Eleison Comments

General Chapter – III

General Chapter – III on August 11, 2018

When Catholic Truth and Catholic Authority move apart, as at Vatican II, it cannot be the Truth that is moving, because Catholic doctrine does not change. It can only be the Authority that has moved, and therefore the Church authorities can alone be to blame for the separation. All the more reason to treasure those authorities that did not betray the Truth, such as Archbishop Lefebvre and his Society of St Pius X. All the more reason to take at least one more look at what happened to it at its recent General Chapter – did the Society in fact get back on the Archbishop’s track which it left in 2012, or did the French proverb apply, “the more things change, the more they stay the same”?

At the beginning of the Chapter three new men were elected to form the triumvirate (body of three men) ruling the Society, and many a good priest in the Society breathed a great sigh of relief and enjoyed a few days of real hope for the future. But then at the end of the Chapter there were voted onto the Society’s General Council, where major decisions are taken, the previous Superior General together with his own predecessor as Superior General. This was by the creation of a novelty in the Society, a new post of “Counsellor.” And many a good priest’s heart must have sunk in his breast. What hope could there be now for a change of the Society’s disastrous course from faithful Truth to faithless authorities when that course’s two main architects were reinstated on the Society’s General Council?

At least one participant in the Chapter was reassured that the two “Counsellors” will not be living in Society headquarters in Menzingen, Switzerland; that they will only be advising on questions of setting up or closing Society houses and admitting or expelling Society members; that creating the “Counsellors” was a clever move of the Chapter because it will help to heal divisions in the Society. Does anyone feel re-assured? Menzingen must win back the trust which its ambiguous politics for 20 years have lost. Here is one commentator among many who does not trust such recent soothing words of the Society’s rulers:—

In reality the choice – fixed beforehand – of Fr Pagliarani for the new Superior General disguises the policy likewise fixed beforehand of confirming the status quo, as to the future direction of the Society. Shamelessly there were placed at the side of the New Superior two more Assistants, hardly outstanding for their resistance to modernist Rome. Moreover the Chapter had the nerve to invent the function of two “Counsellors,” unheard of in the Society’s Statutes, and to “choose” for the job the two characters most in favour of an agreement with Rome that the Society has ever had: Fr. Schmidberger, known for his friendship with Cardinal Ratzinger, and Bishop Fellay, known for his “new friends” in Rome and for his dedication to liquidating the Society, to be handed over bound hand and foot to the Roman apostates.

The picture that emerges is not necessarily one of unconditional surrender, but we catch a glimpse of a new way of getting closer to Rome, with a little more caution and a little more diplomacy towards the priests and laity of the Society. However, given that God both sees and foresees, and that while man proposes, it is God who disposes, then another possibility is that Our Lord intervenes and infuses in the relatively young Fr Pagliarani the Gifts of Counsel, Fortitude and Fear of God which he will need to straighten out the course of the Society lifeboat, and bring it safely to port. May that be God’s will!

In fairness, the Chapter did succeed in changing the Superior General, which was the most important thing that it had to do. Bishop Fellay and Fr Schmidberger as “Counsellors” may well go on scheming with the Romans on how to bring what remains of the Archbishop’s Society under the heel of Conciliar Rome, but supreme power in the Society now belongs to Fr Pagliarani. Will he make good use of it? God only knows. “Charity believes all things, hopes all things” (I Cor. XIII, 7). We must pray for him.

Kyrie eleison.

General Chapter – II

General Chapter – II on August 4, 2018

At least for the moment one may reasonably judge that the General Chapter of the Society of St Pius X concluded in yet another disguised defeat for the Catholic Faith. It is a shame if the 40 leading priests of what was once Archbishop Lefebvre’s Society do not grasp the full dimension of the Church and world crisis in which we all find ourselves today, but that is the reality. In a way they are not to be blamed, because they are no more nor less than children of their age. Given that we are living in pre-apocalyptic times, why should Society priests have been spared the temptations and blindness which have, since Vatican II, brought low the mass of the Church’s bishops and priests? The Church has Our Lord’s promise that it will never fail (Mt. XXVIII, 20), but the Society never had any such promise.

Therefore let Catholics who wish to save their souls “get real”, as Americans say, or adjust their minds to the reality of our situation. For example, an anxious mother from the United States just wrote to me of her concern for her children:– “I want my children to have other children who love the faith. And I want other opportunities for them to meet faithful Catholics and maybe marry one-day. I have a son who is only 12 and would like to become a priest. What is the future for them? Will there ever be in our neck of the woods a “Resistance” priest? And how about a school? And will my son ever be safe entering a seminary?” There must be today many Catholic mothers with the same heartburn. I replied with the immense need that all Catholics have today to grasp reality and to adapt to it:–

Dear Mother,

GET USED TO THE IDEA THAT IN A FAMINE A CRUST OF BREAD IS A LUXURY . The Church is in a state of famine. Therefore –

1 Sufficient for the day is the evil thereof, says Our Lord (Sermon on the Mount). There may or may not be a decent Seminary by the time your 12-year old grows up. If there is not, that will mean that Our Lord did not mean for him to be a priest. But much water will go over the dam between now and then.

2 A priest from the “Resistance” in your neck of the woods? Time alone will tell. Meanwhile you are not obliged to attend Masses which diminish your faith, in fact you may be obliged not to attend them. Let you and your husband judge. But if you attend no public Mass, you must adore God at home in a regular way on Sunday. That is the Third Commandment. Your example will teach your children.

3 A “Resistance” school will be a super-luxury. Meanwhile children DOOOOO listen to their biological parents, it is deep in their nature. You can send them to schools not so good, as long as you have the Rosary at home, and watch carefully over all influences that can come to play on them, especially their music… Do not let them be alone in their rooms with any electronics. Keep these out of the home, as absolutely far as possible.

4 Sufficient for the day is the evil thereof. Remember St Ambrose to St Monica — “The child of so many tears (the future St Augustine) cannot be lost.” Weep tears of blood if necessary for the salvation of each of your children – what else matters? – but at the same time have a boundless trust in the Sacred Heart of Jesus and in the desire and power of His Mother to obtain their salvation.

Therefore, dear readers, the Archbishop and his Society were a super-luxury. It is all too normal if today we lose it. We must “gird our loins”, i.e. tighten our belts, and reckon on saving our souls without it, if necessary. The grace of God is always there. “The help of God is closer than the door.”

Kyrie eleison.

General Chapter – I

General Chapter – I on July 28, 2018

So the latest General Chapter of the Society of St Pius X, the fourth with elections (1982, 1994, 2006 and 2018), came to a close in Écône, Switzerland, last Saturday. The event was followed with interest in many quarters, because for about 40 years from its founding in 1970 the Society emerged as a most important bastion of the Catholic Faith in the wake of the Second Vatican Council (1962–1965), which had in effect officially undermined that Faith. However, over the last 20 years or so the Society had given increasing signs of a change of direction, more in line with the Church’s Conciliar officials, and less in line with its Founder, Archbishop Lefebvre. Which direction would the General Chapter now show the Society to be taking?

The detailed proceedings of a Chapter are meant to remain private, like those of the election of a Pope, but at the end of the Chapter emerged public words and actions. The words were the Chapter’s official Declaration of policy for the future, which aligned itself on Archbishop Lefebvre’s famous declaration of November of 1974, “in its entirety.” However, as the website Non Possumus has clearly shown by quoting truly in its entirety that declaration of war against the new religion of Vatican II, the Chapter has deliberately chosen to quote only its more peaceful parts. This is not promising for the Society’s continuation of the Archbishop’s holy war against the dreadful apostasy of Vatican II.

Of course the Archbishop was Catholic first and only as a consequence anti-Conciliar, which is why his declaration of war contains peaceful parts. But how can truth be loved without a hatred of error? Anti-Conciliarism follows immediately and necessarily upon love of Catholicism, which is why hordes of true Catholics came to follow the Society and its Founder who clearly and openly denounced the apostasy of the Church’s officials. Under him, the seminary in Écône once had well over a hundred seminarians, and crowds of thousands would attend each summer the ordination of a dozen or more new priests. In June of this year an estimated crowd of 450 souls attended the ordination of three new priests from among about 40 seminarians. Catholics are voting with their feet – and closing their wallets – against the Newsociety.

As for the Chapter’s public actions, which always speak louder than words, these consisted in the election of a new Superior General and two new Assistants. Participants in the Chapter must be congratulated on having deposed the previous General and Assistants, because these had striven for 12 years to change the Society’s direction in order to pursue official recognition from the Roman apostates. The recognition was not obtained, but the Society was seriously weakened and its best priests disoriented. So who did the Chapter choose as rulers in their place? The two new Assistants have been loyal executives of the previous General with his policy of currying favour with Conciliar Rome. For the common good of the Society? But when was there ever a Catholic common good opposed to the Faith? As for the new General, he may not himself know what he means to do as General, because God alone knows for sure what a man will do when he is put in power. Often he will disappoint, because “Power corrupts and absolute power corrupts absolutely” (Lord Acton) – but he can prove to be surprisingly good. Fr Pagliarani certainly needs our prayers.

In this respect however, the Chapter’s last public action came like a thunderclap. Just before the Chapter’s close they voted to add to the Society’s governing Council of General and two Assistants another two “Counsellors,” and who did they choose? The Society’s last two Generals, Fr Schmidberger (1982–1994) and Bishop Fellay, who between 1994 when he was first elected and 2018 when he was at last dethroned, was the main architect of the Society’s weakening and decline! Whose doing was it to put Bishop Fellay right back next to the throne, together with his closest collaborator, Fr Schmidberger? What wise Superior wants his predecessor to be hanging around for another 12 years? What did the Chapter think it was doing? In any case, it is not a good sign if the Society is to love truth and hate error.

Kyrie eleison.

Artificial Intelligence – II

Artificial Intelligence – II on July 21, 2018

Artificial Intelligence is in fact a contradiction in terms. Anything artificial cannot be intelligent. Anything truly intelligent cannot be artificial. Any intelligent being must (as such) be living, spiritual and free. Anything artificial must (as such) be non-living and material and cannot be free. Therefore nothing artificial can be intelligent in the true sense of the word, and nothing truly intelligent can be artificial. An intelligence can be created by God alone. Man can create only things artificial.

To show as much, let us assume with the “Comments” of last week that there are three ranks of spiritual beings: the (1) Creator, (2) angels and (3) men, and four ranks of material beings: (3) men, (4) animal, (5) vegetable and (6) mineral. This means that man is the most complicated of creatures, because he alone is both spiritual and material. If anybody claims that man is purely material, he is probably making the most elementary of errors in philosophy, namely that only material beings exist. That error is widespread in our materialistic world of today, but either such a man has never thought or loved, or he is denying the full nature of his own experience. But if then he is nothing but matter, why does he have such a sharp sense of his own human dignity? And why does he behave as though freedom is of supreme importance to him?

In fact the six ranks of being can be graded by how far they climb out of matter. (6) Mineral is locked into matter but (5) plants are not so locked – they live and move, but still they are fixed in place and know nothing outside of themselves. (4) Animals live and move, but are not fixed in place and they have sense-knowledge and sense-desire of material things outside themselves. (5) Men live and move, are not fixed in place, and have not only sense-knowledge and sense-desire of material particulars outside themselves, but also intelligence and desire by will of non-material universals outside themselves, which is a huge step forward in climbing free of matter. The word “intelligence” comes from the Latin “intus-lego,” meaning “within I read,” that is to say, intelligence reads within things sensed their non-material form or essence. This is because intelligence, and the will which follows it, are both spiritual faculties, belonging to that part of man which is, as such, free from matter and above matter.

And upon these two faculties follows the freedom of (3) man’s will, shared by no other (4) animals which are all locked into their instincts. And that freedom manifests even to the most atheistic of materialists his superior dignity above all mere (4) animals, if he is only honest enough to recognise the fact. Above man are the (2) angels who are purely spiritual and intelligent but still particular beings, whereas (1) the Creator is universal spiritual Being Itself, locked into no matter nor even into any particularity.

Thus (3) man is living, and spiritual by his immortal soul with its intelligence and will which are the foundation of his free-will, making him free. Now is anything “artificial,” like a computer or a robot, either living or spiritual or free? Firstly, is not living from within itself. Nature spills human, animal and plant seed in all directions, and every seed contains life. But despite tremendous effort now for many years, human art has not succeeded in creating one seed with life inside it (and one suspects it never will). Secondly, if nothing made by human art is living, still less can it be spiritual, because a spiritual being presupposes a high (3) form of life. And thirdly no computer or robot made by man can possibly be free, because free-will presupposes a spiritual intelligence which no human art can fabricate. A (3) spiritual intelligence can be created not even by a (2) angel, but by (1) the Creator alone, God.

Therefore (6) computers and computer-driven robots cannot be living, and can initiate nothing outside what has been programmed into them. They cannot be intelligent in the full sense of the word, because that requires a spiritual being which God alone can create. And so they cannot be free to make any decision on their own, they are mere (6) machines, locked inside their (6) material programme. To credit them with any human passions, original thinking or freedom is simply childish materialism.

Kyrie eleison.

Artificial Intelligence? – I

Artificial Intelligence? – I on July 14, 2018

It seems that there is currently more and more talk of AI, or Artificial Intelligence. In other words, so many people are so impressed by the extraordinary progress made over the last few years in the development of computers and of machines directed by computers, that they seriously consider the taking over of more and more normally human and even divine tasks by computer robots. Anybody with a grain of common sense knows that there are strict limits to what machines are capable of, but any such person also knows how common sense is being eroded today by the New World Order, which has a major vested interest in using its media, politics, education, etcetera, to detach people more and more from reality so that they can be the more easily controlled. It is time to repeat a few very simple basics.

All beings whatsoever fall into one of six categories: beneath God the Creator there are five ordered ranks of His creatures: angels, human beings, animal, vegetable and mineral. These five ranks are clearly distinct from one another, even though television programmes do their best to blur the distinctions, especially between men and animals. But the distinctions are clear in reality. Starting from below,

Mineral merely exists, because it has within it no principle or origin of life or movement.

Vegetable both exists and lives, because from within, it ingests (eg water), grows and reproduces itself.

Animal has all these three abilities within it, but it also senses, in other words by some or all of the five sense faculties (sight, hearing, smell, touch and taste) it has sense knowledge of things outside it.

Man has all of these material abilities or faculties of animal and vegetable, but he also shares with the angels the spiritual faculties of mind and will, in other words he has sensation and reason, meaning the ability of the mind to read within particular sensations their universal essences, and the ability of will to desire in accordance with what his mind has read. These two faculties no animal has (when an animal behaves with apparent intelligence, like a bee for instance, that is thanks only to the animal instincts implanted in it by its supremely intelligent Creator).

Angels have mind and will, but no material faculties of the animals, because angels are purely spiritual. (The animal faculties of sense-knowledge and sense-desire all involve matter, absent in the angels.)

Now whatever is truly human, or human as such, is what men have that neither animals, vegetable nor mineral have. But all machines are purely mineral and essentially, by their essence, inanimate. At their most complicated they still have no principle or origin of life or movement from within them. Any movement of them by electricity for instance, is from without. It follows that computers have no inner grasp whatsoever of any truly human activity, which, as human, completely escapes them. All they can do is register from outside what is observable and computable in people’s behaviour, and churn out statistics and spread-sheets, i.e. numbers, which they are good at. But Churchill said – he was no Saint but he was a human politician – “there are lies, damned lies, and statistics.” And why do statistics lie, if not because the essentially human essentially escapes them?

Here is an example. In New York maybe 15 years back, a group of computer experts set up a computer, Deep Blue, to play chess against Kasparov, the world chess champion. Now if there is a game suited to computers, it is chess, because if only one can process billions of alternative moves in a few minutes, or seconds, one can come up with the best move that leaves nothing to chance. Guess what? After a few games the experts had to reset the computer to respond to how Kasparov was playing! Computers have no inner life or initiative, they cannot think outside of the box programmed into them, they cannot possibly respond to any eventuality outside of their box. Game, set and match to human beings!

Kyrie eleison.

Attention, Capitulants!

Attention, Capitulants! on July 7, 2018

Remember, all of you Capitulants of the Society of St Pius X, preparing to take part in votes that will shape the Society for the next 12 years, remember your grave responsibility! You are not in a few days’ time taking part in a children’s garden-party, but in contributing to decisions with potential repercussions for the entire Church – and world!

Beware of an atmosphere being created at the Chapters by which everybody is made to feel they are being nice together, like in a garden-party, where nobody must break everybody’s nice feelings. You are all on the front line of the final battle between the Blessed Virgin and the Devil (Sister Lucy of Fatima).

Remember the Church crisis, let loose by Vatican II, which gave rise to the founding of your Society. True, Archbishop Lefebvre created seminaries for the true Catholic priesthood and spirituality, but these he fought to uphold in order to save the Catholic Faith. What use would priests be, or spirituality, if nobody had the Faith? In this respect even the true Mass is a means and not the end.

Beware of anybody pretending that the crisis is over, or that Conciliar Rome is no longer Conciliar, or that Pope Francis likes the Society. He and the officials that he has chosen to surround him can only like the Society if and when it stops resisting their Council. Then they will love the Society, because it will make itself into an outstanding advocate for the Universal Church’s apostasy.

Remember your Founder, Archbishop Lefebvre, especially the advice and warnings of his last few years, between the episcopal consecrations of 1988 and his death in 1991. Those consecrations against the Pope’s express will did not contradict all his previous loyal service of the Church, they were its crowning glory, because nothing else he ever did so served to defend and uphold the Catholic Faith!

Beware of being told that the Archbishop was always trying to come to an agreement with the Roman authorities. True, he would talk with them, but when in 1988 they finally refused to protect Tradition, then he resolutely put doctrine in front of diplomacy. Since 2012 it is diplomacy back in front of doctrine

Remember how the whole Church had to listen to the Archbishop, because he stood for the Truth and his Society was in the forefront of the glorious fight for the Faith. From 2012 what has the Society stood for? Ever since it renounced the primacy of doctrine, it is less and less different from several Congregations coming under Ecclesia Dei, and the best of Society priests are confused – “What are we now meant to be defending?”

Beware of your decisions completing the Society’s 2012 primacy of practice over doctrine, of men’s unity over God’s truth, of man over God. Never has the world so needed God! Never has the Church been more in need of witness to God’s Truth! And just now the Society’s witness is to fade out?

Remember how meetings like a General Chapter can be skilfully manipulated, like Vatican II, by liberals well prepared beforehand. Do not be afraid of meeting and discussing with fellow-priests before the Chapter begins. Liberals have certainly done so, and they can even have decided all major questions. By all means throw monkey-wrenches into their smooth machinery! Speak up, before the Truth goes down!

Beware of giving up on grace, of renouncing reality, of being docile in dreamland! Beware of “peace and unity” in anything except the Truth. 2018 is do-or-die for the Society. Compromise is not victory. Do not be mere rubber-stamps, but thrash out what the true Church requires of the true Society!

Kyrie eleison.