Eleison Comments

AGAINST SEDEVACANTISM

AGAINST SEDEVACANTISM on December 28, 2024

How men behave must be by law refined,

But law must follow reality close behind.

The controversy over the resignation by Benedict XVI from the Papacy in February of 2013 continues to feed the argument over the vacancy of the Apostolic See – was that resignation valid or not? If it was valid, then the ensuing election of Pope Francis was not invalidated by Benedict still being in any way the valid Pope. But if Benedict’s resignation was doubtfully valid, then a doubt is left hanging over all Francis’ subsequent papacy, because Benedict only died in 2022 after Francis had acted as Pope for the space of nearly ten years. In the autumn of last year Bishop Athanasius Schneider wrote a most interesting article, accessible on the Internet, giving precious principles on the whole dispute of whether the Apostolic See (Latin “sedes”) is vacant or not.

It may seem an idle dispute, but it is not. The Catholic Church is a worldwide organisation, strictly hierarchical, in which all parish priests depend upon valid diocesan bishops for their valid appointment to parishes, and those bishops depend in turn upon a valid Pope for their valid appointment to their dioceses. For the Church to be able to function, its head must be really existent, clearly identified and universally accepted. Of course several times in Church history the identity of the Pope has been disputed, notably during the Great Western Schism from 1378 to 1417, which saw at its end not just two but three candidates all claiming to be Pope. However, all Catholics knew that more than one Pope was most harmful to the Church, so the Schism lasted only 39 years.

In that dispute, it is precious to observe how the Church judged of the validity of the popes in question. On the one hand Urban VII was duly elected in Rome in the papal conclave of 1378 amid huge pressure and threats, but he was accepted and recognised as Pope by all the cardinals who had elected him. The Church has come to see in him and in his successors the line of true and valid Popes. On the other hand, a few months later, French cardinals counter-elected a Frenchman as Pope Clement VII, who set up the Avignon papacy in Southern France. This line of “Popes” the Church has come to condemn as anti-popes. What is to be observed from this example and several others, especially in the Middle Ages, is that for a Pope to be valid the letter of the law is less important than the absolute need for the Church to have a single, visible, recognised and certain head.

Thus Gregory VI bought his papacy in 1045 for a large sum of money, so that his election was strictly invalid, yet the Church has always recognised him as a valid Pope. In 1294 Pope Celestine V doubtfully resigned and Boniface VIII disputedly succeeded him, yet both events were “healed at the root,” or made valid afterwards, by their being universally accepted by Catholics, clergy and laity. This doctrine of an event, illegal at the time but being made legal afterwards, the Church applies to marriages and to papal elections, under certain conditions. For papal elections those conditions are that the new Pope should be immediately accepted as Pope by the Universal Church. This was surely the case of Pope Francis, when he greeted the crowd from a Vatican balcony overlooking St Peter’s Square just after his papal election, with all the election’s possible canonical faults.

As for the disputed or doubtful resignation of Benedict XVI, opinions may differ, and the Church may decide with Authority what it meant, only after the Church emerges at last from the unprecedented crisis brought about by the splitting of Catholic Authority from Catholic Truth at the Second Vatican Council. However, based on the realistic principles laid out by Bishop Schneider in his article, it does not seem difficult to conclude that that resignation was both doubtful in itself and harmful in practice to the Church.

Doubtful in itself, because God designed His Church as a monarchy, or rule of one, and not as a diarchy, or rule of two. God obviously meant His Vicar, or stand-in, to have at his disposal in Rome a whole aristocracy of officials to help him to rule the worldwide Church, but of that aristocracy he is the undisputed sole king. And harmful in practice, because Benedict’s distinction between “munus” (office) for himself and “ministerium” (ministry or work) for Francis, did not clearly exclude his own continuing to participate in the rule of the Church. However, who did rule the Church from Benedict’s resignation to his death? Not Benedict. And when Benedict died – was there a papal conclave? No. It is Francis who has been Pope, from 2013 until now.

Kyrie eleison.

AMERICAN ELECTION

AMERICAN ELECTION on December 21, 2024

God is supremely generous. His bliss

Is something I shall be quite mad to miss.

The re-election at the beginning of last month of Donald Trump as President of the United States of America for the next four years can be seen from a religious or a political point of view. If God did not exist, then the religious point of view would be of little or no interest, and that election might be taken as encouraging proof that the American people have not lost all good sense, because that election showed the people rising up against the extreme left-wing folly of the last four years’ government under President Biden and the Democrats. On the other hand if God does exist, then that election is not so encouraging, because so many democratic elections in modern times show the right-wing conservatives to be conserving relatively little, while the revolutionaries are all the time gaining ground on the left. This election was no exception.

For instance, the valiant Catholic editor of the Remnant magazine and website in the United States, Michael Matt, compared Trump’s 2016 Republican Manifesto when he was elected President for the first time, with the Manifesto for his second successful election in 2024. In 2016 he stood against abortion, often mentioned. In 2024 pro-life is hardly mentioned, as he had made known that he was no longer against abortion. In 2016 the Manifesto mentioned God 16 times. In 2024 God was mentioned twice. And leading up to the election of 2024, he gave several extra indications of his deference to those anti-Christian people who rule the USA, to the point that one wonders if they are not confident that they can control him for the next four years. In 2016 they may have feared Trump’s heading up a popular reaction against them, but hardly in 2024. In 2016 he was a man with decent values of family, country and God. Is he still the man he was in 2016? Or has he slidden to the left, like the large part of his fellow-countrymen?

Of course this slide to the left, despite some right-wing appearances as in this election of 2024, is not only in the United States, it is in all countries of the post-Christian West. Why? Because religion underlies politics as God the First Cause underlies the being and action of all secondary causes. When men chase God out of their lives, of course they lose all sense of any importance of religion, and to attain the good life they rely on themselves alone, and they make substitute religions out of a variety of alternatives to God, notably out of politics. Ever since Henry VIII, Englishmen have worshipped their government instead of God, with disastrous results for England and for the eternal salvation of English souls at their Judgment before God.

But He does not cease to exist, nor does He cease to do all He can, short of taking away men’s free-will, to save their souls. That is why they may vote democratically to be rid of Him and of His Ten Commandments, but as a result their lives will become more and more unbearable, as a punishment by His absence of their refusing His presence (to paraphrase Cardinal Pie). Of course men are aware that their godless lives are becoming more and more murderous – the food that does not nourish, schools that do not teach, doctors that no longer cure, hospitals that kill all ages of patients, politicians that betray – the list goes on and on – but does the mass of people even dream of turning back to God, or to Our Lord Jesus Christ? These make up the one solution which is excluded in advance. These may be mentioned neither in polite conversation, nor in politics.

Here is how and why we have the politicians and politics that we have. Politics are not a substitute religion. They are merely the arrangement of human society between men and men. Religion is far deeper and higher than politics, concerning the arrangement of eternal salvation, between men and God, notably the Ten Commandments, notably the first: I am the Lord your God, it is I who designed your human nature for you to go to Heaven, and if you co-operate, that is such a supreme gift for all eternity, and I surround you in your life on earth with so many creatures to help you to Heaven, that it is no more than just for Me to demand of you love and obedience in return. But I am a jealous God, and for your own good I will have no other gods before Me. Heed what I say, pay no attention to the liars who contradict Me, obey My Commandments, and then a bliss that you cannot remotely imagine will be yours, without interruption, for ever and ever. Heed My Mother, who will never lie to you, and She will show you the sure way to My Heaven, through My Catholic Church.

Kyrie eleison.

RIGHTEOUS CAUSE

RIGHTEOUS CAUSE on December 14, 2024

A Russian convert thunders against the West?

Only because he sees God’s foes the best!

Dear readers, beware. Today’s long quote below comes from the former president of Russia from 2008 to 2012 when he was filling in for Vladimir Putin, who was obliged by Russia’s Constitution at that time to step down for four years from the Presidency, even if Putin remained Prime Minister. To this day Dmitri Medvedev (1965- ) remains, upon information and belief, a close colleague of Putin, certainly a believer in what Putin is trying to achieve in the war with Ukraine, as shown by these words of his from December of two years ago. In Medvedev’s highly coloured denunciation of today’s rotten West, one may not agree with every detail, for instance the earliest European empires by which Portugal and Spain built a Rosary of Catholic nations from top to bottom of Central and South America, must have sent to Heaven hundreds of thousands of Catholic souls. However, as for the heart of the matter, Medvedev is absolutely right.

God exists. The Devil exists. Between the two of them is a pitched, and irreconcilable battle for the conquest of souls, by God to populate Heaven, by the Devil to populate Hell. God being the Creator and the Devil being a mere creature, then God could utterly paralyse the Devil at any moment that He wanted to. But He does not want to, because the more men have to struggle in this brief life to save their souls, the higher will be the quality of the souls saved, the more beautiful will be God’s paradise. So God is always giving a measure of liberty to the Devil to tempt and damn souls, but never so much liberty as to force souls to choose damnation. Even in the Garden of Gethsemane, Our Lord still tries to convert Judas Iscariot – “Friend, why are you here?” (Mt. XXVI, 50). All human life plays out against this battle between God and the Devil as its ultimate background, and to pretend one can be neutral is to side with the Devil.

This is what Medvedev sees so clearly in the war between Russia and the Ukraine: the West is rotten, it is the business of Russia to pour out its blood and treasure to clean out the rot. Surely Our Lady of Fatima thinks the same. Medvedev converted to Russian Orthodoxy at the age of 23. Most probably She obtained that grace for him. Here is what he said in 2022 – prepare to be shocked.

Everything against Russia today belongs to a dying world. It is a bunch of mad nazi drug-addicts, of zombies intimidated by them, and a huge pack of barking dogs coming out of the western doghouse. Together with them, a variegated herd of honking pigs and a narrow-minded middle class, originating from the collapse of the empire of the West, with the saliva of degeneracy dripping down their chins. They have neither faith nor ideal, unless it be the obscene morals they have invented and the norms of doublethink they have spread around, negating any of the morality granted to normal people. Here is why, by rising up against them, our fight has taken on a sacred character . . .

But then, you may object, why did you keep quiet for so long? We were weak, laid low by a sorry episode in our history. Whereas now we have fully woken up from that sticky half-sleep and from the mournful fog of these last tens of years in which the death of the Fatherland immersed us. Other countries were waiting for us to wake up, countries violated, enslaved and oppressed by the lords of darkness, who still dream of their monstrous colonial past, while they aspire to maintain their power over the world. Many countries gave up believing in their nonsense long ago, but they are still afraid of the colonial powers. Soon they will have to wake up. And when today’s rotten world order collapses, it will bury beneath the tons and tons of its wreckage all of its arrogant high priests, blood-stained followers, mocking servants and dumb zombies.

So what weapons do we have? They are various. We have the means of consigning all our enemies to a fiery hell, but that is not what we are about. We are listening to the Creator’s words in our hearts, and we are obeying what we hear. These words give us a sacred purpose, which is to stop in his tracks the supreme leader of Hell, whatever name anyone wants to give him . . . because his purpose is death. Our purpose is life. His weapon is one huge lie. Our weapons are the Truth. Here is why our cause is just. Here is why the victory will be ours!

Kyrie eleison.

SILENT MAJOR

SILENT MAJOR on December 7, 2024

In all things modern, Luther led the way?

Then heeding modern man must lead astray.

What on earth is a silent Major? Is it an army officer who does not talk much? Actually, no. It is a way of naming perhaps the most interesting feature of the book written by Archbishop Georg Gänswein, published last year, entitled “Who believes is not alone. My life beside Benedict XVI.” Gänswein was Pope Benedict’s choice to be his private secretary from 2003 to the Pope’s death on the last day of 2022. As secretary to the Pope for all those years, Gänswein was closely involved in affairs of the Catholic Church at the very top, and his book naturally relates interesting details of many of these affairs. However, from the standpoint of Catholic Tradition, what is of greatest interest is the Silent Major.

In logic, “Silent Major” names that essential part of a syllogism when it goes unmentioned, as one way of abbreviating a syllogism expressed in full, because the content of the Silent Major is supposedly too obvious to need mentioning. A syllogism is an argument consisting of three connected propositions, two Premisses, Major and Minor, and the Conclusion which can be deduced from the two Premisses when linked together. The Major might be compared to an expectant mother, the Minor to a mid-wife, and the Conclusion to the baby. Thus the Major implicitly includes the Conclusion, but the Minor is needed to make that Conclusion explicit by showing that is included in the Major.

Thus the most famous syllogism of all runs – Major: “All men are rational,” Minor: “Socrates is a man,” Conclusion: “Therefore Socrates is rational.” With the Silent Major the syllogism might be abbreviated as, “Socrates is a man, so he is bound to be rational,” or shorter still, “Being a man, Socrates is rational.” In daily life we are all the time syllogising, or deducing one thing from another two things, but it is rare for us to lay out the syllogisms in full. Frequently we leave out the Major or the Minor, but more frequently the Major, and then we have a case of the Silent Major. Here are two more examples – “Football is a sport, so it’s a waste of good time.” And “Catholic Tradition does not get through to modern man, it’s a waste of time.” The Silent Majors here are that “All sport is a waste of time,” and “Any religion is useless which does not get through to modern man.”

Thus in his book Gänswein paints a basically sympathetic portrait of life inside the Vatican and especially of Pope Ratzinger himself as a brilliant but humble man, basically an academic who never had any desire to be Pope because he would have preferred to retire somewhere calm where he could read and write books. In fact he wrote 66 of them, and they are no doubt full of many wise and traditional insights, as was his daily life, as Gänswein relates. This why many Traditionalists at that time put their hope and trust in him. Yet ultimately the Pope disappointed them. Why? Because of the Silent Major.

For indeed Ratzinger, like all modernists, was obsessed with getting through to modern man. Therefore for him the unchanging Truth of Catholic Tradition which he knew, always had to be at least expressed anew in a way that would fit modern man. But Luther, said a famous German “philosopher,” Johann Fichte (1762–1814) was “the first modern man.” And read “Three Reformers” of Jacques Maritain to see how today’s world is marinated in the revolt of Luther against the Catholic Church, in fact against God. So how is any modernist going to adapt godly Truth to godless modern man without resorting to ambiguity, on the way to outright heresy, which can also be found in the writings of Joseph Ratzinger?

And what weight can there be behind the best insights of Archbishop, Cardinal or Pope Ratzinger? If he believes in the Silent Major – “Catholicism must get through to modern man” – then at best he can only half believe in Catholic Truth. But Catholic Truth is all or nothing. If I believe in just one heresy, I have lost the Catholic Faith. Archbishop Lefebvre was not exaggerating when he said in 1990 that Rome had lost the Faith. Yet Gänswein portrays apostate Rome and Romans as though they are quite normal. He can only be himself a victim of the Silent Major.

Kyrie eleison.

CORPORAL PUNISHMENT

CORPORAL PUNISHMENT on November 30, 2024

‘Tis God Who designed, created every child.

Neglect His own instructions – they go wild.

“Spare the rod and spoil the child” is an old proverb, going back certainly before our own time, going back at least to the Old Testament, in surprisingly many places. Eight of them are quoted here below, with comments, and there might easily be even be more. What matters is to realise that if Scripture is so insistent, then the principle comes not only from natural common sense, but ultimately from God Himself to instruct us on how human nature, specially of boys, is to be formed. Of course modern circumstances must be taken into account, for instance fundamentally wicked legislation by which a government’s so-called “social services” can take my children away from me and my wife if we dare to lay a finger on them. But the series of Scripture quotes tells us at least what to think of such “social services.”

Let us begin with Proverbs XIII, 24, an almost literal version of our familiar proverb –

He that spareth the rod hateth his son: but he that loveth him correcteth him betimes.

Proverbs XIX, 18 is an appeal to common sense. Corporal punishment is to be used justly, without excess –

Chastise thy son, despair not: but to the killing of him set not thy soul.

Proverbs XXII, 15 evokes the original sin which is the great truth behind the need for corporal punishment –

Folly is bound up in the heart of a child, and the rod of correction shall drive it away.

Proverbs XXIII, 13 is another appeal to common sense: it will not kill the child to warm his backside –

Withhold not correction from a child: for if thou strike him with the rod, he shall not die.

Proverbs XXV, 20 declares how unwise it is to spoil a bad person (or naughty child) with being too nice – As vinegar upon nitre, so is he that singeth songs to a very evil heart.

Proverbs XXIX, 15, 17 declare the good/bad effect on parents of punishing/ not punishing children –

15 The rod and reproof instil wisdom, but the child that is left to his own will bringeth his mother to shame.

17 Instruct thy son, and he shall refresh thee, and shall give delight to thy soul.

Ecclesiasticus XXII, 6 repeats the teaching of Proverbs on the value of corporal punishment -–

 . . . the stripes and instruction of wisdom are never out of time (“stripes” here means “beatings”).

Ecclesiasticus XXX, 1–12 is a little treatise on the value of taking care in bringing up one’s sons –

He that loveth his son, frequently chastiseth him, that he may rejoice in his latter end, and not grope after the doors of his neighbours. 2 He that instructeth his son shall be praised in him, and shall glory in him in the midst of them of his household. 3 He that teacheth his son, maketh his enemy jealous, and in the midst of his friends shall glory in him . . . 6 For he left behind him a defender of his house against his enemies, and one that will repay kindness to his friends . . .

9 Give thy son his way, and he shall make thee afraid: play with him, and he shall make thee sorrowful. 10 Laugh not with him, lest thou have sorrow, and at the last thy teeth be set on edge. 11 Give him not liberty in his youth, and wink not at his devices. 12 Bow down his neck while he is young, and beat his sides while he is a child, lest he grow stubborn, and regard thee not, and so be a sorrow of heart to thee.

Do not the “child psychologists” of today teach parents rather the opposite of the Old Testament? Do not many parents of today tend to give up on disciplining or instructing their own children, rather handing them over, or letting them be taken in hand, by their godless States? And are the boys any the better for it? Judging by a mass of today’s young men . . .

Kyrie eleison.

CONTROLLED CHAOS

CONTROLLED CHAOS on November 23, 2024

God then withdrew, a punishment quite just,

Yet still men are intent on going bust!

If there is one word with which to describe the state of the Catholic Church today, surely that word is “chaos.” The normal structure of the Church is that of a pyramid, with God’s own Authority descending through Pope, cardinals, bishops and priests, all raised up by God to look after His sheep, or laity, at ground level. This hierarchy consists of fallible men, from top to bottom, so that at all levels mistakes can be made. However, if in normal circumstances a Superior in the hierarchy misbehaves, he usually has a Superior of his own to whom I can appeal against his misbehaviour, because any given Superior in the Church will normally make decisions in accordance with Canon Law, and, with a minimum of good will, in accordance with truth and justice. And so, in normal circumstances, from lower down I can appeal all the way up to Rome.

However, what happens when the fallible human being at the top of this pyramid loses his sense of truth and justice, and even his good will? There can only be chaos in the Church from top to bottom, because the Catholic Church was designed by God to be a monarchy in which there is His own divine Authority to protect the great truths of salvation, so that He can populate His Heaven with souls to share His bliss. That Authority is recognised and exercised at all levels of the hierarchy, but supremely by the Pope, who has no human Superior above him, but only God. It follows that if the Pope, or the man in white who is universally accepted as Pope, seems to lose all sense of Truth for which alone he receives his awesome Authority over the Church, dwarfing all merely human authorities, then the Church is in chaos, from top to bottom.

In this respect, the Catholic Church resembles a string doll consisting of multiple pieces of coloured wood, upheld on strings, upheld in turn by the puppeteer above. If for one moment the puppeteer lets go of the strings, the entire doll collapses into a jumbled heap of meaningless pieces of wood. If for one moment Almighty God lets go of His Pope and Cardinals in Rome, His bishops and priests and laity turn worldwide into a jumbled heap of Catholics, disunited and divided among themselves, many of them striving to recreate in their own little corner a semblance of that divine Authority which can come from God alone. What less can they do? Wise Catholics recognise their basic impotency, unless and until God restores a Catholic Pope. Meanwhile Catholics must do what they can to rebuild Catholic corners, and help all other Catholics to do the same, just so long as they have the Catholic Faith (and here let nobody pretend to be infallible!).

And the Pope, or seeming Pope? The correct perspective on the history of mankind is that, because of original sin, each of its Seven Ages is launched by a key figure, followed by a period of decadence until the next key figure is appointed by God to raise mankind up again, until the Antichrist will bring to an end the Seventh Age of the World which was introduced by God Himself with His Incarnation, some 2000 years ago.

This Seventh Age has been by far the longest, because God’s own Incarnation has been the turning-point of human history, the climax of all Seven Ages, because the Incarnation has continued ever since through the Catholic Church, Jesus continuing to live and save souls for eternity among all races and nations.

But God, to honour man, chose to entrust His Church not to angels but to fallible men, without turning them into robots by taking away their free-will. This means that He laid Himself open to the possibility that the human ministers of His Church would eventually so misuse their God-given free-will as to destroy His Church. This is what virtually happened at Vatican II (1962–1965). In 1968, God gave mankind a second chance, when He guided Pope Paul VI to condemn artificial means of birth control in the Encyclical Humanae Vitae. But all mankind, not just the Catholics, rose up in revolt, to condemn the old man dressed in white, living in Rome, supposed to know nothing about marriage.

Almighty God then said, so to speak, “Alright. Have it your own way. You do not want My Church. Have your own, and see how you like it. Good-bye for now. Get back in touch as soon as you want My Church back. Meanwhile, I will keep it going, in distress. I will be waiting to hear from you. I love you still.

Kyrie eleison.