Eleison Comments

Sliding Still – I

Sliding Still – I on November 2, 2019

There have been signs to give one hope that the official Society of St Pius X is no longer sliding under the power and control of the Conciliar churchmen in Rome, but such signs are overwhelmed by the evidence to the contrary. For instance, on September 12 the new Superior General (SG) who was voted to take over from Bishop Fellay in July of last year, Fr Davide Pagliarani, made public an interview in which he said many good things, enough to make at least one reader of these “Comments” rejoice that the Society’s slide was being thrown into reverse. Alas, a recent report from Society HQ in Switzerland gives us to fear that Fr Pagliarani is being directed to say such conservative things in order to fool all Traditionalists who are not watching his actions. Here is the background and the report –

Catholic Tradition has houses in France of three outstanding Orders of monks and friars from the Church’s past: the Benedictines in Bellaigue, the Dominicans in Avrillé, the Franciscans in Morgon. All three were encouraged and helped to start in their day by Archbishop Lefebvre, but never did he claim authority over any of them, in fact he positively refused to do so, because he did not see the Society as having any mission to monopolise Tradition or to control all Traditional initiatives. Since their founding, all three independent houses have, relatively speaking, flourished, and in 2019, as is normal for monks and friars, all three exert a special influence over Traditionalists, all over the world one might say.

However, with the Society’s major change of direction which became public in 2012, relations of these houses with the Society have become problematic, because its leaders have naturally wanted these influential religious to change direction also. Several years ago the SSPX broke off relations with the Dominicans of Avrillé who were considered to be too independent, while the Franciscans have needed over the same period of time to adopt a policy carefully balanced between co-operation and independence. And as for the Benedictines, their young Superior from Brazil, Dom Placide, came last August under particular pressure from the Society.

Summoned to Menzingen by Fr Pagliarani, he was rebuked for his lack of co-operation with the Society, and a piece of paper was put before him by which he was to sign over to the Society all control over the Benedictine Monastery! When – to put it politely – he declined the offer, he was threatened that the whole world would be told that the SSPX was cutting off all relations with the Monastery. Dom Placide replied that it was up to the SG to do what he thought best, whereupon the threat changed. Now the threat was that all priories of the Society would be ordered to send no more vocations to Bellaigue. And this threat has been carried out. Dom Placide declined the offer to stay for lunch in Menzingen.

We are entitled to speculate upon such a conversation. If we wish to keep up our hopes for Fr Pagliarani personally, we might speculate that he himself was directed to use such bully tactics upon the relatively young head of the Benedictines. But he cannot avoid the responsibility for at least consenting to act the part of the bully. More seriously, the bully tactics suggest that Rome and Menzingen are plotting jointly to sweep together under the Society all presently independent Traditional groupings, and then to restructure the Society and replace it by a Personal Prelature under Conciliar Rome’s complete control. This would have two advantages for Rome’s war on Tradition: firstly the independence and last traces of Archbishop Lefebvre in the structure of the Society which he designed would disappear, and secondly Rome could then gently strangle, together with the Society, all Traditional groupings and initiatives in one fell swoop. Nor would the Society’s present leaders disapprove of the fell swoop, on the contrary, because as they gently dropped dead of the strangling they would at least have the official recognition for which they have striven for so long.

So much for the misleaders of the Society. But what about its followers, priests and laity?

Kyrie eleison.

Father Bruewiler

Father Bruewiler on October 26, 2019

The following analysis of the present situation of the Newsociety of St Pius X appeared in the St Gallen parish bulletin #3 of Fr Aloïs Bruewihler for autumn of this year. Fr Bruewihler is a former Society priest who left the Society in 2015 because he could not reconcile himself with the false direction being taken by the Newsociety which is still pursuing recognition by the Newchurch authorities in Rome, although these are always insisting on acceptance by the Newsociety of the profoundly anti-Catholic documents of Vatican II as the indispensable condition of that recognition. Fr Bruewihler’s article is adapted here to the A4 length of each of these “Comments.”

In a time of severe crisis when life’s very foundations are being attacked, shaken and even overthrown, a Catholic must in all humility, with trust in the protection of Almighty God, concentrate on “the one thing necessary” (Lk. X, 42), without calling God in question, but instead humbly accepting the trial that His Eternal Wisdom has allowed (or even set up?) as a grace-laden means of punishing or purifying or sanctifying or saving us, body and soul.

Since Mother Church, humiliated and in chains since Vatican II, is as occupied and swamped as ever by sinister Freemasonic powers established within the “Conciliar church,” God’s all-wise Providence gave to Catholics a faithful successor of the Apostles, Archbishop Lefebvre, in order to guarantee for us in our extreme and continuing need an emergency source of the unadulterated doctrine of Christ. The more the Newvatican speaks and acts under the influence of the “smoke of Satan,” the more attention Catholics should pay to the doctrinal heritage left to us by the Founder of the Society of St Pius X if they wish to save their souls. For just as St Paul warned the Corinthians to keep to the Gospel as he had preached it to them, and as he had received it from Christ (I Cor. XV, 1–3, etc.), so today to abandon the Archbishop’s teaching on the New Mass and the Council is in effect to abandon the teaching of Christ.

But soon after the Archbishop’s death in 1991, the Society’s leaders set out on a new path, by which they have striven ever since to “normalise” the Society’s canonical standing within the mainstream Church, as though it were the Archbishop’s Society and not the Conciliar Church that was abnormal. This change of direction began clearly to appear with the Society leaders’ attempt in 2001 to submit to the Conciliar Romans, and it came still more clearly into focus with the Letter to those leaders on April 7, 2012, from three of the Society’s four bishops, one of whom was soon after excluded from the Society. The Society was being split in two, and whoever approved of that exclusion then must be approving now of the Society’s new friends, such as the Swiss Newchurch Bishop, whose doctrine on Council and Mass is far from that of Archbishop Lefebvre. Thus the Newsociety is now being formed on the basis of practical unity before doctrinal truth, which is a Freemasonic principle, absolutely not Catholic. Yet, more and more blinded priests and laity seem to be hoping that a Society-Rome agreement will come about.

The problem goes back to Vatican II (1962–1965) when faithful Catholics, in their families and at work, had to learn to their cost what it meant for Church officials to depart from Catholic Truth. Catholics could no longer follow or obey those Popes, bishops and priests who had authority over them, because Catholic Authority is at the service of Faith and Justice. On the contrary, Benedict XVI’s “Motu Proprio” of 2007, and the SSPX Superior General’s ambiguous and misleading Press Statement issued at the same time, are two examples of serious disregard for truth and justice. As Bishop Tissier said in 2016, “The ‘Motu Proprio’ Mass is not the true Mass.” We could add, the Newsociety, forming steadily ever since 1991, is no longer the true Society.

Kyrie eleison.

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.