Eleison Comments

T.F.P. on Liberalism

T.F.P. on Liberalism on November 3, 2018

Whatever have been from its beginning – and still are – the faults of the organisation known as T.F.P. (Tradition, Family, Property), it is a pleasure to say that it is doing some good work in the United States today. In a regular circular letter (available from tfp@tfp.org) it presents brief essays often on three important points for the understanding of how the Catholic Faith needs to function in today’s demonic world. The essays are not too deep for ordinary readers to understand, but neither are they shallow. They may not be infallible, but they are thoughtful and full of good sense, and they often address important problems in today’s Church and world. Here for example is a summary of Four Characteristics of the Liberal Mind that are Destroying Society, from the American T.F.P. Letter of one month ago:—

The fragmented and polarised state of society today is proof that something has gone terribly wrong. Conservatives often blame the breakdown on liberal activists at work in politics and in the media, but the liberals’ dissolvent activity comes from a whole liberal mindset, spread far and wide. Almost everybody today accepts the principles of classic liberalism, enshrined in the American Constitution but moderated at that time by America’s Christian heritage. With that heritage now being largely repudiated, the full dissolvency of liberal principles is today becoming evident, as it was not evident before. In order to see where our chaos is coming from, let us look at four characteristics of the liberal mindset.

1 The liberal mind is always moving away from objective truth. Wanting to appear more compassionate and kind than the “heartless conservatives,” by means of half-truths they slide into error which they did not at first embrace. For instance liberals may well oppose crime in principle, but they promote it in practice by going soft on criminals, because of supposed injustices that criminals may have suffered.

2 To replace unpleasant and impersonal objective truth, the liberal mind is always looking for pleasing subjective opinions, or personal judgments, to confirm them in their own way of thinking and acting. A classic example comes from a Supreme Court decision of 1992, justifying abortion: “At the heart of liberty is the right to define one’s own concept of existence, of the meaning of the universe, and of the mystery of human life.”

3 The liberal mind is always wrongly defining freedom as the right to do whatever one wants to do. By this definition, sheer whims and fantasy can ultimately take over. Liberals will then call in doubt whatever contradicts their whims, but never what confirms them.

4 The liberal mind is always disliking rules and laws, which it feels as being automatically restrictive. In reality, law consists of reasonable precepts put forward by any society’s competent authority as being essential to that society’s common good. But liberals will resent even rules of clothing or grammar if these are felt to be too restrictive! Thus to replace the real God of Justice and the Ten Commandments, they fabricate their own god, a god above all of compassion, a god of ten Recommendations.

In brief, all four characteristics are centred on the self. According to liberalism, each person determines for himself what are true and false, right and wrong. Here is where society is breaking down.

For indeed liberalism as such cannot create a social order, or a society, but only a social breakdown. If it has survived until now, that is only by the solid Christian order which it inherited, and of which it is the dissolution. Liberals depend on what they destroy, and destroy what they depend on. In 2018 they are pushing ever closer to chaos. Liberalism is intrinsically anti-social. No society can be made out of anti-social members. Liberalism can only make people more and more isolated, lonely and frustrated. It can only make human life turn more and more into a series of clashes between sacrosanct individuals.

Kyrie eleison.

Still Sliding

Still Sliding on October 27, 2018

“No enemies on the left” is a classic saying of Democrats, Socialists, Communists, etc. It means that in politics, nobody fighting on the left should fight anybody else fighting on the left, unless they are going over to the right. In religion, the same saying should apply as follows: nobody fighting the good fight for Catholic Tradition should fight anybody else fighting for Tradition, unless they are in the process of abandoning Tradition. This means that no Catholics of Tradition should normally be attacking the Society of St Pius X which for over 40 years rendered outstanding service to Tradition. Alas, its interim Chapter of 2012 showed it to be sliding away from that Tradition in which it had been founded by Archbishop Lefebvre, and now the elective Chapter of last July seems to show the same slide to be continuing. Therefore with no intention here to harm the Society, let Catholics learn of the officially continuing slide.

The evidence is in a circular letter from Society Headquarters in Menzingen which begins to tell details of policy decisions taken by the Chapter of last July concerning relations of the Society with Rome. The policy is in five sections, of which the first three and the fifth contain a variety of pious considerations to frame the fourth section, which could not be a more official presentation of the Society’s policy towards Rome. Here is the fourth section, quoted in full. It is so important for the Society’s immediate future that every word will have been chosen by the Chapter with special care, and every word may be analysed:—

4a It is within the rights of the Superior General to decide if it is expedient to have contacts with the Holy See. It is up to him, in prudence and when the hour has come, dictated by Divine Providence, to take into consideration a modification of the canonical status, without prejudice to the prior convocation of a Chapter.

4b The Society is a work of the Church. Therefore, she has no agreement to conclude with the Holy Father. However, when the time comes, the true rights of the Society will be recognised and codified canonically. This is why the Society’s members are invited to speak more specifically about a “normalisation,” a “recognition,” a “solution or modification of the canonical status,” or a “renewal of our canonical approval.”

As to 4a – Indeed the Society’s Superior General must decide on what negotiations with Rome serve the Faith, and on how to conduct them, but in all Society Chapters prior to 2012 (1994, 2000, 2006), it was clearly repeated that any final submission to official Rome, or re-integration into it, or agreement with it, was something of such momentum for the Society that the Superior General could not alone decide on it without a full General Chapter also voting in its favour. Now note the phraseology of 2018: “modification of the canonical status” is a fig-leaf expression to cover over the placing of Archbishop Lefebvre’s Society of Truth under Conciliar Rome’s Authority of Lies. And “without prejudice to” (i.e. not excluding) is a poor substitute for “never without” (i.e. necessarily including). And note the assumption that the Superior General is guaranteed to decide in accordance with Providence. Did Paul VI have any such guarantee?

As to 4b – Indeed normally no subject makes an agreement with his Superior as though they are equals, but Neo-modernist Rome is not normal Rome! The Archbishop’s Society of Truth has no business to be putting itself in the position of a beggar with regard to the modernists now holding office in Rome. Truth does not beg from lies, unless it is ceasing to be Truth. In fact the Newsociety of 2018, has lost all real grip on the truth of the overwhelming crisis in the Newchurch of Vatican II, and it is losing its grip on Truth in general. So the four fig-leaf expressions that the Chapter here chooses to replace words expressing the reality of the Newsociety HQ’s intended sell-out to the enemies of the Faith now in Rome, are wholly out of place. They absolutely do not correspond to the reality of that sell-out.

Kyrie eleison.

“Resistance” Acting?

“Resistance” Acting? on October 20, 2018

This time it is a grandmother who writes to “Eleison Comments” with a concern which is widely shared among readers and friends who sympathise in general with the aims of the “Resistance” movement, but wonder what it is actually doing today to help their situation. Here is her plea, slightly summarised:—

I am very disappointed in the lack of leadership which is being shown today in the Society and the Resistance. We support the Resistance but we hear nothing about what it is doing. You have recently consecrated three Bishops but what is their function? What are they doing to give some comfort and hope to the faithful? We don’t hear anything about them either. Can they not form some sort of opposition to the Society, together with some very solid priests that have left the Society? Surely God is looking for something more than just prayers. Years ago He raised up the Archbishop to protect His Church. Is He now going to leave us faithful followers in the lurch? I think many Traditional Catholics are desperately looking for some strong leadership today, whether in the Society or in the Resistance.

Dear Grandmother,

Let me begin to answer with a famous episode from Roman history before Christ. In 216 BC the Roman army, normally unbeatable, went to fight the Carthaginians led by Hannibal who had invaded Italy and were threatening the very city of Rome. But at the battle of Cannae in south Italy the Romans allowed themselves to be out-manoeuvred and surrounded by Hannibal, so that they were slaughtered by the Carthaginians. There was consternation in Rome. What should they do? Some Romans wanted to raise another army and go after Hannibal again, but the advice of the Consul Fabius was to avoid battle if possible, and instead, while keeping a close watch on the enemy, nevertheless to wait until he would go home on his own. The advice was good, and it was followed. Eventually the Carthaginians went home, where their army was crushed by the Romans fourteen years later. “Fabius the Delayer” had won.

No comparisons work perfectly. So after the Church’s crushing defeat at Vatican II (1962-1965), would anybody say that Archbishop Lefebvre was wrong to have raised a few years later what army he could to go on fighting the modernists? Surely not. But Vatican II was a major battle which left enough good soldiers scattered around for the Archbishop to be able to rally them together in a small army in the 1970’s. On the contrary, the defeat of that army from 2012 onwards was a numerically small defeat, leaving far fewer scattered soldiers to fight. Could the strategy be the same as in the 1970’s and 1980’s? Surely not. For one thing, the soldiers this time round, often children of the revolutionary 1960’s or later, had that much less sense of obedience or of an ordered Church or world than the scattered Catholics had had after the Council. For who can deny that the 2010’s are far more disordered and undisciplined even than the 1970’s? One may wonder if the Archbishop, with all his gifts, could or would have put together a “counter-Society” today. Perhaps, perhaps not…

As it is, the four bishops of the “Resistance” movement do what they can, each in his own part of the world, to provide the few Catholics wishing to keep the Faith with iron rations of sane doctrine and guidance available to all interested, together with the episcopal sacraments. That is a minimal achievement, neither glamorous nor sensational, but it may be the essential necessary. If it is, may God keep us faithful.

Kyrie eleison.

Priceless Femininity – II

Priceless Femininity – II on October 13, 2018

The womanliness of woman is today under fierce attack. The reason is not far to seek. Satan wants complete power over mankind so as to make sure that every single soul falls into Hell. Now the way in which Almighty God designs for human beings to set out on the road to Heaven is by their birth within a normal human family, in which what we call today the “biological father” and the “biological mother” look after the fruit of their mutual love, their own children. Dr Henry Makow takes up the story from last week’s “Eleison Comments,” from the standpoint of the Satanists.

“Cabalist Jews and Freemasons are Satanists. They control by degrading and corrupting. Like termites they eat away at the supporting columns of society. The family is the red blood cell of a healthy society. It provides us with our roles and identity, as well as necessary emotional and material support. It ensures the young are born, loved and raised properly, and the aged are taken care of. Our family is our link in the chain of eternity. So the Satanists have always wanted to destroy it. They went after the women, whom they deemed fickle, vain and feeble-minded. ‘There is no way of influencing men so powerfully as by means of the women,’ Adam Weishaupt wrote. ‘These should therefore be our chief study; we should insinuate ourselves into their good opinion, give them hints of emancipation from the tyranny of public opinion, and of standing up for themselves; it will be an immense relief to their enslaved minds to be freed from any one bond of restraint, and it will fire them the more, and cause them to work for us with zeal without knowing that they do so; for they will only be indulging their own desire of personal admiration.’

“So the Satanists convinced women that marriage and family were ‘oppressive.’ Men may have toiled in factories and died in war to provide and protect, but somehow women were the ones oppressed. Satanists needed to interfere with the natural affection and attraction that males and females have for each other, and for their offspring. Satanists exist to banish love. A woman’s essence is love, the power to generate love, by loving and being loved in return. This is the source of her power. A woman’s love for her husband and children is the most precious thing in the world. For a man, this love is his greatest treasure. By allowing herself to be deceived, by pursuing material instead of spiritual power, modern woman has essentially lost the power to love. She can have power or love. She cannot have both. Women need a man’s love like a flower needs sunshine and water. Men nurture women and women empower men by acquiescing to their reasonable demands. This is the heterosexual dynamic [ . . . ]

“But this is what is condemned as the exploitation of woman (the ‘eroticisation of powerlessness’) by, for example, a Sheila Jeffreys, known as a lesbian feminist scholar and political activist. Obviously she cannot understand that woman’s love is her true power. She wants to turn all women into lesbians who like her cannot understand that woman’s style, beauty and charm, in brief her femininity, depend on eschewing material power. A woman who gives herself to her husband is cherished and loved by him and their children. A woman who pursues power in masculine terms is doomed to a life of isolation and bitterness.

“Western feminists, you have forfeited your most precious gift for nothing. You are vulgar, a real turn-off. You lack personality, charm, style, substance. You cannot love. You are not even attractive. And soon you will lose your youth. You will have nothing but your job, your dog and your equally desperate friends. Western feminists, you have been robbed, betrayed by your society, teachers, and political and cultural leaders; and consequently you have joined their traitorous ranks. You have betrayed your unborn children, your culture, your family and the promise of the future. But worst of all, you have betrayed yourselves” (end of Makow quote).

Kyrie eleison.

Priceless Femininity – I

Priceless Femininity – I on October 6, 2018

It is where the soldiers of a besieging army are pouring over the walls that the defenders need to fight. It is where the salvation of souls is being most hindered that servants of God must most fight. That is why these “Comments” and the “Rector’s Letters” that went before them come back often to the unwomaning of women and to the unmanning of men. God’s complementary design of man and woman, going back to Adam and Eve, is basic to human nature and life. And when that design is torn up by man and supposedly thrown away by the foul manipulations of “gender” and so on, how can the supernatural grace of God come in to land within human natures so radically fouled up? And without grace, where do they finish?

In theory, Catholic womenfolk should not have too great difficulty in understanding and accepting how God designed them. In practice, the pro-feminist propaganda is so relentless in today’s abject education and vile media that even Catholic women’s natural instincts and God-given sense of their true role in life are often overwhelmed by the thrust of pride towards seeming power. Here are some rough but wise words on woman, from Irene Claremont de Castillejo, Knowing Woman: Feminine Psychology:—

“Any girl who grows to womanhood without knowing that love is her supreme value has been spiritually raped. Feminine spirituality expresses an attitude of spiritual waiting, and tending, and readiness for the meeting with its opposite which is a prerequisite for woman’s inner wholeness. Without this she becomes a prey to the masculine within herself, a raging spirit of intellectual or physical activity to which no man can be related, and to which she can in no way relate herself. She is a woman possessed.”

And then from Henry Makow, Ph.D., Western Women Have Lost Their Power to Love (revised):—

“Western women have been tricked into pursuing power instead of love. Paradoxically, they have never been so powerless. They want to be loved but no longer have love to offer in exchange. In the movie War Games from 1983, the hero, Matthew Broderick, is a computer whiz-kid who accidentally starts a nuclear countdown and races to avert catastrophe. His girlfriend, played by Ally Sheedy, is seen in a complementary role, basically helping, encouraging and admiring him. He is the leader. But her presence informs, validates and heightens everything he does. It’s as though his actions are dedicated to her. This is the way heterosexuality works. Woman empowers man by entrusting her power to her husband. This is how woman loves, i.e. by ‘trusting,’ enlisting as First Mate to his Captain. If this movie were remade today, she would be Captain, he would be emasculated, and they would break up.

“From Chaucer to Freud, men have asked, ‘What do women want?’ It’s really quite simple. They want to be loved. Specifically, they want the passionate lifelong love of a husband. But what makes a man love a woman in this way? Her sacrifice. By throwing her lot in with his, by accepting his leadership, and by serving him and their children. In other words, lasting love is earned by deeds. It is not based on sex appeal (which wanes) or witty comebacks. It is built on bonds of GRATITUDE.

“By teaching women to be self-seeking instead of self-sacrificing, Feminism has deprived them of their stock-in-trade, love. All they have left to give is the act of marriage without marriage. Because they won’t surrender to a loving husband, they’re reduced to giving themselves to strangers.” (End of Makow quote.)

“But, Your Excellency, where are the Captains? Where are the potential loving husbands who will lead? The men today are wash-outs, not excluding the Traditional Catholics!” Girls, just like you have been de-feminised without your realising it, so they have been emasculated, by today’s whole wretched culture. You must pray, because God can easily find you a young man. Pray to St Anne, as above, but first of all, promise her that if she finds you a man, you are ready and willing to submit to him. That way she will be rather more inclined to search for you. Then twist her arm. Heaven does not mind that – Lk XVIII, 2–8.

Kyrie eleison.

Swedish Forethought

Swedish Forethought on September 29, 2018

“If crisis or war comes” is the title of a brochure of 19 pages issued to all Swedish households in May of this year by the State of Sweden, “to help us become better prepared for anything from serious accidents, extreme weather and IT (Information Technology) attacks, to military conflicts . . . . Many people may feel anxiety when faced with an uncertain world . . .” One useful page of the brochure lists in common sense fashion the four most important natural needs of any household in a national emergency: water, food, warmth and information. See on the Internet dinsäkerhet.se

The State of Sweden is obviously not alone in observing a high state of tension in the world around us. Every State is formed of nothing but human beings, every one of whom comes from God and has been given life in order to make the right use of it so as to be able to go to God at death. Yet the mass of mankind today lives in a state of indifference towards God, or in positive revolt against Him. Many men may not be atheists, they may still believe that He exists, but they hardly take Him seriously, because science and technology seem to have taken His place, and it is henceforth modern politics and economics that guarantee for us the good life. Old age is conveniently moved off into an old people’s home, and death into a hospital. Yet God exists of course as much as ever, He cares if anything more than ever, to see more souls than ever throwing themselves by sin into Hell, and here is why our world is in such a state of unprecedented tension: it is wilfully living at cross-purposes with its Maker. Some huge crisis must come.

Since the problem is radically religious, then it should go without saying that the best solution is also religious. That household is taking out the very best insurance policy to protect itself where the Rosary is regularly prayed by all the family together. How the Devil must hate the Rosary! But in the meantime Sweden’s practical suggestions are a good start for any household that has not yet been thinking of any natural measures to prepare for trouble. Here are a few of them:—

WATER – Clean drinking water is vital. Allow for at least three litres per adult per day. Foresee a means of boiling it if necessary. Have bottles, buckets with lids, plastic bottles in which to freeze water, and jerry cans, ideally with a tap, to collect water in.

FOOD – Have extra food at home that provides sufficient calories. Use non-perishable food that can be prepared quickly, requires little water or can be eaten without preparation: for instance, bread with a long shelf-life, spreads in tubes, milk powder, cooking-oil, pasta, lentils, tins of sardines, ravioli, boiled meat, soup, honey, nuts, seeds (those are only a few of the brochure’s suggestions).

WARMTH – In a house grown cold without electricity, gather in one room, hang blankets over the windows, cover the floor with rugs and build a den under a table to keep warm. Extinguish all candles and oil-burners before going to sleep. Air the room regularly to let in oxygen. Have woollen clothing, sleeping mats and sleeping bags, fire-lighters, alternative heat sources, etc.

COMMUNICATIONS – In a crisis there will be a need to be able to receive national news, to contact friends and relatives, to contact the emergency services. Therefore have a radio powered by batteries or solar cells or winding: a car radio and mobile phone charger that works in a car, extra batteries, etc.

And the brochure mentions a few miscellaneous extras like cash on hand, a medicine cabinet, fuel in the tank. Many of these things cost relatively little now, but let a dangerous crisis loom, and they risk suddenly becoming much more scarce and expensive, if they can be had at all. “Trust in God,” says the proverb, “but keep rowing to shore.”

Kyrie eleison.