Eleison Comments

Modern Convert

Modern Convert on October 19, 2019

If anybody is tempted today to think that Almighty God has resigned from governing His Church or the world, there are testimonials reaching the office of these “Comments” which show clearly – at least in this Commentator’s opinion – that the Holy Ghost is still at work. A fallen away Catholic tells below how he came back to the Church, how he then found Catholic Tradition and soon after that the “Resistance,” and what sense he makes of it all. Amidst the confusion and discouragement which we all know, he writes with a remarkable breadth and serenity, surely a sign that he is being led by God.

I am a married man with two girls, one nearly adolescent and the other a baby. It is to my grandmother that I owe my return to the Faith. One day five years ago I was just passing by a church when out of the blue I thought of her praying the Rosary, and I was impelled to enter the church to pray. From then on I began to pray once more and to attend Mass. Of course it was the New Mass at first, until about three years ago when I discovered the existence of Catholic Tradition.

From then my family and I have been attending the local chapel of the Society of St Pius X, where we were welcomed with great joy by the priest and congregation. But I soon discovered that there were many divisions in the chapel, and so you can imagine the difficulty I had in sorting out what was going on. Having so recently arrived in Tradition, I needed a good deal of patience, courage and perseverance in order to hang on and not just run away in the first six months! But our thirst for truth and our search for roots overcame our fear, and so we stayed, thanks be to God.

I understood that the SSPX is truly a holy part of the true Catholic Church of Christ, and that is why I am staying at least for the moment inside the Society, with my family. But I am listening all the time to what the sedevacantists and “Resistants” have to say, in order to continue making up my mind. I have an enormous admiration for Archbishop Lefebvre, a true man of God, a holy successor of the Apostles. To see his Society vacillating under the world’s infernal pressure is very difficult to bear, and it requires of us to pray even more.

Certainly the Society still has a great deal to do, because it can still do much good. So can the so-called “Resistance” which plays, and is right to play, the part of a guard-rail whenever the Society strays off course and totters under the attacks of the modern world and the temptations held out to it by the Conciliar churchmen. I am convinced that the “Resistance” has a vital part to play, and that Our Lord enables it to exist for a great good, even inside the Society although it appears to be outside. Personally I count myself as a firm resistant to anybody who does not clearly attack, head on, the Second Vatican Council which was inspired by the Devil. After all, how can one live as a true Catholic today without resisting everywhere and all the time? So is not being a Catholic here below the hardest and most beautiful thing that there is? Thank you, granny, for praying to Jesus and Mary for me!

In this life we never see God Himself, but we do see Him at work: a grandmother’s prayers; prayer of a soul as its first and most important step; attending Mass as a next step: the New Mass still carrying grace, however strangled the grace may be; the Catholic soul being somehow shown Tradition by God, and gravitating towards it; the refuge in a local chapel of the Society, and the welcome there, only for the next severe trial to begin! Trial overcome by the need for roots and the love and pursuit of truth, which settles down in the mind staying open amidst all the confusion, but anchored in respect for the Archbishop and in hatred of Vatican II, profiting by both the Society and the “Resistance” for what each has had to give him, without excluding either; the recognition that any Catholic must swim against the current, and finally gratitude for how God has led him. Many lessons in not too many words. May God bless the writer, and keep him and his family faithful until death. He stands a good chance.

Kyrie eleison.

Presence, Power

Presence, Power on October 12, 2019

While “Western civilisation” is crumbling around our ears, faster and faster, it is very necessary to remember that “Our help is in the name of the Lord,” and in the intercession of His Mother, and in nobody and nothing less. But few people, even Catholics, fully realise just how close to us and how powerful Almighty God is. If they did realise, they might turn rather more easily to prayer, which is in fact the only serious obstacle today to the advance of evil. By a just punishment for the apostasy of mankind, God has let fall under the control of His enemies every other means of influence and power.

But who is God? “Father Almighty, maker of heaven and earth, of all things visible and invisible.”

Firstly, Father. “Maker of Heaven and earth,” but not just a manufacturer who manufactures a product and then leaves it to make its own way in the world. The best comparison to illustrate God’s care and His love for the creatures that He makes, is with the love of a human father for his children which will extend normally to his or their death, and beyond. But a human father’s love is finite, God’s love is infinite.

Secondly, Almighty. Perhaps the simplest way to grasp the might or power of God is to accept the Church’s teaching that God is the Creator, and every other being that exists is a creature which God created, and that creation is out of nothing. Whenever we human beings “create” anything, it is always out of some pre-existing material, for instance a chair out of wood, a house out of bricks, the bricks out of sand, and so on. The more I think about it, the more difficult it becomes to imagine anything being created out of nothing, for the good reason that all changes I know around me are out of something. If I could grasp something coming out of nothing, I would begin to see the meaning of “Almighty.”

Thirdly, maker of all things. Of all things material or “visible,” to the very end of the farthest galaxy – St Ignatius of Loyola used to stand outside his room in Rome and just gaze at the stars at night to profit by the demonstration of God’s infinite power. And much more, of all things spiritual or “invisible,” like the soul that gives life and the faculties of reason and free-will to every human being alive, to say nothing of the whole non-material nine Orders of angels. You doubt that they exist, because they are immaterial? Do you still doubt that there is a far more than human intelligence ordering the evil around us today?

But while many people may be ready to admit that nothing could come into existence without a Creator, what few people grasp is that the creative action of God continues for every moment that the existing thing continues to exist, so that if God for one moment ceased to maintain in existence an existing thing, it would instantly drop back into the nothingness out of which it came. A comparison may help. To start an electric train, its driver must pull towards him what is called the “dead man’s switch,” but he must keep pulling it towards him for the train to keep moving, because the switch or lever is spring-loaded so that if he lets go, the lever will automatically spring back and the train will stop. In this way the train is protected from racing onwards uncontrolled if the driver, for instance, dies at the switch. Thus the train starts by the lever first being pulled, but the same lever must go on being pulled for the train to run.

In the same way God creates a creature in its first moment but it would drop back into nothing if He did not maintain that creative action, or “conserve” the creature for the duration of the thing’s existence. In other words just as the first pull on the lever starts the train but the same lever must go on being pulled for the train to run, so the only difference between God’s creating a creature and conserving it is the difference between the first moment of its existence and every succeeding moment. Thus every moment that I exist, God is active inside me, creating-conserving both my soul and my body. Thus He is more present to all of me than I am to myself, doing what God alone can do, namely hold me out of nothing. And I doubt that He is powerful? Or I doubt that He is close to me? Or I doubt that He cares for me?

Kyrie eleison.

Bishops’ Letter

Bishops’ Letter on October 5, 2019

A reader asks what were the circumstances behind the writing of the letter of April 7, 2012, addressed to Bishop Fellay and his two Assistants, by the three other bishops then of the Society of St Pius X. The letter is fast becoming ancient history, but readers may remember that the letter played an important part in making Traditional Catholics aware of the significant change of direction of the Society that had been surreptitiously taking place over the last 15 years, and which many of them had not noticed. But in March of 2012 the animal had just broken cover, or come out into the open.

In that month in “Cor Unum,” the Society’s magazine appearing three times a year for priests, the Superior General (SG) wrote that it was time for the Society to change Archbishop Lefebvre’s policy of no practical agreement without a doctrinal agreement, because the hostility of the Roman churchmen towards Catholic Tradition was growing less, and so the Society’s trust in the Conciliar Romans should grow more. In fact since the early 2000’s, more and more priests and laity of the Society had been suspecting that the Society was being led in a different direction. Now the SG himself was confirming those suspicions. That “Cor Unum” caused quite a stir within the Society.

At the dinner-table in the Society’s Priory in London, England, the editor of these “Comments” wondered aloud about writing to the SG a letter of protest against the change of direction, and about sending it to Bishop Tissier for him to check the contents. A priestly colleague at table asked if the letter should not be submitted also to Bishop de Galarreta, in case it could go to Society Headquarters as a joint protest against such a serious departure from the Archbishop’s constant preaching and practice of “Doctrine first.” The colleague was right, and so the idea of a letter of the three bishops was born. When consulted on the project, Bishop Tissier recommended that a draft of the letter be written, and when a draft was submitted to him he gave to it his enthusiastic approval. The draft was then submitted to Bishop de Galarreta who also approved, but reinforced considerably the draft by rewriting the last part of it. A final text was then signed by all three bishops and posted to Headquarters in Menzingen with copies for the SG and his two Assistants.

Their reply came just one week later. Not for nothing had Headquarters been changing the Society’s direction while disguising the change. They genuinely thought that Conciliar Rome was becoming more Catholic, to the point that the Archbishop’s grave reservations as to co-operating with the Neo-modernists in Rome were in effect out of date. To Cardinal Ratzinger in 1988 the Archbishop had said that co-operation was impossible, because the SSPX and Rome were working in directly opposite directions – Rome wanted to de-christianise society while the SSPX was striving to re-christianise society. But in 2012, SSPX Headquarters were adamant that the situation had changed, and so by opposing the three bishops they were not opposing the Archbishop. But what would the latter have said about the shenanigans of Pope Francis? What would he not have said? Yet in a recently appeared book-interview of the now former SG, Bishop Fellay vigorously repudiates even the least criticism of Pope Francis.

And so on a pre-arranged date in June of 2012 the latter presented himself in Rome with a trusted adjutant to put the seal on an agreement with Rome which would at last put an end to what SSPX Headquarters must have considered was an unnecessary 37-year squabble between the SSPX and Rome. Unnecessary? Squabble? Conciliar Rome is at war with Catholic Tradition! And the Romans had obviously learned of the three bishops’ letter. In which case what use would it have been for them to trap the Society’s official leadership if the other three of its four bishops avoided the trap? Tradition risked starting up all over again. And so the SG in 2012 was sent away from Rome, empty-handed. He would have to get to work on those bishops to bring them round. He wasted no time . . .

Kyrie eleison.

Ibsen’s Rosmersholm

Ibsen’s <i>Rosmersholm</i> on September 28, 2019

Henrik Ibsen (1828–1906) was a famous Norwegian playwright, often credited with being the worldwide father of modern drama. He was not Catholic, but he told a great truth, and St Augustine once said that all truth belongs to Catholics (because their God is “the Way, the Truth and the Life”). For this reason Catholics can even sometimes appreciate better than non-Catholics the truths that the non-Catholics are telling. The great truth of Ibsen is that even in strait-laced hypocritical Norway of the late 19th century, where life and joy are stifled beneath a weight of dying traditions, still the human spirit rises up in protest, and it prefers even death to an existence entrapped with no apparent freedom or meaning.

Let us illustrate this protest with a group of three later plays of Ibsen in which he has turned rather from the drama of modern society to that of individual persons. Rosmersholm (1886) ends with the hero and his beloved committing joint suicide. The Master Builder (1892) ends with the hero falling to his death from a high tower which it was suicidal for him to have attempted to climb in the first place. John Gabriel Borkman (1896) ends with the hero dying from the cold of a virtually suicidal climb up a freezing mountain slope. But in each case the hero was striving for the freedom of the human spirit against a world stifling that spirit. Let us have a look at Rosmersholm in particular, an adaptation of which was staged in London recently with great success. Ibsen lives!

Every drama needs a dramatic clash, and the clash in Rosmersholm is between the old world of the Rosmer family and home on the one side, distinguished for the last 200 years by its soldiers and parsons who have set an example and given a lead to the whole region, and on the other side the rising new world of emancipation and freedom from all those old values. The central figure in the play is the last scion of the noble family, John Rosmer, formerly a parson but who has lost his Christian faith and is now torn between the two worlds. On the one side is Dr Kroll, a cold-hearted conservative attempting to save Norway from the all-invading liberalism, but whose own wife and children are going liberal. On the other side is the editor of the local radical paper, Mortensgaard, who is at least as disreputable as Kroll in his attempts to pull Rosmer to his side. Rosmer himself has in theory been won over to the new world of joy and freedom by the charming young woman, Rebekka West, his platonic companion for several years.

The drama comes to a head when Rosmer tells Kroll of his loss of faith and his intention to fight in public for the liberals. Kroll moves into action, by fair means or foul, to stop Rosmer from lending his person and prestige to the rot. Under pressure from Kroll, Rebekka realises that in her struggle to liberate Rosmer from his noble but stifling background, it is in fact that background, Rosmersholm, which has overcome herself. In the end, the only way that John and Rebekka can achieve both the new freedom and the old nobility is to throw themselves together into the water-mill of Rosmersholm. In other words, says Ibsen, the old nobility is joyless, the new conservatism is heartless and the new emancipation is no better. There remains only death as a way out, seemingly the only possible affirmation for the trapped couple.

Is that all dark nonsense, unfit for today’s Catholics? No, it is a realistic portrait of our world. When faith goes dead, as with Rosmer and with billions of souls today, then conservatism (Kroll) ultimately conserves nothing, left-wingery (Mortensgaard) is as good as throwing godless gasoline on a godless fire, emancipation (Rebekka) lacks stamina, and the liberal death-wish takes over. If one wishes to have life, and to have it more abundantly (Jn. X, 10), then Rosmer must revive in himself the faith of his truly noble ancestors, which means he must go back beyond even the best of his Protestant ancestors to the Catholics who made Christian Norway. Let Rosmer become truly Catholic, and then Kroll, Mordensgaard and Rebekka will all be able to see the true solution, and the whole region can light up again with the light of Christ.

Kyrie eleison.

Family Targeted

Family Targeted on September 21, 2019

As the world turns its back more and more on God, so He gently withdraws for the moment – He will come back in force, wait for it! – but in the meantime there is steadily disappearing with Him His divine protection upon His own seedbed for human beings, the family. Gravest of all is the abandoning of the family by the Catholic churchmen, leaving it wide open to attack from all sides by Satan. Most hurtful must be when the attack comes from within, by beloved family members. Here below is such a case, and it has to be typical of many today. The family father writes:—

With my wife we had ten children, three of whom are now adults, and we had gone through some difficult times and a few tragedies, but now she has declared war on me. About 18 months ago, fully supported by her Novus Ordo priest and powerful friends, she undertook legal maneuvers to get me out of the home, and away from the children. It was all unbelievable, and terribly painful. That the persecution was essentially religious was confirmed when she offered to let me stay at home as a separated man, living in the basement, if only I signed a legal agreement relinquishing any religious rights over the education and formation of my children, and precluding us all from going to any Traditional chapel and/or from communicating with any so-called Traditionalists. Of course, I could not sign that, and her group went on to totally roll over me and the kids with legal tricks . . . and I lost everything: wife, home, children, money, car, health insurance, and almost entirely my business. As my children were strong in the faith, and would not yield to Mom’s bizarre and wrong behaviour and preferred to be with Dad, then she got a team of “therapists” to “wash out” their brains, and get them to be “normal” again, and she got them into Novus Ordo schools and forced them to attend the Novus Ordo Mass with her.

It’s been well over a year since I last saw my little children. The youngest is now almost 3 years old, and the rest of the younger children are 18–24 months apart, up to 16. I have no way to find out what’s going on with them, and whether they are keeping the faith, because they aren’t allowed to see or hear anybody other than Novus Ordo liberals. The three older ones, adults now, have been able to communicate with me and to remain as close as they can. The oldest one, who was already in a seminary and had finished philosophy, got out, perhaps due to the shock caused by the family break-up, but he keeps his faith intact, attends Mass almost daily, and works well in the world. Sadly, #2 swallowed the poison that college is the only way to make a living in the future. The third one is now debating the idea of going to college, but has not lost sight of God’s Will.

I can see that God has a plan, and that my own faults and flaws have played their part in the break-up. Years ago a Traditional priest told me that we had such a Catholic family that the devil surely hated us. This is surely a furious attack from Satan to destroy the faith of my children, and to lead me to despair, but my faith is still strong, and I hope that through this ordeal some, many, or all of us will be saved. Still, there is more pain than joy in my heart. We used to be a good example for other families, but now we are objects of pity and derision . . . and I’m being blamed for being “fanatic,” mentally-ill, inflexible, and so forth. Had I not known many souls committed to the true faith, explaining and denouncing the current evils in Church and world, I would have agreed with my wife and her entourage, and I would have gone along with the easy, comfortable, secular way of life. But I do remain weak, and so sometimes I do wonder if Tradition isn’t all insanity – how can such a small remnant of Catholics be right? Yet, there were only 12 Apostles in the beginning, and one of them was a traitor.

Such a reaction from a mother of ten is not normal, but today what is normal? So how can a father defend his family against such a reaction? Prevention is better than cure, says the proverb. Whoever it is in the family that Satan is targeting, the family Rosary every day must be the first line of defence. Beyond that, “What can’t be cured, must be endured,” as this Catholic father realizes. We must trust God.

Kyrie eleison.

White Racism? – II

White Racism? – II on September 14, 2019

Following on these “Comments” of last week, one reader remarked that the title should rather have been “Anti-white racism.” Of course he is right in the sense that the antagonism is going today much more from non-whites towards whites than from whites towards non-whites, but what matters for all of us is to allay the antagonism, going in whatever racial direction, by understanding what is behind it. Ultimately it is the liberals presently running the world who want to kick Almighty God out of His Creation so that they can take His place. As good “liberals,” they want above all liberty from God. What use is freedom from anything or anybody else, if they are not free from God and His Ten Commandments?

Now when God took flesh, the religion which His Son instituted spread Christendom worldwide, where in St Paul’s words, as many as are baptised into Christ have put on Christ, so that “There is neither Jew nor Greek, there is neither slave nor free, there is neither male nor female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus” (Gal. III, 27–29; Col. III, 11). This doctrine means that where Christianity prevails, antagonisms such as “anti-semitism,” “racism” and “feminism” all tend to be dissolved, because they are all drowned in baptism in Christ. But what if men reject Christ? Will not all antagonisms between Jew and non-Jew, between non-white and white, between male and female, re-surface?

They will, and they will be worse after Christendom than they were before, because Christianity gave men to know God as they had not known Him before, and also to know the absolute equality of all men before God, an equality belonging to eternity, which dwarfs the multiple inequalities between men in this short life on earth. Before Christendom, men naturally accepted these inequalities as being part of life against which it was foolish to protest – the inequalities were simply there. Under Christendom mankind learned to be consoled for the inequalities, still there, by the supreme equality of eternity. But after Christendom, the Christian faith, Christ, heaven and eternity are all gone, so that the inequalities of this life, which have not gone away, are more keenly felt than ever.

For indeed the liberals who are doing their best to put an end to Christendom have nevertheless carried over from it a sense, for instance, of its supreme equality of all men, even if they have gotten rid of the God upon whom that equality was founded. Therefore an equality of eternity must now be jammed into seventy years and ten. Like trying to cram a quart of liquid into a pint jar. It will not go. Then they will force it to go. And here is why liberals are always fighting reality. They are post-Christians attempting to cram into one short life ideals of Christ which have dimensions of eternity. They miss Christianity but do not want Christ, so with might and main they strive to recreate Christianity without Christ, which is an enterprise doomed to failure. But will they return to Christ? Never! “Liberty, Equality, Fraternity!”

Thus Christian liberty from sin, for Heaven, must be turned into liberty from any earthly oppression, real or imagined, liberty for Revolution: Christian equality before God, for eternity, must be turned into the levelling down of all real superiorities on earth, which will not go away, however hard the liberals try; and finally f raternity in Christ, the true brotherhood of all men as children of the one true God, must be replaced by the artificial association of all men in institutions like the United Nations, which can only fail.

In conclusion, the white race received from God special gifts, natural and supernatural, to bring Christ and His Church to all mankind. Whenever they did this, all mankind benefited and men made their way to Heaven all over the world, with no resentment and much gratitude towards the race which was opening their way to Heaven. But when this race ceased to serve that function, then the rest of mankind felt instinctively betrayed, and “racism” raged, as never before. Whites, if you do not like anti-white racism, then pick up the Rosary, 15 Mysteries a day.

Kyrie eleison.