Eleison Comments

“…Into Temptation…” ?

“...Into Temptation...” ? on January 25, 2020

A reader asks a classic question concerning the Lord’s Prayer, where it says, “Lead us not into temptation.” Surely temptation is an evil. How can the infinitely good God lead us into an evil? Yet if we pray to Him not to lead us into evil, it stands to reason that He can do so. But how is that possible? For “Lead us not into temptation” is the literal translation of the original text in Greek – “μη εισενεγκης ημ ας εις πειρασμον”– and the Church teaches that the original text in Greek was inspired by God Himself. How can God Himself declare that He can lead us into temptation? Four truths need to be established:—

1 Firstly, God can want physical evil, like for instance an illness to punish morally evil human beings, but it is absolutely impossible for God to want moral evil, because that is sin, and God cannot possibly sin, because He is Goodness Itself, because He is Being Itself. For if anything at all exists, then a First Cause must exist, and that First Cause can have had no finite limits set to its Being by any cause prior to Its First self, so it is Infinite Being. Now where there is being there is goodness, and vice versa, in fact the two are interchangeable – evil is always the lack in a being of something due to it, for instance blindness is no evil in a stone, but it is an evil in an animal that normally has sight. Therefore the Infinite Being is infinitely good, or Infinite Goodness, incapable of directly wanting or causing moral evil. Few things are more absolutely certain than that.

2 However, God can allow moral evil because He can and does always draw out of it a greater good. We human beings can by no means always see in what that greater good consists, but at the latest at the General Judgment, all of us will see clearly the supreme Wisdom of allowing every moral evil which He ever allowed. Here is a useful comparison – from the underside of a woven carpet I can only guess at the beauty of the pattern on the carpet’s over-side. But that beauty exists, and without it I would not be seeing the underside which enables me at least to guess at the beauty invisible from the underside.

3 Objection: but God is still acting in order to allow moral evil, e.g. temptation to sin. For instance in several verses of Exodus VII-XIII, Scripture says that God “hardened the Pharaoh’s heart,” for him to sin against the Israelites. Solution: no, whenever God allows a moral evil, He commits no positive act, He merely abstains from granting the grace or help with which the sinner would not have sinned. But by choosing to allow the Pharaoh to sin, he was positively leading the Pharaoh into temptation and sin. No, because Scripture says, “God is faithful, and He will not let you be tempted beyond your strength, but with the temptation will also provide the way of escape that you may be able to endure it” (I Cor. X, 13).

Therefore sinners being tempted are being given by God all the grace they need not to sin, so long as they themselves want not to sin. It is their own fault if they fall in the temptation.

4 But whenever sinners fell in temptation, God foresaw that they would do so. Why then did He lead them into it, by allowing it, and by abstaining from giving the grace needed by them not to fall in it? Negatively, because it is only ever the sinners’ fault if in temptation they fall. Positively, St Ignatius in his Spiritual Exercises (#322) gives three positive reasons why God can allow spiritual desolation for a soul, and the same reasons apply to spiritual temptation: God can make good use of moral temptation to punish us, or to try us, or to teach us. He can punish us by the next temptation for the last sin we committed. Then by putting us to the trial by a temptation, He can make it possible for us to earn great merit, so long as we resist and do not fall. Padre Pio said, “If only souls knew how much they can merit by resisting temptation, they would positively ask to be tempted.” And lastly God can teach us how truly dependent we are on His help by a temptation that shows us how humble and weak we are without His help.

In conclusion, there is so much good for us sinners that God can draw out of allowing us to be tempted that we need not even ask not to be tempted, but we must ask for the grace not to fall when we are being tempted. Lord, let fire warm me, but never burn me. Let temptation make me merit, but never fall.

Professor Drexel – III

Professor Drexel – III on January 18, 2020

In the third and last extracts for these “Comments” from the admirable book of Professor Drexel from the 1970’s in Austria, “Faith is greater than Obedience,” we are entitled to think that it is Our Lord speaking, because in itself the message is entirely orthodox, and in the context of the confusion in the Church which followed on Vatican II (1962–1965), it is a clear signpost that the official Church was going the wrong way, as it is still doing, well into the 20th century. For the Catholic clergy, the message is a clear warning: if you insist on following men’s new direction so as to abandon God’s true religion, you face a frightening condemnation in Hell when you die. For the Catholic lay-folk, the book is an encouragement equally clear: if with faith and courage you remain faithful to the true Church, your reward will be great in Heaven. For clergy and laity alike, the message is entirely up-to-date in 2020.

MAY, 1974.

Do not become dejected because of the confusion and heresies of unfaithful and apostate priests, whose body and sensual enjoyment count more than the love of My Church and of immortal souls. Let all the real, true believers know that the interior and exterior enemies of the Church shall perish – forever – unless they return with interior repentance to the one and only doctrine of the Church.

I tell you: Priests will arise, who are even now being trained, hidden away in silence for the future and for the time – coming soon – when with an apostolic spirit, following in the footsteps of the saints, for that divine order and for that unity of My Catholic Church which I desire, they will step forward with a holy reverence for the mystery and miracle of the Holy Eucharist. (This is surely a prophecy of the young priests of Tradition who would start coming out of Écône in small but significant numbers in 1976.)

JULY, 1975.

My Church lives in the midst of apostasy and destruction. She lives on among numerous faithful and loyal people. In the history of My Church, there have always been times of decline, desertion and devastation, because of bad priests and tepid shepherds. But the spirit of God is stronger, and upon the ruins and graveyard of infidelity and betrayal it has raised up the Church and caused it to blossom again, only smaller than before. My servant Marcel’s work in Écône is not about to perish! (The “Marcel” here mentioned is of course Archbishop Lefebvre who founded in 1970 the Traditional seminary of Écône.)

MARCH, 1976.

My faithful son Marcel, who is suffering so much for the sake of the Faith, is on the right track. He is like a light and pillar of truth, which many ordained priests of Mine are betraying. Faith is greater than

obedience. Therefore, it is My will that the work for the theological education of priests should continue, in the spirit and according to the will of My son Marcel, so as to contribute powerfully to the rescue of My one true Church. (Whoever has ears to hear, has here the clearest endorsement of Catholic Tradition.)

DECEMBER, 1976.

Those who prepare themselves for the priesthood and enter seminaries under the diocesan bishops, enter without having a whole or deep faith in Transsubstantiation; and not a few priestly candidates flirt with the idea of one day getting married. Therefore, the time is not far away when people will be without priests in many places.

Yet those priests who see in the sacramental Sacrifice of the Mass the truest and holiest of sacrifices, and who celebrate with a holy reverence the mystery of My Body and Blood, as does My worthy servant Marcel, are persecuted, despised, and outlawed.

Kyrie eleison.

Professor Drexel – II

Professor Drexel – II on January 11, 2020

As with many alleged messages from Heaven, if anyone were to say that the essence of the messages given to Professor Drexel from 1970 to 1977 is already in the Gospel, namely “Blessed are you when men revile and persecute you . . . for your reward is great in Heaven” (Mt. V, 11–12), they would be quite right. But if they went on to say that his messages are not necessary because they are already in the Gospel, they would be quite wrong. In the 1970’s began the moral torture of many good Catholics torn by the priests of Vatican II between their Catholic faith and their Catholic obedience. It took Our Lord to tell souls like Prof. Drexler, again and again, that it was His own priests who had betrayed.

For indeed Catholics who for 400 years had been saved by their obedience to the faithful Council of Trent (1545–1563) could not, to begin with, grasp that the same obedience could no longer be given to the unfaithful Second Vatican Council (1962–1965). By 2020 the fidelity of Archbishop Lefebvre to the unchanging pre-Conciliar faith and Mass have had time to raise Tradition all over the Church (although there is still a long way to go), but in 1970 it was simply inconceivable except to a very few souls that the Catholic Pope and bishops and priests could be demolishing the Church. Hence the need for messages like this one of July 3, 1970 from Our Lord (as one may well believe) to Professor Drexel:—

“Be in good spirit and do not let yourself be discouraged by the unrest and attempted demolition of My Church, nor by the subversion of the order of the world. It is true that Satan and his demoniacal powers are in action as never before in the history of mankind and the Church. But through the influence of God and the action of the Holy Ghost, is not a Work being created, which, more than any other work, calls upon the help of the angels, the supernatural powers and the good spirits? This work is of divine origin!

May all the faithful of My Church walk in peace and with firmness towards the future.

Satan will rage, and his best helpers are the priests who have fallen away, interiorly and exteriorly, from their faith and their consecration. Mary Immaculate, never touched by sin, shall be victorious. Although My flock that follows me and My cross, and that is faithful and with love believes in the holy presence of My Body and Blood, may become smaller, nevertheless faith and prayer, the profession of faith and hope, and the love of truth, shall triumph in the end. The storms may rage. In nature they can crack rocks and burst dams. But God is all-powerful, truth is stronger, grace richer and more abundant, and therefore the Rock which I have founded will last until the end!”

In the same vein are words from the message of March 5, 1971, to Professor Drexel:—

“Do not be discouraged by the present internal and external oppression of My Church. It is from within that the servants of God have become unfaithful to their vocation and their grace ( . . . ) These are the priests and theologians, as they call themselves, who have abandoned and betrayed me, and who are still persecuting me. Their number increases ( . . . ) Never since I walked visibly among men have the troubles of My one and true Church been so great as at this present time – and the distress is still growing.

Nevertheless, do not despair – even if the flock of which I as Divine and Good Shepherd spoke, becomes very small, that Church which I founded on Peter and which I compared to a rock, shall be destroyed neither from without nor from within. But you and all souls who have been entrusted to you by the Father, must continue to work for the Church, for the faith and for souls. The people helping you shall harvest blessings for their good deeds, and this blessing cannot be compared to anything in this world.”

Kyrie eleison.

Professor Drexel – I

Professor Drexel – I on January 4, 2020

As the crisis of Church and world continues relentlessly from one year to the next, at another New Year’s beginning it may be the moment to return to messages of Our Lord from the early 1970’s when countless good Catholics were starting to suffer seriously from the confusion and distress following on the imposition upon them of the new religion of the Second Vatican Council, which had just come to an end in 1965. One such victim of Vatican II was Fr. Albert Drexel (1889–1977), a prestigious professor of philology from the Vorarlberg in Austria but also a devout Catholic priest, to whom from 1922 Our Lord appeared with a message on every First Friday of the month, to guide his devotion.However, only from 1970 were the messages written down, to be gathered together until his death, after which they were published in a little book still available today, entitled “Faith is greater than obedience.” No Catholic is obliged to believe that these are words of Our Lord Himself, but the First Friday messages from 1970 to 1977 are their own validation for many sheep that recognise in them the Master’s voice. Here for instance is the message of March 5, 1976, from which the words above are taken, just when the Faith of the true Church and obedience to the false Church were coming into sharpest conflict:— “The future looks dark for you. Your interior struggle for true perception and the way to take in the confusion is known to me. And so I shall enlighten you. My faithful son Marcel (Archbishop Lefebvre), who suffers a great deal for the faith, is going on the right path. He is like a light and pillar of truth, which many ordained priests of mine are betraying. Faith is greater than obedience. Therefore it is my will that the work of theological education for priests continues in the spirit and will of my son Marcel, for the salvation and great help of my one and true Church. “The spirit of the world has infiltrated the Church, and the Spirit of God has abandoned many hearts who were called to proclaim His Spirit. They talk about other things and lose themselves in the tricks and snares of Satan. And thus they corrupt the people and even the children ( . . . ) This spirit has penetrated the ecclesiastics and monasteries and convents, because the monks and nuns have lost and deserted the spirit of the Founders of their Orders. They have become a scandal for the people and the world. They have lost not only love towards My most holy Mother, but also reverence towards My sacramental presence. Instead the monks preach about things of the world, of luxury, of a life of pleasure, and the nuns do not talk about the holy angels, and many not even about the most holy Virgin and Mother Mary. Still, places do exist of quiet and of prayer, special shrines in which Mary, My Mother and the Mother of grace, is honoured.” Perhaps this message of 1976 is a little dated, insofar as the difference between the fruits of Vatican II and those of Archbishop Lefebvre have had time to make clear to many souls where the true Spirit of God is to be found. Today in fact the Archbishop is bearing more and more fruit outside of the limits of the Society he founded. Nevertheless, God’s true Church is still being torn to pieces by the modernist wolves in sheep’s clothing, and many souls are still being tempted to abandon the true Faith and the true Church. Let them heed one of many extracts from the messages to Fr Drexel, e.g. from New Year’s Day, 1971:— “A darkness hangs over my holy Church. The confusion is growing; more and more priests become unfaithful to their mission and grace ( . . . ) but while the fruit of the wicked and godless ends in corruption, the fruit of the faithful souls shall blossom into a purer and more beautiful Church. Hail to those who understand the hour and remain in my love, confess My Mother, follow the path of the saints, and who confide in the guidance of the angels; these faithful souls shall shine in the darkness, shall not waver under attack and shall not crumble amidst trials . . .” Kyrie eleison.

Speak Up!

Speak Up! on December 28, 2019

If there have been great minds from the past, it is because they will have been thinking on great matters, which means, explicitly or implicitly, matters of God, and if they were truly great minds, their thinking will have been not just destructive. One such mind was certainly England’s Shakespeare. As a Catholic he grappled with his country’s apostasy being fulfilled just as he was reaching his prime, around 1600. But that turning of England to Protestantism meant that if he did not want to be hanged, drawn and quartered, he had to disguise his Catholic message, as Clare Asquith proved in her book of 2005, “Shadowplay,” where she took English literature way above English “patriots” and the dwarves of literary criticism.

To take just one example, in the book’s Appendix on Shakespeare’s Sonnet 152, she shows how from start to finish, beneath the obvious application to a woman Shakespeare has known, there is a complete second meaning of far wider application to himself as a writer who has failed to warn his countrymen as he should have done. Here are the 14 lines of the sonnet together with their obvious meaning:—

In loving thee thou know’st I am forsworn
But thou art twice forsworn to me love swearing,
In act thy bed-vow broke and new faith torn,
In vowing new hate after new love bearing.
But why of two oaths’ breach do I accuse thee,
When I break twenty? I am perjured most,
For all my vows are oaths but to misuse thee,
And all my honest faith in thee is lost;
For I have sworn deep oaths of thy deep kindness,
Oaths of thy love, thy truth, thy constancy,
And, to enlighten thee, gave eyes to blindness,
Or made them swear against the thing they see.
    For I have sworn thee fair: more perjured eye,
    To swear against the truth so foul a lie.

You know I break a promise by loving you, but by
swearing you love me, you break two promises: you
forsook your husband’s bed, then returned to him
(“new faith,” “new love”) only to forsake him again.
But why do I accuse you of breaking two oaths when
I break twenty oaths? It is I the greater perjurer, for
To your own harm I have sworn oath upon oath about
your goodness when I well knew you were not good.
Thus I have been swearing that you are very kind,
very loving, very truthful, very constant, and to
put you in a good light, I have made me see what I
Did not see, or, have sworn I saw not what eye saw.
    For I have sworn you were good. What terrible
    Perjury on my part, when that is so untrue!

Interestingly, the sonnet’s text makes more sense in its hidden meaning, referring to faithless England, than in its apparent meaning, referring to Shakespeare’s unfaithful mistress. Thus “Merrie Englande” had been a faithful wife of the Catholic Church for 900 years. By Henry VIII’s Act of Supremacy (1534), (“In Act”) England broke its marriage (“bed-vow”) with the Catholic Church and took Protestantism as its lover. Then it remarried the Catholic Church under Mary Tudor (1553, “new faith,” “new love”), only to fall back into adultery with Protestantism under Elizabeth I (1558, “new faith torn,” “new hate” of the Catholic Church). But Shakespeare (1564–1616) blames himself for much worse infidelity, because down these years he has repeatedly glorified (“to enlighten thee”) England with its unfaithful Tudor rulers, for instance in his History Plays, glorified to England’s harm (“to misuse thee”), because as a Catholic he knew full well that Protestantism would be the ruin of “Merrie Englande.” Sure enough!

And today? The pattern repeats itself: for over 1900 years Catholics were faithfully married to the true Church, but with Vatican II (1962–1965) the mass of them followed bad leaders into more or less of adultery with the modern world (“bed-vow broke”). Then Archbishop Lefebvre (1905–1991) led many back to the truly Catholic Church (“new faith,” “new love,” or renewal of the old faith and the old love), only to see his successors at the head of the Society of St Pius X which he founded in 1970 fall back into an adulterous longing for a reunion with Conciliar Rome, by a “new hate” for the pre-Conciliar truth.

Conclusion? Any Shakespeares amongst us, or any Catholics, must speak up, that Pachamama Rome is, as such, nothing other than an abomination, to be shunned.

Kyrie eleison.

Two Bishops

Two Bishops on December 21, 2019

Ever since the summer and autumn of 2012 when it became clear that two of the three bishops of the Society of St Pius X were no longer taking the position towards relations of the Society with Rome which they had taken in their April 7 letter to Society Headquarters, followers of the Society, priests and laity, have wondered why. Few people, then or since, will have taken the bishops’ change of position to have been a question of persons or personalities. Since the letter warned severely against abandoning Archbishop Lefebvre’s clear refusal of contacts with unconverted Rome, most people took the two bishops’ change for what it was, namely a rallying to the Superior General’s new principle of contact before conversion. Yet since Conciliar Rome had hardly changed except for the worse between 1988 and 2012, why had the two bishops changed?

The question retains all of its importance for today. What is to be gained by the Society for the Faith – not by the Faith for the Society! – through friendly contacts of the Society with the Conciliar Romans still hell-bent on their Vatican II ecumenism, down to and including the Pope’s veneration of the Pachamama idol in the very gardens of the Vatican? One thing seems certain: for the last 20 years the Society has staked everything for its future on that friendship, and to give it up now would mean admitting that these 20 years had all been a big mistake. Therefore the Society, in grave need of new bishops for its worldwide Traditional apostolate, cannot choose and consecrate its own choice of Traditional bishops, because these would certainly displease the Conciliar Romans. Therefore the two bishops in 2012 laid a heavy cross on their own backs, heavier each year – they helped to drive the Society up a blind alley – in 2019 it cannot have, and it cannot not have, its own bishops.

Recent information became available that throws some light on the two bishops’ decision to abandon the Archbishop’s line of conversion-before-contacts, to which they had so recently adhered. As for Bishop de Galarreta, we learn that almost as soon as the April 7 letter appeared on the Internet, he hastened to SSPX Headquarters to apologise to the Superior General for its appearance, which he absolutely disclaimed. But how could he disclaim the appearance without also dissociating himself from the content? It seems that the publication made him fear the imminent implosion of the Society more than the content made him fear the blind alley of the Society, its essential abandoning of the Archbishop’s defending of the faith. Was the Society’s survival more important than that of the faith?

Bishop Tissier de Mallerais took longer to retract his signature, so to speak, of the April 7 letter, but by early 2013 that retraction was also clear. To a friend he then gave the following episcopal guidance: Rome’s conversion cannot today come all at once. Official recognition will enable us to work that much more efficaciously from within the Church. We need patience and tact to take our time so as not to upset the Romans who still do not like our criticism of the Council, but we are making our way gradually – is that not what the Saints did? We must continue to denounce scandals and to accuse the Council, but we need to be intelligent so as to understand the way of thinking of our adversaries, who do after all include the See of Peter. Bishop Fellay’s policy has not really failed: nothing was signed on the 13th of June, 2012, nothing catastrophic, nothing stupendous has happened for the last 17 months. A few priests left us, which I find deplorable, from lack of prudence and judgment, but it was all their own fault. In brief, try to be more trusting in others and less trusting in yourself. Put your trust in the Society and its leaders. All’s well that ends well. That should be the spirit of your next decisions and writings.

Here end the bishop’s reasons for recommending his friend to follow Bishop Fellay. But have either Bishop de Galarreta or Bishop Tissier de Mallerais or Bishop Fellay fully understood the Archbishop’s reasons for cutting contact with the Conciliar Romans? Do not all three of them gravely underestimate the unprecedented crisis caused by the Conciliar churchmen’s on-going betrayal of the Truth and of the Faith? How can doctrinal compromise or merely human politicking with Rome solve that pre-apocalyptic crisis?

Kyrie eleison.