Eleison Comments

“Post-Modernity” – II

“Post-Modernity” – II on August 31, 2019

At the risk of wearying readers with variations on the theme of Truth, these “Comments” will make further comment on the summary of Wojcieck Niemczewski’s Culture as religion; the post-modern interpretation of the relationship between culture and religion, quoted here last week. For indeed we must save our souls, and one deep danger in the way of saving our souls is the blinding of our highest faculty, which is our minds, upon which follows immediately the corruption of our hearts. And the deepest danger for our minds today is the universal assumption that ideas do not matter, that truth is not important. See how Vatican II preferred modernity to faithful Catholicism, notably in the Conciliar document of Gaudium et Spes, and then how the Society of St Pius X preferred the Conciliar Romans to their faithful Founder, and in each case, how the large majority of priests and lay-folk followed along.

Let us begin by laying out Niemczewski’s thoughts in order, so as to see where he is coming from and where he is going to: 1 There is no objective God because “God” is the subjective fabrication inside each one of us. 2 Therefore the old “truths” of yesterday’s religion and philosophy no longer have any foundation. 3 Moreover they no longer fit today’s real world, which is changing in all domains and faster than ever. 4 Worse, they are actually blocking modern progress, or the “culture of choice” which enables us to adapt to change, and which guarantees the freedom of each of us to put together his own way of life. 5 So to remain adaptable to modernity, post-modern man must accept this non-universal and non-obligatory “culture of choice” which imposes on man neither norms nor any being superior to him. 6 In conclusion, truth must give way to liberty, religion to culture, and direction to drift. 7 Therefore down with Truth, up with the “culture of choice”!

Alas for post-modern man, there is a reality outside his mind, as close to him as his own arms and legs, and this extra-mental reality has laws of its own, in no way dependent on his mind. For instance if he has tooth-ache, he will have to go to the dentist and not to the fishmonger. And these laws are not only physical but also moral. For instance if a poor girl has an abortion, she is not going to be able to wish away her pangs of conscience, however much she would like to. The free-will of each of us human beings is unquestionably free – hence the possibility of Niemczewski’s “culture of choice” – but that culture of choice can only function inside and not outside of the structured framework of the laws of extra-mental reality, physical and moral. Thus for my eternity I am free to choose Heaven or Hell, but I am not free to choose to break seriously the moral law and still go to Heaven.

The ancient Greeks in their prime pre-dated Our Lord’s Incarnation by hundreds of years, so that they had no benefit of supernatural grace or illumination. But just naturally they observed – they did not invent – the grave and unavoidable consequences of human beings rearing up against the moral structure of human life, and they gave that rearing up a name – “hubris,” today we would call it “pride.” Thus Niemczewski’s presentation of the “culture of choice” begins by denying God and ends by defying Him, but while he may bend men’s minds in favour of his “culture,” he is powerless to bend the eternal and ineffable Existence of God, or the eternal and absolute necessity of Truth. For instance, if there is no such thing as truth, then that at least is a truth. Hence in denying all or any dogma, nobody is so dogmatic as the Freemasons, and in their subjective undermining of all doctrine, nobody is so doctrinal as the Modernists and Neo-modernists.

In brief, a man like Niemczewski is refusing to recognise that around mankind’s arena of choice is a ring of reality which is not of man’s choice. The churchmen of Vatican II are refusing to recognise that the Deposit of Faith cannot be modernised. And the leaders of the Newsociety of St Pius X are refusing to recognise that the Conciliar Romans are fantasy merchants. The “culture of choice” will finish by costing all of them dearly. It may cost them their eternity if they cannot come to their Catholic senses.

Kyrie eleison.

“Post-Modernity” ? – I

“Post-Modernity” ? – I on August 24, 2019

One comes across the words “post-modern,” “post-modernity,” and one wonders what they mean, or what they are referring to. A reasonable guess is that “modernity” is taken to refer to the period in world history which began with the end of the Second World War in 1945, when civilisation had to climb out of the ruins and set out on a new course. But 1945 is now nearly three quarters of a century ago, and 74 years is too long a time for the world to have been moving on without evolving into something different – at all times the world is spinning around, “Volvitur orbis,” but never has the world seemed to be spinning faster than in our own 21st century. Therefore whatever it has moved into, that is “post-modern.”

Of course the question then becomes, what has it moved into? And here the very heart of “post-modernity” may happen to have been pinned down in a book entitled Culture as religion; the post-modern interpretation of the relationship between culture and religion, by Wojcieck Niemczewski. Here follows a two-paragraph summary of Niemczewski’s thesis:—

We are living in an age of changes of all kinds, but the old religious and philosophical principles put brakes on progress and no longer fit the reality around us, which is changing faster than ever. Henceforth we are experiencing the “culture of choice,” involving all those cultural elements that we can mix up to put together our own vision of the world. The possibility we have of choosing then becomes a sign of freedom at the price of the old element of truth, allowing us to remain adaptable to modern life.

As a result this post-modern culture imposes no norms, no obligations, no application to all of life. Nor does it transcend this life because God may exist, but only within ourselves, only inside us, in fact He depends on us! Post-modern man wants to be in tune with his time, in other words with movement and change. But never-ending movement and change towards what? He has no idea, because he has made himself unable to define where he is heading. Thus even if men hold to Tradition, it is liable to be absorbed within this new culture.

In the time of Noah – see Genesis, VI-IX, especially VI, 1–13 – mankind was so corrupt that to save still any significant number of souls, Almighty God had to inflict a worldwide punishment which would give to at least a minority of them motivation and time to make a good act of contrition. And given original sin, it is logical that only interventions of God could from then on slow down or reverse mankind’s inclination to fall. Of course the greatest of these interventions was God’s own Incarnation, but “the higher they are, the harder they fall,” and so after nigh on 2000 years it was foreseeable that the condition of mankind would be worse than ever, if God chose to allow that. Clearly (Lk XVIII, 8) He has chosen from eternity to allow the almost complete disappearance of His Son’s Church before world’s end. What form will this disappearance take? We see it today in Niemczewski’s description of the “new culture.”

His description invites us to distinguish between “modern” and “post-modern” as follows. “Modern” would be the all-embracing culture of nihilism, following especially on the Second World War – hearts and minds empty of all conviction, belief, hope or trust, but the hearts and minds have not yet themselves disintegrated, and there is still a painful sense of what has been lost. On the contrary “post-modern” would be the logical consequence of that pain, namely the self-destruction of the remains of heart and mind by the will so that the pain will no longer be felt. I deliberately renounce truth so that my mind floats in a lotus-land of lovely lies of which I make myself no longer conscious that they are lies, and my heart drifts in a dreamland of deluded desire where everything is soft and sweet and will always be so.

But “A fact is stronger than the Lord Mayor,” says the proverb. True, a mass of modern minds and hearts have cast off all moorings, and refuse all bearings, but wind and tide remain wind and tide, as at least the unchanging enemies of the unchanging God never forget. They want all real souls in the real Hell. If only God’s friends had as much sense of reality as they have!

Kyrie eleison.

People’s Voice – II

People’s Voice – II on August 17, 2019

President Putin’s June interview with the Financial Times, partially summarised and quoted here last week, became notorious because his prophecy that “the liberal idea” has done its time and is out of date, hit a raw nerve with Western politicians and media. They reacted vigorously, like ants whose ant-hill has been struck with a stick. What is the significance of his prophecy, and of the Western reaction to it? We must begin with a summary of the summary, in order to get clear what is at the very heart of his argument. In the original long interview he spoke on many subjects, but what he said on liberalism was indeed the most important subject that he broached.

The President starts out from the practical problem for Western peoples of the mass immigration of inassimilable foreigners into their countries. At ground level, multiculturalism is simply not working, but the liberalism of the elites leading the West makes them treat the immigration not as a problem, but as an enlightened advance, so they do nothing to stop it, and it continues unchecked. But States cannot survive without some basic human rules and moral values, which were formed in the West by the Bible. By the liberal elites’ disregard for these biblical values still held amongst the peoples, the liberals are proving that their liberalism is no longer in touch with reality and has become obsolete. Let anti-liberalism not turn into a tyranny in its turn, but the present stranglehold of liberals on Western politics and media is a true tyranny, and it must come to an end.

In brief, liberal values are opposed to Biblical values. Biblical values built the Western nations. Liberal values are destroying those nations. It is time for liberal values to stop destroying the West. Here Putin is quite right as far as he goes, but since he is a politician and not a theologian, he cannot express the argument in its full force, and he has to rest his case not upon absolutes such as Almighty God and His ten Commandments, but upon the presence still of Biblical values amongst the peoples of the West. Now 70 years of acute suffering under Jewish Communism are bringing the Russian people back to the Christ of Orthodoxy, so that Putin can rest his case on his own people’s return to Biblical values, but is there anything of Christ in the Western people’s resistance to mass immigration? Hardly. And yet there is a decisive participation of the enemies of Christ in the organising and financing of the mass immigration. (Readers of these “Comments” may remember the Jewess in Sweden, Barbara Specter, who boasted that her race was behind the immigration, “necessary to save Europe” – understand, from Christ.)

Thus if Putin rests his case for the Western nations upon their fidelity to Biblical values, who can deny that these are being eroded faster and faster? – “Thank you, Mr President, for wanting to defend us, but in all honesty we do not care for your defence. We love our liberalism because it gives us freedom to sin however we like. You are trying to save us from ourselves, but we worship Mammon (money), and we adore our liberty, equality and fraternity. We choose to go to Hell. Kindly leave us alone. We took centuries to get rid of God, and we do not want Him back.” Such is the reaction of the West, implicitly if not explicitly, to Putin’s political approach. He needs firebrand apostles to state the religious case in its most absolute terms:—

God exists, unchanging from all eternity. He freely chose to create spiritual creatures, angels and men, with a material earth, so as to have beings to share in his infinite bliss. But He does not want robots in His Heaven, so every spiritual creature had or has to use its free-will to choose to spend eternity with Him in Heaven instead of without Him in Hell. Yet a third of the angels and the original human couple chose Hell. He prepared a race to provide a human cradle for His divine Son to take human nature to repair that Fall. That race crucified His Son, and has fought ever since the Church which His Son instituted to continue saving souls until the end of the world. That fight is a cosmic war, the driving force of world history.

Kyrie eleison.

People’s Voice – I

People’s Voice – I on August 10, 2019

See en.​kremlin.​ru/​events/​president/​news/​copy/​60836 for a notorious interview of President Putin from last June, partly summarised here below. See these “Comments” next week for a commentary.

What is happening in the West . . . in Europe as well? The ruling elites have broken away from the people, because of the gap between the interests of the elites and the overwhelming majority of the people . . . . This means that liberalism has outlived its purpose, because, as our Western partners have admitted, liberal ideas such as multiculturalism, have proved to be no longer tenable.

When the flood of migrants into Western Europe brought the migration problem to a head, many people admitted that the policy of multiculturalism is not effective, and that the interests of the core population should be considered . . . . Maybe a wall between Mexico and the United States could be going too far . . . but President Trump was at least looking for a solution. Otherwise, who is doing anything? . . . Ordinary Americans say, Good for him, at least he is working on ideas and looking for solutions.

On the contrary liberals are doing nothing. Sitting in their cosy offices they say that everything is fine, but those who are facing the situation every day down on the streets in Texas or Florida are not happy, because they can see serious problems ahead . . . . Is anyone thinking about the people? The same is happening in Europe. I have discussed this with many of my colleagues, but nobody has the answer. They say that present laws exclude a hard-line policy . . . . Well then, change the law! In Russia we are making immigrants respect the laws, customs and culture of Russia, so in Russia too we have immigration problems, but at least we are doing something about it.

On the contrary liberals assume that nothing needs to be done . . . . The migrants can kill, plunder and rape with impunity because their rights as migrants must be protected. What rights are these? Every crime must have its punishment. In fact, liberalism has become obsolete. It has come into conflict with the interests of the overwhelming majority of the population. In the name of liberalism one may now claim, for instance . . . that children can play five or six gender roles . . . but everyone pursuing life, liberty and happiness as they see it cannot be allowed to overwhelm the culture, traditions and traditional family values of millions of people making up the core population.

As for religion, it cannot be pushed out of this cultural space. We should not abuse anything. Russia is an Orthodox Christian nation, and it is not a Catholic nation, but from Russia we sometimes get the feeling that the same liberalism is at work, using elements and problems of the Church itself to destroy the Roman Catholic Church . . . . I consider this to be incorrect and dangerous. Have we forgotten that all of us live in a world based on Biblical values? Even atheists, living in this world, profit by those values. We may not be daily or public practitioners of our particular religion, but deep down inside there must be some fundamental human rules and moral values. In this sense, traditional values are more stable and more important for millions of people than liberalism, which in my opinion is coming to an end.

Then if liberalism is over, does that mean that tyranny is on its way? Not necessarily. A certain variety of opinions must always have free play. What matters is that the interests of the general public, millions of people living their daily lives, should never be forgotten . . . . Thus even liberals should be treated with a certain respect, but liberals cannot go on dictating to everybody as they have been doing for the last several decades, both in the media and in real life. For instance, how have they put certain subjects out of bounds? Let liberals have their say, but let them no longer absolutely dominate the public arena.

Kyrie eleison.

“Resistance” Unity

“Resistance” Unity on August 3, 2019

With the purpose of aiming a fire-extinguisher at pride, these “Comments” choose rarely to highlight any achievement of the priests and lay-folk labouring since 2012 to ensure the survival of Catholic principles and practice, especially but not exclusively within the Newsociety of St Pius X, i.e. that Society which is sliding into the arms of Rome. Newsociety leaders naturally condemn the so-called “Resistance” or “Fidelity” movement, pointing out in particular the divisions that have arisen between its various priests. But the time has come to highlight the contrasting unity of the Catholic “Resistance.”

For instance a long-standing observer of the “Resistance” scene makes the following pertinent remarks: The main argument of the Superiors of the Newsociety against the “Resistance” is to point out the divisions between Resistant priests. But while various Resistant priests have a variety of vocational gifts, giving rise to a variety of Resistant works (e.g. a Friary, a Seminary, a Monastery, a Priory, a Mission, etc.), there reigns amongst them all a remarkable unity as to the end being pursued – the survival of the Catholic Faith. On the contrary, the Newsociety is a giant with feet of clay, held together only by disciplinary measures, the fear of sanctions and personal interests, but as to the end being pursued it is highly divided: an Agreement with Rome, or not; marriages under official authority, or not; flirting with Conciliar bishops, or not – the Newsociety is cracking in all directions.

Once again, what we are seeing today is how all Catholics without exception are undermined by the split between Catholic Truth and Catholic Authority which resulted from the conscious or unconscious betrayal of the 2000 bishops and two Popes who engineered Vatican II. Thus in 2019 on the one hand the “Resistance” holding to the Truth suffers outward divisions from the lack of Authority, because the need for authority cannot from below create its reality, because authority can by definition only come from above. On the other hand the Newsociety holding to Roman Authority suffers inward division from the lack of Truth, because that Roman Authority is clinging to the lies of Vatican II.

But Truth is the purpose of Authority, and not the other way round. “Peter, when you have turned again, strengthen your brethren” (Lk. XXII, 32). In other words, firstly recover your own shaken faith in the Truth, then secondly exercise your Authority over the other Apostles. This is because in a fallen world, the inward Truth needs outward Authority to defend it, but if the outward Authority is no longer defending that inward Truth then it has lost its true reason for being, and it becomes an end in itself, ultimately a tyranny to serve personal positions, as with Paul VI and the Archbishop’s successors.

Thus however plentiful be the personal miseries of individual Resistants, so long as they are faithful to the Truth, the “Resistance” will outlive the Newsociety, just as the Archbishop’s Society, as long as it was faithful to the Truth, dominated, and will ultimately outlive, the Conciliar Romans. The ultimate problem is not one of persons or Authority, but of doctrines and Truth. Thus when in the early 2000’s the successor of the Archbishop at that time appealed to Authority to solve divisions inside the Society, he was already well down the Conciliar path of preferring Authority to Truth, of preferring will to reason. As a result, the Archbishop’s Society has been turned into a tyranny, and although the tyrant was apparently dismissed from the seat of power by the election of a year ago, really he is back there. Such is our modern world. Reality gives the lie to appearances.

Kyrie eleison.

Contradiction Rampant

Contradiction Rampant on July 27, 2019

Back to Bishop Huonder, not for any personal reason, but for the universal confusion which he illustrates. On the day when he resigned from being head of Switzerland’s major Diocese of Chur to take up residence in the Traditional SSPX boys’ school of Wangs in the Diocese of St Gallen, his move may have seemed so surprising, that on the same day he issued two explanations, one for Tradition and the other for the mainstream Church. Here are the key words from each explanation, which distort neither explanation by their being taken out of their full context.

To his former colleagues and lay-folk in the Diocese of Chur he wrote about his retirement to Wangs: “In accordance with the mind of Pope Francis I shall strive there (in Wangs) to contribute to the unity of the Church, not by excluding anyone but rather by discerning, following and integrating people.” For the Traditional Catholics among whom he was about to retire, he co-signed with the SSPX Superior General, Fr David Pagliarani, a joint Statement containing these words: “The one and only purpose of Bishop Huonder’s retiring within a house of the SSPX is to devote himself to prayer and silence, to celebrating exclusively the Tridentine Mass and to working for Tradition as the only way to renew the Church.”

But how can the honourable Bishop not see the contradiction between his two explanations? Ever since Francis became Pope in 2013, who has not seen the almost daily flow of words and deeds by which this Pope means Catholics to leave behind the Church of Tradition? Who has not sensed the deep and instinctive repugnance, which he shares with all the Conciliar churchmen who wrought the revolution of Vatican II, for the Church as it was before the Council? How can Bishop Huonder not see that between the “mind of Pope Francis” and “Tradition” there is a great gulf fixed?

If he is imagining that the “mind of Pope Francis” is other than what it is, or if he is hoping that it can be brought to be other than what it is, then on all previous showing the Pope will surely correct him swiftly and firmly as to the true state of his mind. On the other hand if the Bishop is imagining or hoping that Tradition is not what it is, here alas we must admit that he can well have been deceived by the 20-year slide from what the Society of St Pius X was under Archbishop Lefebvre to what the Newsociety has become under his successors. Under the Archbishop it was the Church’s single greatest fortress of the Catholic doctrine, sacraments and morals of all time, but once his personal magnetism died with him in 1991, then within a mere few years the official magnetism of Rome that draws all Catholics re-asserted itself, and the Society began with GREC its change into the Newsociety to fit in with Rome’s Newchurch. Probably Bishop Huonder sees no contradiction because he wants to help that change along.

But how about the Bishop’s co-signer on the joint Statement for Traditionalists, i.e. the Newsociety’s Superior General, Fr Pagliarani? Obviously he knows what Pope Francis is up to, and certainly he knew 20 years ago what the Archbishop understood by Tradition. So when he co-signed the Statement, did he know of the Bishop’s simultaneous intention to work in Wangs both “in accordance with the Pope’s mind” and “for Tradition”? And if he knew of the double intention, did he too see no contradiction? And if he sees the contradiction now, what has he done about the Trojan Horse, however well-intentioned, within the gates of Tradition? Perhaps he is saying to himself, “Oh, it hardly matters. The Archbishop wanted us to look after Newchurch priests (yes, but not Trojan Horses). Bishop Huonder is a nice man. We are all nice. We will all get along. Contradiction is more of a problem in theory than it is in practice, etc . . .”

If that is indeed how the Newgeneral is thinking, then he has caught the Conciliar disease, and the Society is truly sunk, while the Mushsociety is set fair to sail happily for ever after on the Mushchurch seas of confusion and contradiction. But woe to souls!

Kyrie eleison.