Eleison Comments

Parenting – III

Parenting – III on March 10, 2018

EC 553 (“Parenting – I” Feb 17) has been hitting a nerve. It is not surprising. The Devil has virtually the whole of society in his grasp. The battleground has moved to those families which are not yet in his grasp. Parents, do not despair of God (which is what the Devil wants you to do), but take the measure of the gravity of the situation, and see the logic of the two counter-measures proposed by God through His Mother for this situation. Then do the best you can, and leave your children in Our Lady’s hands.

Several readers have reacted so far to “Parenting – I,” and there are sure to be more. A first reader laments that Fr Delagneau’s analysis fits exactly his own family. On the day after Christmas last year their eldest daughter, just turned 20, turned her back on the family, left the family’s Traditional Catholic way of life “once and for all,” and turned herself over to the world with an imminent marriage into the bargain, for which she is not ready. However, a spark of hope is that the young man in question has no religion, which means that he may find his way with her to God more easily than if he had some religion! Another spark of hope is always that motherhood may bring her back to reality, as it did Marya Shatova in the novel “The Devils” of Dostoevsky (who saw the modern world coming).

A second reader, given the accuracy of Fr Delagneau’s portrait of today’s youngsters, wonders why these “Comments” ever recommend young men today in general to get married. She writes that there are hardly any half-way genuine young men or women left, because “the basic material has changed.” Might it not be time, she asks, to consider the possibility that God wants more men and women to stay single and to suffer from the loneliness, but by the freedom from family engagements to have more time for celibate struggle and sacrifice? In the workplace she says that the rising generation of workers want money, power and time off, that they have no idea even in theory of any work ethos, and almost all are living in sin, with “partners” or second spouses or some perversion or other. “Jesus, have mercy,” she concludes.

A third reader suggests that it is all very well for Fr Delagneau to turn to the parents, but what is the Church now doing to defend families? Whereas the reader himself is old enough to be able to look back fondly to the 1960’s when his own mother was always at home to look after the children, now he says few families can make ends meet without the mother having to go outside of the home to work, and the children have to be turned over to the State to be looked after, because the official Church is on the ropes and Catholic Tradition is stretched far apart. Living conditions for families are determined by the State which does not favour families and has none of the Church’s skill to be able to help with a family’s human problems. This reader concludes that we are enslaved, like the Jews in Egypt. But he does also say that since God has left families in today’s situation, there must be something they can do about it.

Indeed. “Where there is a will, there is a way,” says the proverb. And the Council of Trent quotes St Augustine to the effect that God cannot abandon a soul that has not first abandoned Him. As Solzhenitsyn said, Russia would never have fallen into the Communist Hell if it had not turned its back on God. Almighty God allowed that Hell in order to bring “Holy Russia” back to Him. It took several years, but that return to God is now taking place all over Russia, even if the conversion is not yet Catholic. Patience. The Consecration of Russia to Mary’s Immaculate Heart will see to that. “In suffering is learning.” And now families all over the consumerist West are suffering intensely. Patience.

Parents need above all to grasp the urgency of the need to resort to Our Lady’s two remedies, the Rosary and the Devotion of the First Saturdays to make reparation to her Immaculate Heart. For who can say that either of these remedies is absolutely impossible? Let parents make a real effort with both – five Mysteries with the children, another ten individually if at all possible, and as long a drive as may be necessary for the First Saturdays, and then how could Our lady abandon them? Not possible!

Kyrie eleison.

Menzingen Defended – II

Menzingen Defended – II on March 3, 2018

No doubt some readers of these “Comments” are not so interested in reading about what seem to them merely internal squabbles among relatively few Catholic priests. Let such readers beware of missing the importance of these “squabbles.” Religion leads the world because God exists, and how men stand to him (religion) governs how they stand to their fellow-men (politics). The Catholic Church leads religion because since Christ’s Incarnation Catholicism is the only religion founded by the one true God. And Catholic Tradition leads the Catholic Church because that Church is as essentially unchanging as Our Lord Himself. And for 42 years (1970–2012) the Society of St Pius X was in the front-line of the defence of Catholic Tradition because it was the only worldwide Catholic organisation effectively resisting the unfaithful modernisation of the Church by the Second Vatican Council. Therefore all men alive, atheists or Protestants or Conciliarists, especially priests and followers of the SSPX, are concerned by the problem of infidelity to Catholic Tradition within the SSPX. Read on, everybody!

Another champion of Menzingen, Fr. B., has stepped into the lists to defend its policy of rejoining Conciliar Rome – let us call them the Reconciliarists – with an article in the official monthly magazine of the SSPX in the USA. Ever since Vatican II separated Catholic Authority from the Catholic Truth which it only exists to defend and maintain, all Catholics have been necessarily more or less schizophrenic – either they follow Authority and abandon Truth, or they follow Truth and abandon Authority, or they choose any one of a variety of combinations in between.

The Founder of the SSPX, Archbishop Lefebvre, chose Truth, but kept as much respect for the holders of Catholic Authority as was compatible with faithfulness to the Truth, and as a result he suffered serious persecution and condemnation from all Catholics who more or less preferred Authority On the contrary, his successors at the head of his Society are wanting to take it back under Conciliar Authority, so that from 2012 the Society has been officially Reconciliarist. By this switch of the SSPX from the Founder’s Truth back to Conciliar Authority, they have filled the Society with schizophrenia, causing a movement of “Resistance” to their “Reconciliarism.”

For most of his article, Fr B. is Catholic in his principles, but at the end he is Reconciliarist in their application. Therefore possibly to help the Society’s present Reconciliarist Superior General to be re-elected in July, he attacks the “Resistance” not for its attachment to Truth, which is its strong point, but for its detachment from Catholic Authority, both in Rome and in Menzingen. Thus, Fr B. says, towards Rome the “Resistance” is for the sake of its own “ease and convenience” in danger of ignoring the Pope and of not acknowledging his authority, while towards Menzingen it is refusing proper respect and obedience, and by criticising every word uttered by the Superior General it is sowing suspicion and blocking the channels of grace.

But, Reverend Father, among your Catholic principles you yourself acknowledge the primacy of the Faith. Now Vatican II was a disaster for the Faith, by trying to put modern man in the place of God. Therefore Conciliarism and Reconciliarism are both disastrous, and both the officials of Rome and the Society’s present Superior General are to be judged accordingly. And he must not be replaced by another Reconciliarist. The problem is not the “Resistance” which does not “ignore” the Pope and is certainly not seeking its own ease and convenience, because it is highly uncomfortable for Catholics to be deprived of all support from recognisable Catholic officials above. Therefore the “Resistance” is neither falling into “a schismatic attitude in its own right,” nor is it wrecking the channels of grace. The problem is the Council causing schism, the Council poisoning the Popes and the Council strangling the grace of Jesus Christ. The present Superior General must not be re-elected if anything of the true Society is to survive.

Kyrie eleison.

Parenting Today – II

Parenting Today – II on February 24, 2018

When parents read here last week the question whether they know what parenting today demands, it is to be hoped that they did not feel accused. They are under heavy pressure from the whole environment surrounding their children, and when souls are under pressure, God does not require of them to do the impossible, but only whatever they can do. Thus in the Letter to the second of the seven Churches of Asia, corresponding to the Church’s Age of Martyrs (Apoc. II, 8–11), the Venerable Holzhauser explains that if the Catholics of Smyrna receive from the Holy Ghost no rebuke or reproach like five of the other seven Churches, it is because Catholics under persecution need encouragement and not criticism.

And God knows, parents striving to save their children’s souls are under persecution, not yet bloody, but most powerful. For when men are, for instance, turning to AI (Artificial Intelligence) to make a robot into their god, then they are losing not only the true God, they are losing all notion of the difference between a machine and a human being, let alone the difference between man and woman or between parents and children. How can an environment trusting in AI for its future have any understanding or sympathy for the family as God designed it?

As one reader wrote to me, Eastern Communism treated brutally anybody not in line, but at least the enemy of salvation was recognisable, whereas what one might call Consumerism in East or West is rather more subtle – instead of brutalising, it merely marginalises, making true Catholics “abnormal,” while the children so want to be “normal,” with smart-phones like all the other children, etc. Consumerism glitters like its coloured lights, and so the children are being turned into mindless robots, clever enough when it comes to manipulating technology and the machines, but with no idea of the essential human questions, because they are never taught to read, or to read between the lines as one did under Communism, and they are deprived of all tools of thinking. A generation of android puppets is growing all around us.

So, as opposed to what parents cannot do, what can they do to put their children on the path to Heaven (it will be the children’s own free choice later if they stay there)? Firstly, a few basics. God exists and He wants to save all children, and to all of us He gives the help of His Mother and of invisible but powerful guardian angels who are on the side of all true parents. In the home, let these supernatural realities be part of everyday life, and let the everyday life be supernatural, even while parental common sense stops the children from being turned off by an artificial excess of religion.

Then on the natural level, give your children as much time as you see they need. Love is spelt T-I-M-E. Children to become human need to be formed by human beings, not by machines. And the natural formers of children are their parents, who have an enormous natural influence on their children, if only the parents will use it, instead of abdicating it. Set regular family meals around a table, and at the meals, talk. Chinese proverb: “Instruct your children at table, your wife on the pillow.” Talk politics, especially the difference between reality and what the media present as reality. Warn the children to be careful outside the home, but tell them the truth about 9/11, and about The Monster Fib (between five and seven million). Yes, tell them about it as soon as they are capable of understanding (not before), so that they can realise what a world of lies God has given us to live in, as a just punishment for our apostasy. Always add in the religious dimension because it is always there, and the children need to understand that it is God that matters. But not just by piety – Our Lady of Fatima promotes both the Rosary and Russia’s Consecration.

Then, more practically, get all possible electronics out of the house. Teach the children why you are not allowing television or smart-phones under your roof, and if you cannot do without the Internet, teach them why it is under physical (not just electronic) lock and key. And get their hands to work, boys on taking to pieces a motorbike, or carpentry, girls on sewing and cooking, all hands on the Rosary. And instead of television, try every night a family reading from Maria Valtorta’s “Poem of the Man-God” (former title). Ridiculous? Try it. You may just find that the “Poem” is God’s own answer to the television set!

Kyrie eleison.

Parenting Today – I

Parenting Today – I on February 17, 2018

Nearly 20 years ago a priest of the Society of St Pius X, master of an Ignatian Retreat House in France and therefore in close contact with Traditional Catholic family problems, wrote an excellent editorial on How our youngsters are evolving. He paints a dark picture. Alas, the picture has grown only darker in the meantime. We must not despair, but on the other hand parents must see things as they are. It is not as though today’s youngsters are blameless, but parents must do everything possible to put them on the path to Heaven, because even today that is still the responsibility of parents. Here is the dark picture, adapted and abbreviated from Revue Marchons Droit, # 90, avril-mai-juin, 2000:—

In the Retreats we see youngsters growing up, incapable of rebuilding Christendom. The sacrifices made by parents and teachers seem to have borne no proportional fruit. Clearly something is not working , and if we do not react, then within two generations we will be swallowed up by the spirit of the world.

Young people we observe between 18 and 30 years old are profoundly ignorant of the crisis in Church and world, not because they have not been taught, but for lack of interest . Broadly speaking, they follow along the lines of their parents, but they cannot explain on their own what is wrong with the New Mass, with Vatican II, with the New World Order. Never having had to fight, to defend their beliefs or to resist, and so never having studied for themselves, when they meet the world they easily give way. They want to be like everybody else , they do not want to be different, they lack the personal conviction to stand up for Catholic Tradition, and so instead of being Apostles of Christ, little by little they go with the flow.

Where will there be tomorrow the good vocations, the good Christian families we so urgently need? Vocations grow rare, marriages grow weak or dry up altogether, formation grows soft, immaturity takes over. All the youngsters want is to enjoy. The boys lack character, sense of responsibility, generosity, self-control, everything that parents should be inculcating in them to turn them into the men we can rely on for tomorrow: men chaste, mature, thoughtful, hard-working, magnanimous. Without such men of conviction, where will be the heads of tomorrow’s families? The girls are also being reared in disorder.

Instead of preparing for motherhood and for looking after a family, they learn to look down on the domesticity which is their true vocation, and they are encouraged to study longer and longer, thus acquiring a spirit of independence , alongside a worldliness turning to fashion, parties and rock music. How can mothers give way to their girls’ mini-skirts and trousers, to their loose dress for parties which are obvious occasions of sin, where they waste their time and soil the purity of their hearts?

The result is young people getting married at 20 or 22 years of age, when they are absolutely not ready. And soon the children are arriving whom they have no idea of how to bring up. If I look at the young couples I have married – in Tradition – since my ordination in 1980, thank God there have been no divorces, but I have to say that half the marriages are hanging on a thread, being held together only by the youngsters’ Catholic principles. Parents, do you realise what you need to be giving to your children for their future in today’s world? You must for God’s sake form your boys to be men worthy of the name and your girls to be women worthy of the name. Do your duty. Otherwise, your children risk losing their souls, and Christendom is finished.

Surely Fr Delagneau is right. Christendom is in serious danger, no less. Now can we see why in 2018 God is allowing Europe and France in particular to be filled by His enemies with His enemies? And why He is allowing the Society of St Pius X to be sliding into the arms of His enemies? He did not create us to fall into Hell. He created us to fight the good fight to get to Heaven. And He will permit any disaster that will shake us off the road to Hell, and put us back on the road to Heaven. Wait for it!

Kyrie eleison.

Defending Menzingen

Defending Menzingen on February 10, 2018

Thanks to the directly anti-Catholic words and deeds for the last five years of the present occupant of the See of Peter, delinquencies to which the way was opened by Vatican II, it is less comprehensible than ever that the successors of Archbishop Lefebvre still want to put the Society under Roman control, but in effect they do. Does a Cardinal’s hat appeal? Are they tired of the battle? Are they desperate to be “recognised” by Conciliarists? Can they really think that the Archbishop would have approved of what they are doing? God knows. Howsoever that be, servants of Menzingen are still trying to defend its 20-year slide down from the position of the Archbishop. Here are two recent examples:—

Firstly, to defend Bishop Fellay’s policy of accepting a personal prelature from Rome, a Society priest (http://​fsspx.​news/​en/​content/​34797) seems to think that such a prelature will guarantee for the Society protection from the modernists in Rome. But will Rome be in control of the prelature or not? If it is in control, it may take its time, as it did with St Peter’s Fraternity, but it will use its control slowly to strangle Tradition within the prelature. To think otherwise is simply not to have understood who these Romans are. “Only Saints believe in evil,” said Gustavo Corçao. As for the Archbishop, he called these Romans “antichrists.” And if the prelature does not put them in control, they will never grant it in the first place.

And secondly, this priest attempts to discredit adversaries of the prelature by claiming that they say that the Archbishop changed his principles when he refused the Protocol of May, 1988. The claim is groundless. As the priest himself says, the Archbishop’s change was merely prudential, following on the definitive demonstration just given by the Romans in the Protocol negotiations that they had no intention of looking after Tradition, such as the Society and the Archbishop understood Tradition. For as long as the Romans gave any sign of genuine concern for Tradition, the Archbishop was patient, and he went as far as he could to meet them (in fact further in the Protocol than he should have done, as he once admitted later). But once they had made it clear that in reality they had no such concern, then the Archbishop was inexorable – from then on doctrine would take the place of diplomacy, and the Romans would first have to prove that they were on the same doctrinal page as Catholic Tradition. That was on the Archbishop’s part no change of principles, but merely the final recognition that the Romans were set upon dechristianising, and not on rechristianising, as he wrote a month later to Cardinal Ratzinger.

Likewise the Catholic Family News blog of November last year serves Menzingen. The blog is intelligent, speculating that Rome’s real bait-and-trap to catch the Society is not aimed at the Society’s wholesale surrender, but at its piecemeal division and disintegration (actually, Rome is achieving both). Thus Rome makes repeated enticing offers, each of which divides Society priests so that some break away, while Menzingen gets up its hopes, only to see them dashed by another impossible demand of Rome. And the game will go on until the Society is completely undone. Therefore, concludes CFN, the Society must remain united at all costs and no Society priest must defect.

But, dear CFN, how did the Archbishop build up the Society in the first place? Certainly he too suffered from divisions and defections under him. Did he nevertheless build by crying for unity, unity, unity? That was the great argument of Rome against the Archbishop! His own great argument was the Faith, the Truth, the Faith. To plead as you do for the Society’s unity behind pro-Rome Menzingen is to plead for the Society’s destruction! Unity is always specified by that around which one is to unite. Under the Archbishop it was around Catholic Truth, the whole strength of the Society. Since 2012 it is around Menzingen, presently the division and ruin of the Society.

Take heart, dear readers. “The truth is mighty and will prevail,” with or without the Society of St Pius X.

Kyrie eleison.

“Official Church”?

“Official Church”? on February 3, 2018

One needs to be very careful with words, because words are the handle of our mind upon things, and things are the stuff of everyday life. Therefore upon words depends how we will lead our lives. At the flagship parish church of the Society of St Pius X in Paris, France, there is a Society priest taking due care of words. Fr Gabriel Billecocq wrote in last month’s issue (#333) of the parish’s monthly magazine Le Chardonnet an article entitled “Did you say ‘official Church’?.” In it he never once mentions Society Headquarters in Menzingen, Switzerland, but he does complain of the “wish” coming from somewhere, presumably on high, that the words “Conciliar Church” should always be replaced by the words “official Church.” And he is right, because the words “Conciliar Church” are perfectly clear, whereas the words “official Church” are not clear, but ambiguous.

For on the one hand “Conciliar Church” signifies clearly that large part of today’s Church which is more or less poisoned with the errors of the Second Vatican Council. Those errors consist essentially in the re-centring upon man of the Church which should be centred on God. On the other hand “official Church” is an expression with two possible meanings. Either it can mean the Church officially instituted by Christ and officially brought to us down the ages by the succession of Popes, and to that “official Church” no Catholic can object, on the contrary. Or “official Church” can be taken to mean that mass of the Church’s officials devoted to Vatican II who for the last half-century have been using their official power in Rome to inflict upon Catholics the Conciliar errors, and to this “official Church” no Catholic can not object. Therefore “Conciliar Church” expresses something automatically bad, while “official Church” expresses something good or bad, depending upon which of its two meanings it is being given. Therefore to replace “Conciliar Church” by “official church” is to replace clarity by confusion, and it also stops Catholics from referring to the evil of Vatican II.

Fr Billecocq never suggests that Society Headquarters did “wish” such a thing, but a fact and a speculation do suggest it. As for the fact, earlier this month the Society’s French District Superior, Fr Christian Bouchacourt, being interviewed in public about the Society’s up-coming elections in July, said: “As soon as a Superior General is elected, the Vatican is immediately notified of the decision.” Such notifying of the Vatican by the Society as to Society elections has never been done before. And it strongly suggests that the Society’s present leaders look forward to Rome not only being informed but also giving its official approval of the Society’s choice of its leaders – why notify if not to get approval? What else will the Newsociety beg for from the Newchurch? What will it not beg for? How far the Society has come from the days when the faith of Archbishop Lefebvre used to force Rome to do the begging!

As for the speculation, we hear that two main candidates are being groomed by Menzingen for voters at the Society’s July elections to choose as Superior General, because the post will no longer be taken by a bishop. At a guess, Rome is already in virtual control of these major decisions being taken within Society Headquarters. In that case Rome has little to fear of either of these two candidates substantially changing Bishop Fellay’s pro-Roman policies, while it may have much to gain from the appearance of a change at the top, and it may be able to make use of Bishop Fellay in Rome to be head of a “renovated” Ecclesia Dei Congregation, to include all Traditional communities, including his own former Society.

Who can doubt the skill of the Romans to turn all situations to their advantage? Unless . . . unless there were to break out again within the Society that Faith and Truth which were the driving force of Archbishop Lefebvre and of his victory over all the liberals and modernists in Rome. These demons strive to undo once and for all God’s Catholic Tradition which is the most serious potential obstacle to their new One World Religion. And God may require no less than the blood of Catholic martyrs to stop them. The martyrs coming from among the Society’s priests and lay-folk will be its glory.

Kyrie eleison.