Eleison Comments

Declaration of Support

Declaration of Support on June 27, 2020

Your Excellency, Archbishop Viganò,

Several days ago one of four bishops striving within the Church to maintain the defence of the Faith in accordance with the example set by Archbishop Lefebvre, wrote to you a letter of congratulations and support for your own letter of June 9, in which you traced back to the Second Vatican Council (1962–1965) the present crisis of the Church. With this further letter to yourself, all four of these bishops wish to give public expression to the same congratulations and support for yourself in your present difficult circumstances. Essentially we repeat what Bishop Tomás wrote to you, only a little shortened:

It is as a duty of conscience in front of the whole Church that this letter comes to give you public support in your recent denunciation of the crisis engulfing the Church, and of its origins in the Second Vatican Council. St Thomas Aquinas teaches that there is no obligation to profess the Faith at every moment, but when the Faith is in peril, then there is a grave duty to profess it, even at the risk of one’s life.

Can anyone today deny the unprecedented crisis in the Church, striking deeply at the Catholic priesthood? Yet truly Catholic priests are absolutely necessary for the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass and for the maintaining of holy doctrine. When the Church’s lawful authorities refuse to act in line with the mind of the Church, no bishop can merely resist in the Faith, like a layman may. Before God, from whom we receive our episcopacy, we state by our consecration with the fullness of Holy Orders that in the present crisis not only is it lawful but it is our bounden duty to use these powers for the good of souls.

In your letter of June 6, with an admirable clarity and sincerity, Your Excellency recognises how the Catholic clergy and faithful were deceived when the Council introduced new directions originating in the anti-Christian conspiracy. It is painful to observe the lamentable blindness of so many colleagues in the episcopacy and the priesthood who do not see, or do not wish to see, the present crisis and the need to resist the modernism now reigning supreme, and the Conciliar sect which is entrenched at the highest levels of the Church. This resistance is entirely lawful and in accordance with the will of the abiding Church. A bishop must, in effect, fulfil the mission entrusted to him: to hand down whatever can and must be handed down by the fullness of his Orders for the keeping of the Faith: “Tradidi quod et accepi.”

By their anti-liberalism and anti-modernism, in June of 1988 Archbishop Marcel Lefebvre and Bishop Antonio de Castro Mayer, to save the treasure of Catholic Tradition from modernism and the New Mass and the Council’s reforms, went ahead with consecrating four bishops in the so-called “Operation Survival,” thus guaranteeing that grace and the unchanging doctrine would continue to be handed down. As their heirs, we wish to express our sincere adherence to Your Excellency’s position, dictated by his fidelity to the Church of all time. By so doing we wish to do no other than drink at the same source, which is the Holy, Catholic and Apostolic Roman Church, outside of which there is no salvation.

And if anyone asks us when there will be an agreement with the authorities in Rome, our reply is simple: when Rome returns to Our Lord. On the day when the Roman officials once again recognise Our Lord as the King of all peoples and nations, on that day it will not be ourselves returning to the Church but those who attempted to overthrow the Catholic Church which we never left. In the meantime we judge that by openly opposing and resisting the Council’s errors and those who promote them, we are rendering the most necessary service to the Church of Our Lord Jesus Christ.

May the most Blessed Virgin, Our Lady, who as our Mother at Fatima warned us of the gravity of the present hour, grant to the Pope and to the bishops of the entire world the graces necessary for the Consecration of Russia to Her Immaculate Heart to be performed, and for the devotion of Reparation of the First Five Saturdays to be spread far and wide, so that modernism is abandoned and souls return to the Catholic Faith, whole and inviolate, without which it is impossible to please God.

May God bless His Excellency Archbishop Carlo Maria Viganò,

Bishop Jean-Michel Faure
Bishop Tomás Aquinas
Bishop Richard Williamson
Bishop Gerardo Zendejas

Admirable Reorientation

Admirable Reorientation on June 20, 2020

Here is a summary of the June 9 public letter of Archbishop Viganò on the Second Vatican Council:—

Bravo, Bishop Schneider, for your recent essay on the Council and its false religious liberty. People talk of “the Spirit of the Council.” But when was there talk of “the Spirit of Trent,” or of any other Catholic Council? There never was, because all other Councils simply followed the spirit of the Church. However, the good Bishop should beware of exaggerating “errors” that needed “correcting” in past teachings of the Church, because whatever these may have been, they were nothing like what the Second Vatican Council did, which was comparable (even in content) with the Council of Pistoia (A.D. 1786), later condemned by the Church.

At Vatican II, many of us were fooled. In good faith, we made too many allowances for the supposed good intentions of those promoting an ecumenism which turned later into false teaching on the Church. Today many Catholics no longer believe that there is no salvation outside the Catholic Church, and it is in the texts of Vatican II that the ambiguities are to be found which opened the way to this undermining of the Faith. It began with inter-religious meetings, but it is due to end in some universal religion from which the one true God will have been banished. This was all planned long ago. Numerous errors of today have their roots in Vatican II, to the texts of which it is easy to trace back today’s multiple betrayals of truly Catholic belief and practice. Vatican II is now used to justify all aberrations, whereas its texts prove uniquely difficult to interpret, and they contradict previous Church Tradition in a way no other Church Council has ever done.

I confess serenely now that I was at the time too unconditionally obedient to the Church authorities. I think that many of us could not then imagine the Hierarchy being unfaithful to the Church, as we see now especially in the present Pontificate. With the election of Pope Francis, at last the conspirators’ mask came off. They were finally free from the philo-Tridentine Benedict XVI, free to create the Newchurch, to replace the old Church with a Masonic substitute for both the form and substance of Catholicism.

Democratisation, synodality, women priests, pan-ecumenism, dialogue, demythologising the Papacy, the politically correct, gender theory, sodomy, homosexual marriage, contraception, immigrationism, ecologism, – if we cannot recognise how all these have their roots in Vatican II, there will be no cure for them.

Such a recognition “requires a great humility, first of all in recognizing that for decades we have been led into error, in good faith, by people who, established in authority, have not known how to watch over and guard the flock of Christ.” Those shepherds who in bad faith or even with malicious intent betrayed the Church, must be identified and excommunicated . We have had far too many mercenaries, more concerned with pleasing Christ’s enemies than with being faithful to His Church.

“Just as I honestly and serenely obeyed questionable orders sixty years ago, believing that they represented the loving voice of the Church, so today with equal serenity and honesty I recognize that I have been deceived.” I cannot now persevere in my error. Nor can I claim that I saw clear from the start. We all knew that the Council was more or less a revolution, but none of us imagined just how devastating it would be. We could say that Benedict XVI slowed it down, but the Pontificate of Francis has proved beyond all possible doubt that among the shepherds at the top of the Church there is sheer apostasy, while the sheep below are abandoned and virtually scorned.

The Declaration of Abu Dhabi (“God is pleased with all religions”) was unforgivable for a Catholic. True charity does not compromise with error. And if one day Francis refuses any longer to play the game, he will be removed, just like Benedict XVI was removed, and replaced. But the Truth remains and will prevail: “Outside the Catholic Church there is no salvation.”

Kyrie eleison.

Modernism’s Malice – V

Modernism’s Malice – V on June 13, 2020

There is at least one more important consideration to be presented before we leave modernism alone (at least for the time being), and it is a prophecy of Fr Frederick Faber (1814–1863), concerning our own times, which has surely appeared already more than once in these “Comments.” He said words to the effect that the end of the world will be characterised by men doing evil while they think they are doing good.

It stands to reason. Even at world’s end men will still have their God-given nature, which as such is good, underlying their original and personal sins, however heavy these are in the last times – II Tim. III, 1–5. By this underlying nature which underlies even their inborn original sin, men have an underlying natural inclination to good. Yet the mass of men under the Antichrist and his predecessors will have gone along with his evil, actual or anticipated. How will this good and this evil have been compatible inside them?

The human will can want nothing that the human mind has not first presented to it. In front of every human desire must go a human thought. The desire of a non-object can only be a non-desire. Therefore the will depends on the mind to have grasped its object for it, and between every will and the object it wants must have come the mind, always assuming that the mind grasps its own object. But now comes Kant who says that the mind cannot grasp its own real object, it can only grasp what it itself fabricates. This means that the will and its real object are no longer properly connected. This means that a good will can will things in reality bad and a bad will can will something in reality good, but given men’s original sin the latter case will be less frequent. And so when Kant unhooks the mind from objective reality, he is making it that much easier for the will to want something bad while it appeared to be good. Thus in today’s whole world of minds unhooked from objective reality, it is that much easier for men still to be of good will even when they are wanting what is in reality not good, because the mind has been radically crippled.

Here is what Fr Faber is prophesying. He is saying that by the end of the world, the problem need not be so much bad hearts or ill-will as good hearts with crippled minds, in other words good hearts with bad principles. What does this mean in practice? It means that today there will be a large number of Catholics who can have the Faith and who mean well, but whose minds are malfunctioning because they follow, consciously but more often unconsciously, the teaching of Kant, so that their good will is correspondingly adrift. Then they can no longer see how the Newchurch is a gangrene upon the true Catholic Church, or how the Archbishop’s Society of St Pius X is being gangrened by his successors. But in many cases the blindness of such souls is not necessarily out of malice or a lack of good will.

It follows that in dealing with such souls in which the subjective has been split from the objective by a whole world crippled by Kant, a Catholic can easily make one of two opposed but connected errors. Either he can say that such souls are so innocent of heart that they cannot be mistaken in mind, so the Newchurch cannot be all that mistaken, and so he should rejoin it, Pachamama and all – thus behave today the Newsociety’s leaders and all those following them. Or he can say that the errors in the mind of the Newchurch and the Newsociety wishing to rejoin it are so grave that they cannot possibly be the true Church or the true Society, and both must be absolutely shunned – thus argue and behave those known as sedevacantists and those who may refuse the label of sedevacantism but take sedevacantist positions.

On the contrary, if I recognise how Kant began the split of subject from object, I will say neither that such souls are of good will and therefore their doctrine is good, nor that their doctrine is so false that they must be of bad will. Instead I will say that subjectively they may be of good will, but in any case they are objectively of such bad doctrine that for my eternal salvation I cannot follow them or keep them company. And with the Holy Rosary I will beg Our Lady to keep my heart and mind balanced in truth.

Kyrie eleison.

Modernism’s Malice – IV

Modernism’s Malice – IV on June 6, 2020

These “Comments” of March 21 last claimed to be bringing into view “the incredible perversity, pride and perfidy” of Kant. That may seem strong language coming from a Catholic concerning a famous and merely worldly philosopher, but he is not merely worldly. Who that really knows the Revolution in the Church of Vatican II (1962–1965) would not recognise perversity, pride and perfidy as being its hallmarks? Strong language again? Let us see firstly how each of these three hallmarks applies to the principle that the mind is incapable of knowing its own object, extra-mental reality, for which it was designed by God (but Kantism was designed by Kant as a fortress precisely to shut out God, said the great theologian, Fr. Garrigou-Lagrange [1877–1964]). And secondly, how the three marks apply to 1960’s Conciliarism.

PERVERSITY of Kantism When in his Summa Theologiae (2a2ae, 154, art.12) St Thomas Aquinas wishes to prove the supreme malice of homosexuality amongst the sins of impurity, he does it by comparing it with the denial of the principles of thinking inborn in the nature of the mind. But Kant denies not just one or two natural principles of the mind, he denies the application of every single inborn principle of the mind to external reality. Kantism is supremely perverse, and is not that conclusion corroborated by how widespread is the sin against nature among students in our Kantian “universities”?

and of Conciliarism Among Council documents, Dei Verbum section 8 paragraph 2 gives an ambiguous definition of living Tradition, in the name of which John-Paul II condemned that unchanging Catholic Tradition in the name of which Archbishop Lefebvre had just consecrated four bishops in June of 1988. In other words, Catholic Truth so changes down the ages that the Archbishop’s version of objective and unchanging Tradition is no longer acceptable. This melting of Catholic Truth is totally perverse.

PRIDE of Kantism If the “Thing in itself” created by God is unknowable to me on the other side of the appearances, where my mind cannot reach, and if, as Kantism holds, I recompose the thing from the sense appearances in accordance with the prior laws of my own mind, then I become the creator of things, they are fabricated by me, and I take the place of God. For indeed God very rarely makes Himself perceptible to the human senses – even Incarnate and touched by St Thomas, the Apostle still needed an act of faith to believe in His godhead (Jn. XX, 28) – so God is behind the sense-appearances, so, for Kant, He is inaccessible to my mind. He depends on my will to believe in Him, thus: Not what I know but what I want is what is real. Now I want God. So God is real. If this is the basis of God’s existence, could it be more fragile? And if God depends on me to want Him for Him to exist, could pride be more insane?

and of Conciliarism As Fr Calderón makes abundantly clear in his study of Vatican II, Prometheus, the key to the modern man to whom it is the Council’s purpose to adapt the religion of God, is liberty. Modern man will accept no objective truth imprisoning his mind, no objective law commanding his will, no grace healing his nature for any other purpose than nature’s own freedom. In brief, modern man will have nothing and nobody superior to him. He is the supreme creature by his freedom. Also, he is more free than God because he is free to choose evil, which God is not. Again, could pride be more mad?

PERFIDY of Kantism To deny, as does Kantism, that the mind can know anything beyond the sense-appearances, is not to deny that things are what they are, it is merely to make the utterly absurd pretention that they depend on my mind to be what they are. Thus for purposes of living, even surviving, my great mind is bound to fabricate meals on the appearance of my kitchen-table, otherwise I will get rather hungry. And similarly I will fabricate all things necessary for daily existence. So I can behave in daily life just like a normal non-Kantian, and deceive people that I am not crazy at all. Only if I tell them that my mind fabricated the breakfast will they realise that they are dealing with a madman. Thus I can hide from view my radical inward betrayal of outward reality. This is potentially perfidious.

and of Conciliarism Vatican II is not just potentially but actually perfidious because, again as Fr Calderón makes abundantly clear, its very essence was to create a new man-centred humanism which would be able to pass itself of as being still God-centred Catholicism. Objective disguise and deceit were written into the Council’s charter from the very beginning.

Kyrie eleison.

Admirable Appeal

Admirable Appeal on May 30, 2020

Ever since governments all over the world clamped down on the lives of their citizens over two months ago because of dishonest reports of the danger of the “corona-virus” let loose from China, honest experts have contradicted these reports. Included in that clamp-down were severe measures taken against Catholics attending Mass or any of the Holy Week liturgy. And at the time Church leaders and laity set up little resistance. But earlier this month some churchmen published an “Appeal for Church and World” in which at last the sinister forces behind the so-called “pandemic” were openly denounced, even if they were not clearly named. It was high time that Catholics received guidance from high-ranking churchmen that they are being led like sheep to the slaughter by wolves of the Antichrist disguised as friends of mankind. Here is a summary of the 1375-word Appeal –

In today’s crisis, we undersigned Church leaders consider we are in duty bound to make this Appeal to all Catholics and souls of good will. People’s rights have been violated by worldwide government measures taken on the excuse of the coronavirus to restrict their liberties when the facts show that the media panic raised over the virus has been exaggerated out of all proportion. We believe that there are powers interested in creating panic among the world’s population with the sole aim of permanently imposing unacceptable forms of restriction on freedoms, of controlling people and tracking their movements, and that this is a disturbing prelude to the realisation of a world government beyond all control. Such measures have wrecked many an economy, and encouraged foreign interference, whereas governments must protect their citizens and not indulge in social engineering to split families and isolate individuals.

Let scientists tell the truth and beware of shady business interests and of pharmaceutical companies seeking huge profits by expensive cures for the not so dangerous virus. Let governments rigorously avoid all systems of tracking or locating their citizens, and let them not support the hidden intentions of supranational bodies that have very strong commercial and political interests in the plan to do so. Let citizens be free to refuse vaccines, and let self-styled “experts” enjoy no kind of immunity from prosecution. Let the media tell the truth and not practise various forms of censorship as are now being practised, to impose a single way of thinking, in fact a subtle dictatorship of opinion, all the more effective for being subtle.

And last but not least, let everyone remember that Our Lord Jesus Christ granted to His Church an entire independence from the State to worship God and to teach and govern citizens in accordance with her own purposes, the glory of God and the salvation of souls. The State may not interfere in any ruling of the Church upon her own affairs, nor may it in any way limit the sovereignty of God’ s own true Church, nor may it in any way restrict or ban public worship or Catholic priests doing their priestly duty. Therefore let all coronavirus restrictions upon Catholic worship be removed. If citizens have duties towards the State, so also they have rights, which include respect for natural law and for God’s interests coming first.

We are fighting against an invisible enemy that seeks to divide citizens, to separate children from parents, grandchildren from grandparents, souls from priests, students from teachers, and so on, in brief to erase centuries of Christian civilisation by an odious technological tyranny in which nameless and faceless people can decide the fate of the world by confining us to a virtual reality. But Christ will win. We pray for government leaders who face a special responsibility before the judgment seat of God, We beg Our Lord to protect His Church. And may Our Lady defeat the plans of the children of darkness.

And this appeal was signed by dozens of eminent laymen, in addition to several leading churchmen.

Kyrie eleison.

Men Lacking

Men Lacking on May 23, 2020

When Authority abandons Truth in the Catholic Church as it has been doing ever since Vatican II, then it is easier said than done to walk the fine line between heresy on the left and schism on the right. So it is not surprising if an unusually sharp remark like that of Archbishop Lefebvre quoted in the last two issues of these “Comments” (“Hoist the ladder . . . ”) arouses interest.

One layman even doubted the authenticity of the remark – could the sweet Archbishop really have said such a thing? Oh yes, he did. The original words are a little less elegant than the polished quotation, but the substance is identical – “With that, all that’s left is to pull up the ladder. There’s nothing to be done with these people (the Conciliar Romans). What have we got in common with them? Nothing! It’s not possible. It’s not possible” (6 Sept. 1990). The 1990 audio tape reference is Audio – Retrec – PASCALE90 or SACERDOTALE90. (However, let anyone wishing to check the quotation for himself beware of “revised” collections of the Archbishop’s tapes, because any words of his strongly opposed, like these to the Conciliarists in Rome, may well have been cut out by “editors” of the pro-Rome Newsociety.)

Another reader who reacted to the quotation is a priest, from the Novus Ordo, but now firmly established in a Newsociety Priory in Switzerland (without having been conditionally re-ordained, as best we know).

He thinks that “things really look different today” because the present generation of officials in Rome are a different breed from those that the Archbishop was reacting to in the 1980’s, and the best of them want a genuine restoration of the Church. He concludes that to adopt the Archbishop’s attitude today leaves only two solutions – either the “Resistance” or sedevacantism.

But, Father, while the present breed of Church leaders may be different men from the traitor-priests of the Archbishop’s time, who did all they could to destroy the true Church, have they understood (or read) Pascendi? And what use are sweet and well-meaning Church authorities to the Faith or to the Church or to the SSPX or to the “Resistance,” if they have not grasped that the problem is rubber minds which cannot even conceive of truth condemning error or of dogma condemning heresy? A rubber mind sympathetic to Tradition is basically no more use to Tradition than a rubber mind condemning Tradition. Nor is it true that things are “really different” from the Archbishop’s time. The sign that a priest has really understood the problem is when – at least figuratively – he wants to go down to Rome with a machine-gun and send all sweetie-pies to meet their Maker, as Putin would say. In brief, the “Resistance” must stay on the road, otherwise the road will be torn up to provide stones to cry out the Truth in place of the silent shepherds and their non-barking dogs (cf. Lk XIX, 40). The “Resistance” must not, may not, give way!

Finally a good priest seeks to console us with the news from a Society Prior that the Newsociety Superior General told a meeting in February of all Newsociety Priors in France that discussions between the SSPX and Rome are at a standstill because the SSPX is still insisting on doctrine first – well done, Fr Pagliarani – while Rome insists on fixing first a practical agreement. But need Rome even be concerned? Need it not merely wait for the ripe fruit to fall into its lap? Bishop Tissier is now so unwell that reportedly a room is being hospitalised inside Écône for him to retire to. Only two SSPX bishops remain to look after its worldwide needs. So either the Superior General must submit to Rome’s terms for the consecration of further bishops, continuing his predecessor’s disastrous conciliating of Church leaders who, however sweet they are, have lost the Faith, as the Archbishop said. Or he must consecrate more bishops without the Pope’s permission, as the Archbishop did. But would the Newsociety still follow in the Archbishop’s heroic line, of defying the (at least) objective traitors in Rome? One may doubt it.

Kyrie eleison.