Eleison Comments

Emotions Rampant

Emotions Rampant on February 9, 2019

In another interesting article from the regular bulletin of the American TFP (Tradition, Family, Property, January 4th edition), John Horvat observes and criticises a widespread phenomenon of modern society – emotions running out of control, and dominating people’s lives. Again (cf. these “Comments,” 590 of Nov. 3, 2018), from a Catholic point of view, the international TFP may be open as an organisation to more or less severe criticism (notably for by-passing the true Church), but its American bulletin has many thoughtful yet accessible articles for today’s Catholics having to live in a godless world. How Wisdom helps People Destroy the Dictatorship of the Emojis by John Horvat is one of these articles.

An “emoji” is one of those small digital images or icons used to express an idea or emotion, especially the tiny smiley or frowny faces freely available on computers and easily inserted in a text to express any one of a variety of emotions. Horvat uses emojis as a concrete example of the frequency with which emotions figure in today’s society. He argues that emotions are not bad in themselves, but they are presently playing too large a part in daily living, with disastrous results for the whole of society. When people do not want to face the reality of a world that includes hardship and suffering, then feelings prevail over facts, says Horvat, and instead of thinking they emote, so that, for instance, raw emotions fuel the anger politics that are rocking the world. Where it hurts to have to think, in order to work out why the world’s problems are as they are, on the contrary emotions make me feel good, and so I prefer to emote. But emotions have a necessarily incomplete grasp on reality. Here is why many a good wife has valuable instincts and intuitions, but she recognises that these need to be subordinated to the normally higher reasoning of her husband (not to his tyranny). And here is why our emotive politics of today are so crazy. And why the Newchurch of Vatican II and its Conciliar priests are so effeminate.

So why is reasoning superior to emotion? Because reasoning belongs to the higher part of man, to his mind and will, whereas human emotions belong to his higher and lower parts, to his passions and will. Certainly Our Lord and Our Lady had emotions. Our Lord wept over the grave of Lazarus (Jn. XI, 35). Our Lady suffered intensely when she lost her 12-year old Boy (Lk. II, 48). But just as by her reason she submitted her motherly grief to His mystery (Lk. II, 50), so He submitted 21 years later His human agony in the Garden of Gethsemane to the will of His Father in Heaven (Mt. XXVI, 39). For whereas all animals have sense appetite or passions, responding to sense stimuli from outside them, only the rational animal, man, has also the higher faculty of will which responds to intellective information fed to it by his mind. This intellective or rational dimension of man is wholly lacking to all the non-rational or brute animals.

Now nobody in his right mind accuses any non-rational animal of committing sin. At worst it is only following its instincts. This is because right and wrong are perceived only by man’s mind and performed as such by his will. That is because only by having mind and will does man have a conscience aware of sin (Jn. I, 9), making him able to sin. That is why man’s will must follow his higher reason and control his lower emotions, neither crushing them too tightly nor letting them completely go, but harnessing them in accordance with reason, with what his natural reason (Jn I, 9) tells him is right and not wrong.

It follows that if men want to sin, they will begin by dulling or obscuring their conscience, and they may well finish by denying that they have reason at all, and by affirming that animals are just as rational as they are. Anywhere in between they will let their emotions loose so that they no longer have to think, but are free to wallow in their passions. Horvat does not go this deep, but in fact this modern unleashing of emotion is part and parcel of modern man’s total war on God. God has only to get out of His own universe so that man can take His place, and do with it what he likes. Dear God, have mercy upon us!

Kyrie eleison.

“Holocaustianity”

“Holocaustianity” on February 2, 2019

Many Catholics seem to think that what is called the “Holocaust” has nothing to do with religion. They are very mistaken. Here are two (slightly edited) paragraphs from the handsome tribute paid to the late Professor Robert Faurisson by Jérôme Bourbon, brave editor of the excellent Paris weekly, Rivarol:—

Not only did Professor Faurisson by his research and famous phrase of 60 words threaten the ideological foundations of the world order issuing from World War II, but he also called in question the religion, or counter-religion, of “Holocaustianity.” It is a veritable religion, demanding respect and submission. Its false god requires a homage of adoration, a constant burning of incense before it, a flame to be lit like at Yad Vashem, flowers to be offered, and wailing to go up to Heaven, like at the pilgrimages and processions to Auschwitz and elsewhere, while people must beat their breast, crying out “Never again.”

“Holocaustianity,” taught from primary school to the end of one’s days, by television, cinema and every form of entertainment, does in fact ape all features of the Catholic religion. It has its martyrs (the Six Million), its Saints (Elie Wiesel, Anne Frank), its miracles (“Holocaust” survivors), its stigmatists (tattooed camp-inmates), its pilgrimages (to Auschwitz, etc.), its temples and cathedrals (“Holocaust” museums and memorials), its alms-giving to obtain pardon (never-ending reparation payments to Israel and to “Holocaust” survivors), its relics (camp inmates’ teeth, hair, shoes, etc.), its lives of the Saints (books by Elie Wiesel, Anne Frank, etc.), its torture chambers (gas-chambers), its Gospel (the verdict of the post-war Nuremberg military tribunal), its High Priests and Pontiffs (Simon Wiesenthal), its Inquisition (anti-Revisionist civil law-courts), its laws against blasphemy (strictly forbidding any questioning of the “Holocaust”), its Holy City (modern Jerusalem), its preachers and guardians (all instructors and associations in politics, the media, religion, trade unions, sports and economics), its religious Congregations (World Jewish Congress, B’nai B’rith, AIPAC, etc., etc.), its Hell (for all nationalists – except Israelis! –, all revisionists, all believers in the deicide and in the New Testament replacing the Old, etc.), and its faithful (almost all of mankind).

However, not only does “Holocaustianity” ape Christianity, it also turns it inside out: instead of love, hate; instead of truth, lies; instead of forgiveness, Talmudic vengeance; instead of respect for elders, the hunting down of aged camp-guards; instead of the spirit of poverty, the pursuit of reparation payments; instead of humility, the drive to dominate; instead of sharing, the pursuit of personal gain, instead of charity, blackmail: instead of respect for others, lynching: instead of quiet and discretion, publicity and noisy accusations in the media; instead of the boundless justice of God, the brazen injustice of conquerors setting themselves up as judges of the conquered, and so on and so on.

So here is a sonnet to honour what Prof. Faurisson did to get this monkey off of mankind’s back:—

“The Truth is mighty, and will prevail,” they said.
“Oh no!” one race replied, “the Truth we make –
“We are the Master Race, of all men head,
Our truth is what inferiors have to take!”
And thus a whole mythology arose
From how this race remoulded two World Wars.
On weak minds horror chambers they impose
To fake a god that everyone adores.
Yet one frail Frenchman braved the racist lies –
“Picture us one such genuine chamber – one!”
But pictures there were none to show. With cries
Of rage, the racists knew that Truth had won.
In God, Professor, you did not believe,
But you He used, all races to relieve.

Kyrie eleison.

Macchabees? Where?

Macchabees? Where? on January 26, 2019

What does the reunification of the Society of St Pius X with Rome mean to the great mass of the world’s inhabitants, even to the large number of its Catholics? The answer must be, very little. Similarly when passengers on the Titanic saw a team of engineers going below decks to investigate something or other, they may not have shown much interest, but as soon as they came to learn that their great ship was doomed, their interest must have grown much keener. The Catholic Church hit the iceberg of Vatican II over 50 years ago. A great engineer of the Church warned the Church’s captain of what had happened, and what would be the result, and he showed how to stop the Church from sinking. Alas, Archbishop Lefebvre was not heeded by the captains then or since, and his discouraged successors prefer today to listen to the misguided captains, who are, if the Society no longer shows the true way out, to be pitied.

Let us recall the last six years of the process of reunification, and assess where it is at today.

The decisive step in that process was the Society’s General Chapter of 2012, where it renounced the Archbishop’s fundamental principle that without a doctrinal agreement between the Society and Rome, no merely practical agreement could serve the Church. This is because a Catholic is a Catholic firstly by his subjective virtue of faith submitting his mind and will to the objective creed of the Church’s Faith. What the error of subjectivism does is to render the objective Faith subjective, so that I become free to believe, and consequently to behave, how I like. Like believing 2 and 2 are 4, OR 5 OR 6 OR 6,000,000. This unfaith of Vatican II the Society essentially adopted in 2012, yet Society leaders immediately began reassuring their priests and laity that nothing essential had changed in the Society. BUT –

In 2013 began a series of publicly admitted meetings in Rome with the Roman authorities, to prepare a step-by-step process of full recognition. This process duly followed:—

In 2014, There were visits of Roman dignitaries to SSPX seminaries, and there was the temporary Jubilee “concession” of official jurisdiction for SSPX Confessions.

In 2015, the “concession” on Confessions and Extreme-Unction was made permanent.

In 2016, priestly ordinations in the SSPX were no longer to be punished by suspension “a divinis.”

In 2017, Society Marriages were rendered “licit” by the participation of a Newchurch priest as witness.

In 2018, the SSPX General Chapter elected for their General Council three men who are no tigers of the Faith, and created two new positions alongside them (General Councillors) to enable Bishop Fellay and Fr. Schmidberger to retain their power as the two leading tigers of reunification.

And in 2019? – Rome has just re-absorbed the Commission Ecclesia Dei (ED) into the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith (CDF), from which it was hived off in 1988 to draw back to Rome Catholics tempted by the Society’s episcopal consecrations to follow the Archbishop instead of Rome. As such, ED was meant to be relatively kind to Traditionalists. But Pope Francis has no time for Tradition. Therefore since the Newsociety now agrees with Rome that there is no longer the clash with Rome that there was in 1988, he has put an end to ED. But ED was kind to Tradition, whereas the CDF are tigers of the Newchurch. Like Little Red Riding Hood, the Newsociety is throwing itself into the jaws of Rome – “Oh, sweet Big Bad Rome, what lovely teeth you have!” “All the better to eat you up with, you silly child!”

And the Society? Just as it will be happy if Rome dissolves ED because the CFD will then treat it as belonging fully to the Church, so it risks being happy if Rome were to attach to the Society two relatively decent Newbishops to look after its need of Ordinations and Confirmations, but from outside the Society and always under Rome’s own control. On Rome’s part it would be a clever move, closing the trap even tighter on what remains of the Archbishop’s Society. And how many Newsociety priests will even see that here is “a sea of troubles,” let alone “take arms, to end them” (Hamlet)? Not many, one may fear.

Kyrie eleison.

Californian Fires

Californian Fires on January 19, 2019

If anybody, particularly in the USA but anywhere in the world, still thinks that the United Nations is a benevolent organisation, or that the most recent fires ravaging the State of California are normal forest fires, they need to think again on both counts. There is serious evidence that the fires which destroyed last month the towns of Paradise and Malibu and killed only God knows how many hundreds of people, were started artificially, and there is a reasonable suspicion that they were part of a UN plan to cut down the US population and drive it off the land into big cities. Paranoia? Or a new paradigm? Read on.

From long experience in the State of California the characteristics of a normal forest fire are well known. The temperatures are never normally hot enough to melt metals or rubber tyres, the fires never start suddenly in several places all at once, the trees which surround houses are rarely untouched when the houses are burnt down, and houses are not usually levelled to the ground with a heap of mainly white ash left behind. But these are all features of the fires which destroyed Malibu and Paradise. Moreover exit roads by which inhabitants tried to leave the burning towns were turned into graveyards, with the wrecks of cars and their drivers being burnt to a cinder while the trees lining the same roads were left untouched. On the Internet is a wealth of visual evidence. For just one example, see themillenniumreport.com.

By far the likeliest explanation is that the fires were caused by DEW weapons, Directed Energy Weapons, for instance laser guns fired from above, from helicopters or aeroplanes. Rays from some such ray-guns, which have been around for tens of years, were captured on some inhabitants’ cell cameras, and they would explain the super-heat and the selectiveness of the burning. But who on earth would programme a satellite or pilot a plane to carry out deliberate murder on fellow-citizens? Readers, unless you have your heads buried deep in the sand, you must know by now that few people still believe that 9/11 was the work of 19 Arabs. Most people now admit that the evidence points to an inside job, if not of the public government or armed forces, at any rate of what is now being called the “Deep State,” in other words the private government hidden inside the public government, and which governs the public government. And 9/11 was in 2001. How much more murderous have these quasi-nintendo-players become since then . . . !

But why would the Deep State do any such thing? To fulfil any one of numerous plans for the tyranny of the New World Order. In 1992 was held a major United Nations meeting in Rio de Janeiro where 178 governments voted to adopt Agenda 21, a plan of “sustainable development” for the future of the world. Did not a US Presidential candidate, Albert Gore, propose there a nine-tenths reduction of the world’s population? Why not fry it with nintendo games from the sky? Serious question for these future managers of our godless world! If you love God, wake up and smell the burning!

Goal 15 of the UN’s 2030 Agenda, which was adopted in 2015 to succeed Agenda 21, runs: Protect, restore and promote sustainable use of terrestrial ecosystems, sustainably manage forests, combat desertification, and halt and reverse land degradation and halt biodiversity loss. In plain English, force human beings off the land into huge conurbations where you can “pack’em and stack’em,” and more easily control them; criminalise private land ownership; criminalise self-reliance and force total reliance on government. But perhaps most likely of all is a fourth purpose, of terrorising the population with precise super-powerful ray-guns from overhead against which there is no defence. After all, a worldwide tyranny is the aim, and as California goes, so goes the USA, and as the USA goes, so goes the world.

Now do readers see why Our Lady said in 1973 at Akita in Japan, “Only I can help you now”?

Kyrie eleison.

Trap Closing?

Trap Closing? on January 12, 2019

And so Church and world have staggered into another calendar year with everything coming into place for a third World War to wipe mankind off the face of the earth. And these “Comments” have reached their 600th issue when it seems just yesterday that they were celebrating their 500th issue. The world is spinning at a giddy pace – in Latin, “volvitur orbis” – but Almighty God is in full command, and His Cross is firmly planted, nor does it budge – “stat crux.” God gives a great degree of liberty to His enemies to act as His scourge upon a godless generation, but the scourging is for their good, to separate the sheep from the goats and to stop the sheep from sliding into Hell. And let His enemies not think that they will get the better of Him – He used the Assyrians to chastise the Israelites, but woe to the Assyrians if they thought they would escape His justice! – Isaiah X, especially verse 15 – God is not mocked.

But at the very heart of the world’s problems is the unprecedented problem of the Catholic Church. The Church depends on its hierarchy of bishops and priests, so it was logical that if God planned for His Church to decline before the end of the world (Lk. XVIII, 8), then the hierarchy would be involved in the decline, and that was the Second Vatican Council (1962–1965). The time for their holding strong had lasted from the Counter-Reformation in the 1500s, four admirable centuries of Catholicism, but after that resistance they gave way, and replaced God’s Catholic Church with their own Newchurch, or Conciliar Church. In the 1970’s there was still enough faith in Catholics to make possible a serious continuation of the resistance, for which Archbishop Lefebvre and his Society of St Pius X provided a lead, but after another 40 years his successors gave up that effort, and then Catholics were more abandoned than ever.

Today the life still seems to be draining out of them. It is an illusion to act or to react as though we are still in the 1970s. “Volvitur orbis.” The world has moved on, and with it, the Church. Extreme conditions call for extreme measures. As one once thriving Catholic institution after another turns slowly into a shell-game, Catholics turn slowly into walking ghosts of their former selves, and it seems as though there is little they can do about it. Nor are rhetoric or fine words the answer. The fine words are worn out, and the rhetoric is hollow. Catholics depend on their hierarchy, and their hierarchy is stricken. The Shepherd is struck, and the sheep are scattered, and it is no use their turning to the stricken Shepherd. He is gone!

A recent piece of news, or rumour – the geometry is variable, according to public reaction – is that the Roman sub-Congregation of Ecclesia Dei (ED) , founded by Rome immediately after the Society’s 1988 Consecrations, to reach out to Catholics tempted to follow Archbishop Lefebvre instead of Rome, is going to be re-absorbed into the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith (CDF). Apparently the re-absorption was due to be announced on December 20, but perhaps Rome thought twice. For while the Society’s present leaders might be only too happy to renounce the special outreach of ED and to put an end to their own “schism” (as they see it) by their coming fully under the “normal” CDF, there may still be enough Catholics Catholic enough to want Rome to make at least some gesture still in favour of Tradition. But ED is long since a shell-game. Both Rome and the Society leaders want the Roman trap to be closed . . .

Then what do Catholics do who have the Faith and want to keep it? First of all, take stock. The Church building in Rome was cemented by 250 years’ worth of the blood of martyrs, blood gushing red, including of many young girls. Where are the potential martyrs today? Almighty God has had enough of Catholics growing over centuries weaker and weaker in the Faith, and He is bringing back the lions to make some worthy candidates for Heaven. Secondly, let us gird our loins accordingly, prepare to play the man, as did those girls (without a trace of feminism), and humble ourselves beneath the Wisdom and Justice of God. Thirdly, let us remember that many presently last may soon be first, and vice versa. And fourthly, always, “Watch and pray, watch and pray, Fifteen Mysteries every day.”

Kyrie eleison.

Hamlet = Apostasy

Hamlet = Apostasy on January 5, 2019

If Hamlet is possibly the most puzzling, probably the most interesting, and certainly the most modern amongst all 37 of Shakespeare’s stage plays, it is all for the same reason – there is an elephant in the room. That elephant is England’s apostasy from the Catholic Faith which was being hammered home by the English government when Shakespeare wrote the play, around 1600 AD, and which was driving him to despair because he was a devout Catholic. So (1) Hamlet is the most puzzling of his plays for the mass of post-Catholic readers or theatre-goers or critics who have no inkling of the “Reformation” as being the greatest disaster ever to befall England. (2) It is the most interesting of the plays because it is pivotal and conflictual between the past Middle Ages and the coming Modern Age. (3) It is the most modern, because over the last 400 years virtually the entire world has come to share in England’s apostasy.

(1) But who cares about apostasy today? How many people even know what the word means (a falling away from the Catholic Faith)? There was a time, like 1600 in England, when the Devil fiercely persecuted the Faith, so that Shakespeare had to disguise the Faith in his plays in order not to be hanged, drawn and quartered. But today the Devil ruins many more souls by making them take it for granted that religion is of so little importance that anybody can choose any religion he likes, or none. The vile media are so awash in error and immorality that the mass of people do not even notice them any more. See Clare Asquith’s book Shadowplay for the Catholic coding in all Shakespeare’s plays. But if Hamlet’s incestuous mother, Queen Gertrude, does indeed represent England committing incest with Protestantism, his uncle, is it any wonder if our contemporaries can see no proportionate reason for Prince Hamlet’s melancholy?

(2) The play is pivotal and conflictual because, like no other of Shakespeare’s plays, it is suspended between the medieval world and the New World Order, because Shakespeare himself was being shaken to the core by the seeming success of the stamping out of the Faith in his beloved country, as can be read in the play from the bitterness of the Prince towards almost everyone around him, especially his true love, Ophelia. Now a Catholic is not bitter, but Shakespeare was bitter, in writing Hamlet. It did not last. Read John Vyvyan’s immensely valuable book, The Shakespearean Ethic, if you want to discern that moral pattern underlying all the plays which was Shakespeare’s glorious heritage from medieval England. It is even present in Hamlet, notably in the Prince’s spurning of Ophelia to make room in his heart for revenge, but in Hamlet as in no other play the corruption of society – by apostasy, no less – is so terrible that the anti-social Prince comes over as an absolute hero, the first in a long line of anti-authoritarian heroes (cf. Hollywood) needing to override all natural respect for social authority. Apostasy kills society.

(3) And so Hamlet is the most modern of the Shakespeare plays because it is the play which most departs from, or overlays, the medieval model. Shakespeare wrote many plays after Hamlet, but he was never again tempted to replace love by vengeance, or to return from the New to the Old Testament. He regained his calm and balance while still writing superb plays, but in 1611 he abandoned the stage and London to leave the Puritans to take over England and lead eventually all the world away from God. By today generations of young men suckled on anti-heroes have turned into anti-men, with little to nothing left in them of their medieval heritage. But human nature has not changed, and human beings still need men to lead, which is why the girls are trying to make themselves into men, and the two young sexes more and more spurn one another. In a line from Macbeth, “Confusion now hath made his masterpiece.”

If you read Hamlet, beware of the Ghost in Act One. If you are Catholic you know that Almighty God would never let out of Purgatory a soul to pursue revenge. Then where can the Ghost come from, other than from Hell? In which case, is the Prince really such a hero? Shakespeare’s bitterness was understandable, but it twisted his theology. Young men, adore and love Jesus Christ, love His Mother, pray her Rosary and lead the girls. That is what they need you for.

Kyrie eleison.