they will blame it also on global warming. Covid and Global Warming are two cosmic lies designed to dodge the blame for the coming chaos, and to establish the globalists’ worldwide tyranny. So much for the “experts”!

Kyrie eleison.

These “Comments” refer frequently to an imminent Chastisement, even a “rain of fire,” which an angry God will inflict upon a sinful mankind. Yet Catholics have always learned from the Church of the extreme mercy of Almighty God, the supreme mercifulness of the Sacred Heart of Jesus. See for instance the marvellous revelations of His mercy made to Sister Josefa Menendez in a French convent in the 1920’s, and described in her book “The Way of Divine Love.” Tell the world, said Our Lord to the Sister, that I long to forgive anybody any sin they ever committed, if only they will turn to me with trust in my mercy. At one point she found His mercy so extreme that He had to say to her, “Yes, Sister, write down what I just said to you, write it down!” The question can then arise, how can such a merciful God think of inflicting on mankind a “rain of fire” such as Our Lady warned us of at Akita in Japan in 1973?

For Catholic liberals who have lost their grip on the great truths of their Faith, the problem is insoluble. For them, if God exists He is such a soft old sugar-daddy (pardon me, divine Lord!) that He could never punish anybody for anything, so that if Hell exists then it is virtually empty, except perhaps for Cain and Judas Iscariot (and Adolf Hitler). On the other hand, for Catholics who still treasure their penny catechism with its ancient truths, the solution is obvious – let me just live in accordance with those ancient truths, and I will see why it is entirely normal for a merciful God to punish sinful men, even severely.

For instance, God exists and from Him all of us human beings come, by His individual creation of our spiritual souls giving life to our material bodies. and to Him at death we are all meant to go, to His glorious Heaven by having believed in Him, loved, served and obeyed Him for the duration of our brief lives on earth. Nor is that unreasonable or unjust on His part, given the variety of gifts that He showers upon us during our brief life. But immediately after it begins eternal life, lasting for ever in Heaven or Hell, depending on what use we have made of His gifts.

So if we loved God here below, we enjoy everlasting bliss with Him in His Heaven. If we defied God here below, we endure everlasting torture without Him, in the Hell He created for obstinate sinners and fallen angels (Mt. XXV, 41). Either way, in Heaven or in Hell, the next life after death for every single man who lived, lasts for ever and ever. Therefore men’s life on earth, even if it lasts 80 or 100 years, is as brief as a breath of wind, whereas his life after death is as eternal, in a certain way, as God Himself. Then in which life is it more important to be happy? Clearly, in the next life. Did not Augustine pray, “Lord, punish me as much as You like in this life, just so long as You do not have to punish me in the next!”?

The problem is that by the fault of Adam and Eve from the very beginning of the human race, temptations in this life to defy God, notably those of pride and sensuality, can be so enticing that men rather more easily choose the way to Hell than the way to Heaven (Mt. VII, 13–14). Then what does God need to do to help men nevertheless to choose Heaven, as His love wants them all without exception to do (I Tim. II, 4)? He has the power to force them all to choose His way, but that would destroy the whole purpose of creating them, because then His Heaven would be filled, in effect, with robots. Then what God prefers to do is to make known to the natural conscience of all men His ten Commandments, and if men still touch forbidden fruit, so to punish them in one way or another that they will again choose Heaven.

But can the heaviest punishments in this life compare with the tortures of eternal Hell? Not remotely! Then how cruel are the cruellest punishments in this life, if only they help to keep me on the right way to enjoy eternal life? If only I choose to endure them in the right way, understanding that they come from the love of God, then they are not essentially cruel at all.

Kyrie eleison.

Besides the balance between liberalism and sedevacantism (cf. these “Comments” last week), there is another angle from which to come at the wisdom of Archbishop Lefebvre’s resisting “to their face” Popes Paul VI and John-Paul II, and that is how exceptional he was at that time in seeing how necessary for the Church such resistance was. When in 1974 he made his November Declaration which was like the Charter of the Traditional movement to come, and when in 1975 he was punished for it with the official “suspension” of his Society of St Pius X, and in 1976 with his personal suspension from all activity as a bishop by Rome, the great majority of his colleagues in the episcopacy sided with Rome, and many of them put continual pressure on him to give way to Paul VI, and to cease “disobeying.”

All the way until the consecration of four bishops in 1988 for Catholic Tradition he hoped to be able to put together a little group of four or five Traditional bishops which he knew would seriously obstruct the neo-modernists’ on-going dissolution of the Church, but although he visited many, he never found any who would join him in his public stand against the Roman dissolvers. Only in 1981 did a colleague at last stand with him in public, and that was only because Bishop de Castro Mayer, having just reached the age of 75, had had to resign as diocesan bishop of Campos, Brazil. However, he did stay faithfully at the Archbishop’s side, in public, notably at the ceremony of consecration of bishops in 1988, a gesture hugely appreciated by the Archbishop, because it proved that the Archbishop was not alone in judging that the crisis of the Church justified such drastic action as episcopal consecrations without Papal approval.

And the two clear-sighted bishops stayed together until both died within a month of each other in 1991. However, neither was followed for long after his death by his own followers, which highlights just how exceptional the clear sight of the two of them had been. In Brazil the group of Campos priests were soon splitting Bishop de Castro Mayer in two: the obedient Pastor prior to his rebellion “against Rome,” and the “disobedient Rebel.” And declaring that their loyalty was to “Castro I,” they scuttled collectively back under the skirts of Rome. As for the worldwide Society that the Archbishop had left behind him, within a few years its leaders were making private contact with representatives of the official Church in organised talks of GREC, and within a few more years the Society’s Superior was announcing in public that only the final seal was lacking to an official agreement between the Society and Rome. To the Society leaders’ credit, the agreement has never happened yet, but to their discredit, that has not been for lack of trying.

But how dare one so sharply discredit the Society’s leaders for their noble efforts to regain their rightful status as a Society recognised within the official Church? Answer, by the fruits of those same efforts. Is there any comparison between the fruits of the Society when, behind the Archbishop, it was sharply repudiating contact with the traitors to the Faith in Rome, and ever since when, behind his successors, it has been seen to be trying to come to an understanding with them? Granted, it is not as though the Society has been bearing no fruit after it began treating these Romans as though they are Catholic, but in the ever worsening – and not easing! – crisis of the Church, how much more real fruit the Society could have borne if only souls had not been put off by a mixed message: “Yes, of course the Romans are bad, but they cannot be all that bad! They will give us recognition if only we do no treat them too badly!”

No, they really are that bad. They are primarily responsible for the destruction of the Church, on which hangs the salvation or damnation of millions and millions of souls. And they are still at it, clearly, with the latest Motu Proprio of Pope Francis. Nor have they ever not been at it, for the last 60 years. So how did the Archbishop see that so clearly and neither his colleagues nor his successors? By the strength and purity of his faith.

Kyrie eleison

And what do these “Comments” have to say about Pope Francis’ latest smashing scandal, namely his Motu Proprio “Traditionis Custodes” in which he does all he can to extinguish the age-old Traditional rite of Mass in Latin, and to make sure that it will disappear for ever from celebrations of Mass? First and foremost these “Comments” would give glory to God for having given us as model, to guide us through this end of world crisis of the Church, Archbishop Lefebvre. He ended his days supposedly “excommunicated” by the mainstream churchmen. Nor has he been faithfully followed by the leading churchmen of the Society of St Pius X, which he himself formed. But the historic record of what he did and said is there, and its wisdom for the Church’s future becomes more clear with each day that passes.

That record tells us exactly how he would have reacted to Traditionis Custodes. On the one hand he would have once more wholly rejected the false doctrine of Vatican II, which is behind the Novus Ordo Mass and which to this day strives to abolish all trace of the old Tridentine rite of Mass which has proved since 1969 to be the indestructible competitor of Pope Paul’s New Mass, risking to live on long after the New Mass is in the dustbins of history. On the other hand even with the agonising problem for Catholics set by Popes fighting against Catholic Tradition more bitterly than ever, like Francis in this Motu Proprio, it seems highly unlikely that the Archbishop would have declared that Pope Francis was not Pope. Rather, for the sake of the Church’s structure he would have insisted on respect and courtesy towards all the apparent Popes of Vatican II, leaving to the official Church alone in a more tranquil future time to decide what status to attribute to these Vicars of Christ who had so little understanding of Catholic Tradition.

This balance of the Archbishop between condemning the Conciliar Popes’ doctrine but respecting their office has come to be known as “Recognise and Resist” – recognise their office, resist their doctrine. But as a policy for Catholics to follow, it comes into heavy criticism from both sides. Liberals will say, if you rightly recognise the office, then you have no right to resist its commands. Anti-liberal “sedevacantists” will turn that position around, saying, if you rightly resist the office’s false commands, then you cannot still be recognising the office issuing those commands, i.e. you cannot both recognise and resist, it must be one or the other. No, said the Archbishop, I reject the teacher’s teaching but not necessarily his office. Catholic Popes hating Tradition are a mystery for a future age of the Church to solve, if it will and can. And in this position the Archbishop has been followed ever since by many Catholics, not because of his official authority of which he had little to none, but because, confronted by the same problems in the Church, they had by themselves come to the same conclusions as he had, and therefore followed him, thus making him the trail-blazer of balance and sanity in the Church’s on-going crisis.

And so what was it that enabled the Archbishop to keep his balance and serenity when in the wake of the Council so many believing Catholics either lost their faith or despaired of the Church? Undoubtedly it was his unshakable faith in a God and a Truth both far above all human changes or influences or politics or whatever, a God and a Truth enshrined in Catholic Tradition for the benefit of humans, but not in any intrinsic way subject to humans or dependent on humans. Here are the heights on which he lived in spirit and from which he descended into daily life, neither admitting undue change in the things of God, nor demanding too much perfection in the things of men. Liberals are mad to be wanting to adapt God’s one true Church to our age of godlessness, while Catholics are mistaken if they doubt God’s Providence in His management of His Church.

So Pope Francis is mad, but Jesus Christ is with His Church until world’s end. He said so Himself – Mt. XXVIII, 20.

Kyrie eleison.