Eleison Comments

War Avoided? – II

War Avoided? – II on April 28, 2018

Since the best of political commentators rarely get anywhere near the religious well-springs of history, and yet as God governs man, so a man’s relations with his God (religion) govern his relations with his fellow-men (politics), and so religion governs politics, then a religious commentator must open up the religious dimension of political questions which most people without God may positively wish their political commentators to leave alone. Almighty God seems to be as unwelcome on the present world scene as He is nevertheless its complete Master!

The theme of religion in fact driving politics arose in these “Comments” last week when it was stated that a certain race of men was behind both the media lies and the military pressure to start the Third World War. Given how murderous the latest weapons of modern times will make that war, who on earth can think that they will gain more than they will lose by the global conflict? The answer is, a race of men so absolutely sure of their superiority over all other men that they are convinced that they deserve to rule all mankind, and that they can and must manipulate world events until they arrive at that dominion, by fair means or foul, because the end is so sacred that it justifies all means. Sacred? The obliteration of mankind, sacred? Yes, a twisted sense of the sacred is the key to the insanity: “We, the Chosen People, are so sacred that either we rule the world or it must be destroyed, and ourselves with it!”

The problem is that from Abraham to Christ, they really were the race chosen out by God to be the cradle and launching pad of His own Incarnate Son. For two thousand years they were to be strictly separated from the rest of men and lifted above them, specially privileged and specially punished when necessary, in any case specially treated to make them fit to provide the divine Son with His human nature, human Mother and friends and race and surroundings, so that as their Messiah He could redeem all men from their sins. And if the African proverb says that it takes a village to make a child, what did it take to make a Blessed Virgin Mary? Say what one will about that race today, they did fulfil their mission in this major respect. The drama is that when their Messiah came among them and proved that His mission was to conquer the world for the Kingdom of Heaven and not for their glory, then they crucified Him, and as they have repudiated him collectively ever since, so they set themselves, as the Messiah-hating Race of the Messiah, an insoluble pathological problem, unless and until they turn individually to the Christ they have so hated.

From this pathology – or rather theology – of the Jews down two millennia, there follows a cascade of consequences for the correct reading of today’s world events, but the most important conclusions to be drawn are the following. First and foremost, if Almighty God is deliberately allowing a small number of Jews to master-mind the corruption and chaos of a large number of Gentiles, it is only in order to drive these Gentiles back towards Him. For indeed the one and only thing that the Jews cannot handle is the true Faith of the one true Catholic Church. God created neither the world nor the Catholic Church for all souls to fall into Hell, and so that whenever souls pick up on the true Faith they have in hand their “victory over the world” (I Jn. V, 4). And nothing and nobody else can force them to abandon that Faith. If they do so, they have essentially nobody but themselves to blame.

Then let every one of us turn in heart and mind to the one true God of the one true Church (not that of Vatican II), and the enemies of God, Jew or Gentile, can only lose their present power. Here alone is the true solution to our present worldwide corruption and chaos. If at all possible, fifteen Mysteries a day of the most Holy Rosary of the Blessed Mother of God, the greatest human person that ever lived – and a Jewess.

Kyrie eleison.

War Avoided? – I

War Avoided? – I on April 21, 2018

At world’s end there will be “wars and rumours of wars,” says Our Divine Lord (Mt. XXIV, 6), but “see that you are not alarmed; for this must take place, but the end is not yet.” In the last few weeks we have certainly had rumours of war, including the threat in Syria of a major confrontation between the armed forces of the United States and of Russia. Since then the threat seems to have subsided. What happened to it, and what are the prospects for the future? Are we now safe from World War III?

It is difficult to tell for sure, because of course the public media are virtually all in the hands of that race which is pushing towards that Third World War which it hopes will enable them to complete their tyranny over mankind, left incomplete by their first two World Wars. Therefore virtually all media reports are slanted in favour of the people and events which could lead to war. However that race has not yet managed to control the Internet which has for the moment broken their monopolistic control of public opinion, so that sane voices can still be heard if one is looking for the truth. What follows is a version of events starting out from material supplied by two such commentators from the United States, both accessible on the Internet – Paul Craig Roberts, and “the Saker”:—

The latest feared confrontation between the USA and Russia in Syria was avoided because the leaders of the US armed forces in Washington would not risk a conflict with the Russians, because of the fearsome Russian weapons newly revealed by President Putin in Russia. These weapons would seem able to wreak havoc upon any American fleet presently in the Mediterranean. Therefore the Americans carefully avoided a strike which could have provoked a Russian retaliation, and they warned the Russians in advance, so that most of the attacking missiles were shot down by Syria, and the damage was minimal.

Does that mean that the danger is over? By no means. The race mentioned above still wants war, and it controls American foreign policy, as Ariel Sharon once boasted in Israel – “We control the Americans, and they know it.” By all means within their considerable power they will go to work on the dissenting American Generals and on President Trump, meanwhile working furiously to develop effective means of defence against the new Russian weapons. And as soon as they think that they have overcome these obstacles, their media will produce another set of lies to fool the stupid Western public, like “chemical weapons” (all long since removed from Syria), or building democracy (Syrians themselves are quite happy with their President Assad), or “Putin is Hitler” (he continues to show remarkable forbearance in the face of vile Western provocation, but if it will not stop, then one day he will more than understandably react).

However, even that race’s overpowering influence (barely alluded to by the two political commentators) does not go to the very heart of the matter (not mentioned at all by the commentators): that race is merely a scourge used – and protected – by God to serve Him by punishing the peoples on earth that turn their backs on Him. Thus that race has shown to leaders of the West all the kingdoms of the world, boasting that they are in its power, and it has promised to hand over to the West the New World Order if only the West will bow down and adore. The Western leaders and nations did not have to accept the offer, but of their own free choice they did.

Therefore unless the Western leaders and nations start to give the correct answer to that offer, namely “You shall worship the Lord your God, and Him only shall you serve,” that race will continue to use all its special God-given talents to tempt and to scourge. World War III seems correspondingly likely to occur eventually, if not in Syria, then wherever else godless nations can be fooled.

Kyrie eleison.

Anti-Lefebvrism – II

Anti-Lefebvrism – II on April 14, 2018

Is there a reason why NM (see last week’s “Comments”), in order to deal with the problem of the Conciliar Popes, resorts to the dramatic solution of declaring that they have not been Popes at all? There would seem to be. The Catholic Church is both human (a society of human beings) and divine (specially animated by the Holy Ghost), and it is important not to confuse the two. Human beings as such are all fallible. God alone is infallible. The mistake of Catholics resorting to the dramatic solution of NM is that they are attributing to the human Popes too much of the infallibility that can come from God alone. Let us take an illustration from any modern home.

When I put an electric plug into a socket in the wall, the electric current does not come from the plug, it comes from the power station through the wall and socket into the plug and whatever appliance needs the electric current. The power station is God. The wall and socket are the Church. The current is the Church’s infallibility, coming from God. The plug is the four conditions which the Pope alone can insert into the socket. Those conditions are of course that he 1) speaks as Pope 2) in order to fix once and for all 3) a point of faith or morals 4) with the intention of binding all Catholics to accept it. Through the Pope’s engaging the four conditions, he and he alone has guaranteed access as a human being to the Church’s divine infallibility. The four conditions are the Pope’s to engage. The infallibility is God’s to engage.

Also of course, this particular socket, known as the Church’s Extraordinary Magisterium (EM), is not the only access of human beings to the Church’s infallibility. They accede to it much more by the Church’s Ordinary Magisterium (OM), which is Catholic Tradition, or, what all the Church’s teachers, Popes and Bishops in particular, have taught all over the world ever since Jesus Christ as God deposited that Deposit of the Faith with His Church, confirmed infallibly in the Apostles at Pentecost and handed down infallibly by them until the last of them died. From then on that doctrine was in the hands of fallible human beings, to whom God left their free-will to teach error if they chose to do so. But if ever human error made doubtful what belonged to the infallible doctrine and what did not, God gave to His Church also the Extraordinary Magisterium, precisely to fix once and for all what does and what does not belong to the Ordinary Magisterium. Thus OM is to EM as dog to tail, and not as tail to dog!

The problem of Catholics without number ever since the solemn definition in 1870 of the Church’s infallibility is that since the access of the EM to the Church’s infallibility is automatically guaranteed in a way in which the access of the OM is not, then the EM seems superior, and Catholics tend to exaggerate the EM and to transfer to the Pope personally that infallibility which in reality belongs automatically only to the Church. This means that if the Pope makes serious errors like those of the Conciliar Popes, then the only possible explanation is that they are not Popes. Or, if they are Popes, then one must follow their errors. The logic is good, but the premise is false. Popes are not as infallible as all that. They can make serious errors, as Vatican II and its Conciliar Popes have shown, as never before in all Church history! But the Church remains infallible, and therefore I know that Catholic Tradition will last to the end of the world despite the very worst that any poor Popes may try to do between now and then.

But how do I know that to the Pope as Pope belongs only the privileged access (four conditions) to the electric current (infallibility), and not the current itself which belongs to the wall (the Church)? Because the very definition of infallibility in 1870 says so! I need only read:—when the Pope engages the four conditions (mentioned above), then he “is possessed of that infallibility with which the Divine Redeemer willed that his Church should be endowed in defining doctrine regarding faith or morals.”

So Catholic Popes are free to make terrible mistakes without the Church being any less infallible.

Kyrie eleison.

Anti-”Lefebvrist” Argument – I

Anti-”Lefebvrist” Argument – I on April 7, 2018

To attack the French Dominican priests of Avrillé for their “Lefebvrism,” i.e. for their refusal to accept that the Conciliar Popes since Paul VI have not been Popes at all, a French layman – Mr. N.M. – has just written an article accusing the Dominicans of rejecting three Catholic dogmas: that the Pope has primacy of jurisdiction over the Universal Church; that the Church’s Universal Ordinary Magisterium is infallible; that it is the Church’s living Magisterium which determines what Catholics must believe. Normally such questions of doctrine may be best left to the experts in doctrine, but ours are not normal times. Today Catholics can have to rely on their own Catholic good sense to decide such questions for themselves.

Let us look at all three questions in a simple and practical way. If I want to accept that the Popes have been true Popes since Paul VI, why should I have to deny firstly that the Pope is head of the Church, secondly that the Church’s normal teaching is infallible and thirdly that the living Pope tells me what I should believe? Let us look at N.M.’s arguments, one by one.

As to the first point, NM quotes the thoroughly anti-liberal Council of Vatican I (1870–1871) to the effect that the Pope is the direct and immediate head of every diocese, every priest and every Catholic. If then like all Lefebvrists, I refuse to obey him, I am implicitly denying that he is my head as a Catholic, so I am denying that the Pope is what Vatican I defined him to be. Answer: I am not at all denying that the Conciliar Popes have the authority to command me as a Catholic, I am only saying that their Catholic authority does not include the authority to make me turn myself into a Protestant, as I will do if I follow their commands in line with Vatican II.

Secondly, NM argues that Vatican I also stated that the everyday teaching of Pope and bishops is infallible. Now if ever we had serious teaching of Pope and Bishops together, it was at Vatican II. If then I refuse that teaching, I am implicitly denying that the Church’s Universal Ordinary Magisterium is infallible. Answer, no, I am not. I fully recognise that when a doctrine has been taught in the Church nearly everywhere, at all times and by all Popes and Bishops, it is infallible, but if it has been taught only

in modern times by the 20th century Popes and Bishops of Vatican II, then it is contrary to what was taught by Popes and Bishops at all other times of the Church, and I do not consider myself bound to accept it. As I accept the heavyweight UOM of all time, so I reject the lightweight UOM of today, contradicting it.

Thirdly, NM argues that the true Pope has the living authority to tell me as a Catholic what I must today believe. If then I refuse to believe what the Conciliar Popes have told me to believe, I am rejecting their living authority as arbiters of the Faith. Answer: no, I am not. I am using my eyes to read, and my God-given brain to judge, that what the Conciliar Popes tell me contradicts what all previous Popes back to St Peter tell me, and I prefer to follow the heavy weight of 261 Popes telling me what to believe against the light weight of six Conciliar Popes. “But then you are rejecting the living authority of the living Pope as arbiter of the Faith!” Only because I am following, obeying and submitting to 261 Popes as arbiters of that Faith which my eyes and my brain tell me that the Conciliar Popes are not following. “But then you are backing your own eyes and brain against the Catholic Pope!” God gave me eyes and a brain which function, and when I come before Him to be judged, I shall answer for the use I made of them.

It is clear that NM’s own answer to the problem of Popes protestantising, modernising and Conciliar, is to deny that they ever were Popes. It should be equally clear that to that problem, which is very real, I am not obliged to adopt NM’s drastic solution. Nor, if I refuse to adopt it, am I obliged to deny three Church dogmas. Peace be to NM.

Kyrie eleison.

Church Resurrection?

Church Resurrection? on March 31, 2018

And the day before Easter should be a good moment to think of how Mother Church is going to rise from her present stricken state. By our Catholic Faith we know with absolute certainty that she will rise again, and that she will last to the end of the world (Mt. XXVIII, 20). But it is a great mistake to think that she will rise this time by human means, because then I start believing for instance in human means to come to her rescue, like for instance “theological discussions” or diplomatic negotiations with her present masters in the Vatican.

Thus the theological discussions of 2009–2011 led nowhere, which is why we have heard almost nothing of them ever since, because they proved that the doctrinal gulf between Conciliar Rome and Catholic Tradition cannot be bridged. And diplomatic negotiations can lead at most to the mere appearance of a rescue for Tradition, because today’s Romans have 2000 years’ experience of diplomacy, and they do not want Tradition, because it is a serious obstacle in the way of their New World Order, where Our Lord Jesus Christ has no business to be doing any more reigning. The problem is a wholesale rejection of God on the part of mankind in general, and on the part of His own churchmen in Rome in particular.

Therefore the problem is not going to be solved by merely human means. As Cardinal Villot (1905–1979), a former Secretary of State in the Vatican under three Conciliar Popes (1969–1979), admitted on his deathbed, “Humanly, the Church is finished.” And it is a great lack of supernatural spirit, not without some arrogance, on the part of the present leaders of the Society of St Pius X to argue as they do that the Society must negotiate some settlement with the Church officials in Rome because there is no other solution for the crisis of the Church. Do these men really think that the Lord God is short of means to come to the rescue of His Church? Do they really think that the arm of God is shortened by the wickedness of men? Here speaks His prophet Isaiah (LIX, 1–3):—

1 Behold, the LORD’s hand is not shortened, that it cannot save, or his ear dull, that it cannot hear; 2 but your iniquities have made a separation between you and your God, and your sins have hid his face from you so that he does not hear. 3 For your hands are defiled with blood and your fingers with iniquity; your lips have spoken lies, your tongue mutters wickedness. 4 No one enters suit justly, no one goes to law honestly; they rely on empty pleas, they speak lies, they conceive mischief and bring forth iniquity.

Men’s iniquities are the problem. And is it likely that God has no solution? No. And is it likely that He wants men to play no part in His solution? No. And is it likely that what He wants them to do to save His Church is specially difficult or complicated? No. But is it likely that it will require some humility? Yes, because “God resists the proud and gives grace to the humble” (James IV, 6). And will it require some faith? Certainly, because “Without faith it is impossible to please God” (Heb.XI, 6). And is there any chance that God will not have told mankind, on the brink of destroying itself, what humble means He wants men to believe in and to apply, for Himself to step in and save them from destruction? There is no such chance at all. Then what has He in fact told mankind for His Church to be able to rise again?

He said it through His Mother, at Fatima, in 1917, in Pontevedra in 1925, and in Akita in 1973. In Fatima: Russia must be consecrated to the Immaculate Heart of Mary by the Pope with all the Catholic bishops. In Pontevedra: Catholics must practise the Devotion of the First Saturdays. In Akita; Catholics must pray the Rosary, for the Pope, for bishops, for priests. Are these three points humble? Yes. Are they supernatural, requiring supernatural faith? Definitely. Are any of them too much to ask, for the Church to rise again, and for mankind to come back from the brink of destruction? Definitely not. Then let nobody complain that there is nothing they can do!

Kyrie eleison.

Chaos Deciphered

Chaos Deciphered on March 24, 2018

Just before Holy Week is a good moment to reflect on the passion (suffering) of the Catholic Church. A

reader writes: “Can you tell us what on earth is going on with SSPX, Bishop Fellay, and others? We’re hearing some weird stories down here, and we don’t quite know what to believe. THINGS ARE FRACTURED ALMOST BEYOND BELIEF – EVERYWHERE. Starting from (1) the Novus Ordo, we have (2) the SSPX, (3) the Sedevacantists, (4) the SSPX Resistance, and (5) Fr. Pfeiffer’s group, with more splits to come, no doubt! What on earth is “Pope” Francis up to? He spends all his time playing politics, nothing spiritual! And one hears that Fellay is chasing a scarlet hat! What does that mean?

Dear Friend, the Catholic Church is in a state of chaos, by a just punishment of God, because His Church is the “light of the world” and the “salt of the earth,” but all over the world mankind is turning away from Him, including even His own churchmen. Nor is it any use God raising a good Pope too soon, because the churchmen would merely turn and tear him (Mt. VII, 6), as perhaps they assassinated John-Paul I. So the whole world is going to be in darkness (no light) and corruption (no salt), until enough men are so overwhelmed by today’s galloping chaos that they get back on their knees to beg God in His mercy to put the Pope back on his feet, who at the moment, as you say, is playing politics instead of religion.

The Pope is crucial because he is the rock on which the Church is built (Mt. XVI, 18), so that if he is fractured through wanting to follow the corrupt world instead of leading it out of its corruption, then as you say “things are fractured almost beyond belief – everywhere.” When Our Lord was struck in the Garden of Gethsemane all the Apostles were scattered (Zachary XIII, 7; Mt. XXVI, 31). Today Pope Francis is so deeply struck that authority throughout the Church is essentially dislocated.

The problem of Pope Francis goes back to the Second Vatican Council (1962–1965), because that was when and where the Popes gave up resisting the decadent modern world and decided to follow it instead. Up till Pius XII included (1939–1958), the Popes had resisted that decadence, but it was so glamorous and overpowering that John XXIII, Paul VI, John-Paul II and Benedict XVI all allowed themselves to be deluded (not without their own fault). They created your (1), the Novus Ordo or Conciliar Church, named after the New Order of Mass which has turned masses of Catholics into virtual Protestants. Pope Francis not only shares these Popes’ errors from the accursed Council, but he also puts them most destructively into practice, causing more chaos in the Church than ever.

Yet soon after the Council, God had raised a Catholic Archbishop to found a Congregation to look after all souls that refused to abandon Catholic Tradition which was then being abandoned by the Popes and the mass of churchmen. That was your (2), the SSPX, or Society of St Pius X, which flourished until the Archbishop died in 1991. But before he died there began also your (3), the “sedevacantists” who are so scandalised by the Conciliar Popes that they refuse even to believe that they are true Popes. And after the Archbishop died, his younger successors at the head of his Society, suckled on the modern world, fell foul of the same errors as the Council, notably Bishop Fellay who may well be seeking a Cardinal’s hat as a reward for his corrupting the resistance of Tradition to the Newchurch. This betrayal of the Archbishop’s true resistance from inside the Society gave rise to your (4) the SSPX “Resistance,” in which scattered priests hang loosely together to keep the Catholic Faith being now corrupted inside both the Novus Ordo and the SSPX. Good Catholics hanker for less looseness, but by now half a century of Conciliar Popes had essentially broken Catholic structure. However, your (5) now arose, Fr. Pfeiffer’s group, to which the (4) “Resistance”did not seem to be resisting enough.

In brief, within all five groupings there are scattered Catholic sheep known to God, who have the faith and want and mean to be Catholics, but Conciliar Popes are incapable of pulling Catholics together in the true Faith. And since nobody less than a Pope in his right mind can fulfil that function, then “what cannot be cured must be endured,” until God intervenes. For God to intervene, let any Catholic – or non-Catholic! – pray 15 Mysteries of the Rosary every day for God’s Mother to intercede with her Son.

Kyrie eleison.