Eleison Comments

Christmas Narrative

Christmas Narrative on December 23, 2017

The following highpoint from a narrative certainly suitable for Christmastide is placed in the mouth of the Mother of God as she re-enters the sacred cave in Bethlehem to describe to friends the human birth of God in the very place where it happened. It is a brave writer who undertakes to describe the scene, and to put words into the mouth of the Mother. Not all readers of these “Comments” may agree that this attempt has been successful. No matter. Other readers may find great delight in the scene, which truly happened, and must have happened in some such way, and for such readers it is presented here:—

“Mary gets to her feet again and enters the cave: “Everything is just like it was then. Only then it was night-time . . . . Joseph struck a light as I entered. Then and only then, getting down from the donkey, did I realise how tired and frozen cold I was. We were greeted by an ox. I went up to it to feel a little warmth, to rest on the hay . . . where I am standing now Joseph spread out the hay to make me a bed, and he dried it out for the two of us, Jesus and me, at the little fire in that corner . . . because my angelic husband had for us the love of a true father . . . and he and I, holding one another by the hands like two brothers lost in the dark of the night, we ate our bread and cheese, and then he went over there to look after the fire, taking off his coat to block the cave entrance . . . . Actually he was veiling the glory of God about to descend from the heavens. With Jesus I stood on the hay between the warmth of the two animals, wrapped up in my coat and the woollen blanket. My dear husband! . . . In that anxious moment for me, facing alone the mystery of giving birth for the first time, an unknown for any woman but heightened for me by the uniqueness of my motherhood, and heightened still further by the prospect of seeing the Son of God emerge from mortal flesh, he, Joseph was like a mother to me, an angel . . . my comforter . . . then and always . . .

“And then silence and sleep came down to enwrap the Just Man . . . so that he should not see what was for me the daily embrace of God . . . . And for me began the boundless waves of ecstasy, rolling in from a sea of paradise, lifting me up again on crests of light, higher and higher, carrying me upwards, upwards, with them, in an ocean of light, more light, peace and love, until I found myself lost in the sea of God, of the bosom of God . . . . A voice still reached up to me from earth; “Are you asleep, Mary?” Oh, so far away! . . . A bare echo, calling from earth! . . . and so faint as hardly to touch the soul, and I have no idea what answer I give him while I climb, I am still climbing in the abyss of fire, of infinite bliss, of the foreknowledge of God . . . until it is God, God Himself . . . . Oh, was Jesus born of me, or was I born of the splendours of the Holy Trinity on that night? Was it I who gave Jesus birth, or was it Jesus that drew me up to give birth to me? I have no idea . . .

“And then the descent, from Choir to Choir of angels, from layer to layer of stars, a descent as gentle and slow and blissful and peaceful as that of a flower being carried on high by an eagle and then dropped, falling slowly on wings of air, glistening in a pearl of rain with the fragment of a rainbow stolen from heaven, and landing back on its native soil . . . . And my jewelled crown: Jesus, Jesus upon my heart . . .

“Seated over here, after adoring Him on my knees, I loved Him. At last I could love Him with no barrier of flesh coming between us, and from here I stood up to carry him over to be loved by the Just One who deserved like me to be among the first ones to love Him. And here between these two rustic pillars, I offered Him to the Father. And here He rested for the first time on Joseph’s heart . . . . I rocked Him on my breast while Joseph dried out the hay at the fire and kept it warm to place it on the Baby’s chest, and then over there, for the two of us to adore Him and bend over Him just as I am bending over now, to drink in His breath, to marvel at just how far God’s love can stoop down to love men, to weep the tears certainly being wept in Heaven for the inexhaustible joy of gazing on God.”

Kyrie eleison.

Culture’s Importance – I

Culture’s Importance – I on December 16, 2017

“When I hear the word ‘culture,’ I reach for my gun,” is a famous quote (often attributed to Reichsmarchall Göring, but coming actually from a Berlin play of 1933), which may be taken to mean that culture is not the ultimate source of the values often attributed to it. Often the word serves as a fig-leaf to cover over the West’s deep-down apostasy by a shameful but long-standing hypocrisy, to which some gun-owners may be instinctively tempted to put a violent end. One American of our own time who realizes that culture depends on religion or its absence is Ron Austin, who has written in December’s issue of the magazine First Things an article on pop culture, arguing that it is neither pop, nor culture.

Austin is a veteran Hollywood writer-producer who spent nearly half a century producing pop culture, mostly for television. He is a member of the American Academy of Motion Pictures Arts and Sciences, but also a Fellow at the Dominican School of Philosophy and Theology in Berkeley, California, which gives him at least a handle on the true dimensions of “culture.” For instance towards the beginning of his article he writes, “The key to understanding modernity and its ultimate failure lies in the many failed efforts to find replacements for religious faith . . . . It was the mass media fostering a “pop culture” that was the most influential and powerful substitute for a meaningful world-view . . . ” Pop culture, says Austin, is an idol . . . as such it is phony . . . it is neither pop nor culture.

Austin defines “pop” as belonging rather to the people than to any elite. He admits that pop culture has considerable popular appeal today, but he says it is synthetic and industrial in nature, deriving as it does from no natural or organic way of life, so it is not truly popular. “Culture” is difficult to define, but he takes it to mean a way of life with shared values and with the means to express it. Culture in this sense can only grow organically like a tree, at nature’s speed which cannot be forced, and it requires a shared memory with a sense of the past, a continuity of meaning, goals and standards. But “pop culture” erases the past. Therefore it is no true culture. Austin recalls the decades of his own life from this point of view.

In the 1950’s and 1960’s he remembers a growing alienation from the past in which the mass media played a crucial part. In the 1970’s a counter-culture of fragmentation and narcissism grew, with more entertainment than ever, and with it an increasing detachment from reality. The medium itself was becoming the message, and morality was based on subjective emotion, which the media packaged as a product for profit. Entertainment replaced thought or analysis. If not fatal, the disease was highly contagious. In the 1980’s the attempt to restore past values failed in the USA, Europe and Russia. In the 1990’s some false hopes came to an end, but the mass of consumers were more fragmented than ever.

However, in the 2010’s the Catholic Faith does give Austin some hope. True culture depends on human beings being human, he says, and humans have for true models Our Lord and Our Lady. True culture will be replanted, and the Light will return.

Austin is on the track of the real problem, even if his treatment of the problem and of its solution is relatively lightweight. It is today’s total environment, or culture, which is so dangerous for souls and their salvation. It has become totally normal either to disbelieve in God, or if one believes in Him, not to take Him seriously. The past has little to tell us (except the Six Million, of course). Immorality is unimportant. There is no such thing as an order of nature to be respected. Technology saves. Freedom is all. And this sickness is highly contagious, because it is so “liberating.” Heaven help us!

Kyrie eleison.

P.S. As a minor resort to the elite culture of yesteryear, in the true sense of the word, a session of Mozart parallel to the “Beethoven Blast” of two years ago will be held here in Broadstairs, from Friday, February 23rd to Sunday, February the 25th, of next year. Details will follow.

NOM Miracles?

NOM Miracles? on December 9, 2017

When these “Comments” claimed last year that in Sokulka, Poland, there had been in 2008 a Eucharistic miracle worked upon a host consecrated at a New Mass (NOM), a number of Catholics in the English-speaking world denied that such a thing was possible. When the same claim was made recently in Paris (https://youtu.be/IgQnQhxmhH4), it was the turn of some French Traditionalists to call in question the apparent scientific evidence of the miracle furnished independently at the time by two Polish laboratories, both of which claimed that the sample submitted to them from the host in question came from the heart muscle of a human being in acute distress.

In the face of such evidence, two opposite lines of argument are possible. Either one can argue from the modernist poison of the NOM to the intrinsic impossibility of God working such a “miracle” within the framework of the NOM, or one can argue from the seriousness of the evidence to the necessary possibility of a new Mass, new priestly Ordinations and new episcopal Consecrations all being valid (because the priest and bishop concerned were ordained and consecrated in 2005 and 1980 respectively). A number of valiant Traditionalists hotly contest all three possibilities within the modernist Newchurch.

What is certain, at least within the Catholic Church, is that such questions must be decided by doctrine and not by emotion. Reason must prevail – for instance, flying by instinct can be fatal for aviators. What Church doctrine says on the validity of a sacrament is that it requires four things: a valid Minister, Form, Matter and sacramental Intention. The NOM may exclude one or all of these, but it excludes automatically none of them. Where all four are present, the New Mass is valid. That is why Archbishop Lefebvre, who knew his theology, never claimed that the NOM was automatically invalid. That is why the NOM celebrated in Sokulka was not necessarily invalid. That is why it seems more reasonable to argue from the evidence to the miracle than from the impossibility of the “miracle” to the falsehood of the evidence. Otherwise one needs a precise reason to question the pathologists’ precise testimony.

The great objection remains: how can Almighty God work miracles in the framework of the NOM, clearly designed by its makers to poison gradually the faith of Catholics and so destroy the Catholic Church? The answer must be that God is not primarily authentifying the NOM, but He is maintaining its possible validity in order not to abandon a mass of Catholic sheep who are still attending it in relative ignorance and innocence of the poison, and therefore by the miracle He is primarily warning both sheep and shepherds to remember that He is Present beneath the appearances of bread and wine. When one remembers the Catholic doctrine by which the NOM can be valid; when one recalls St Paul saying that anyone who partakes unworthily of the Holy Eucharist is “guilty of the Body and Blood of the Lord” (I Cor. XI, 27–39); and when one sees how widespread in the Newchurch is the lack of respect for the Real Presence, then one immediately sees how necessary for the salvation of many souls can be such warnings as the miracle in Sokulka. The parish priest there testifies to how it has raised the level of Catholic faith and practice in the whole region around Sokulka.

But the objector insists – how could God possibly allow such a poisoned rite of Mass ever to be valid? Answer, He does not take away men’s free-will, but He allows us to a great extent to do what we want. In this case the neo-modernists wanted (and still want) a Rite of Mass poisoned enough to kill off the true Church in the long run, but still Catholic enough to deceive in the short run ignorant and innocent Catholics who still trust their pastors telling them, for instance, that the NOM is the Church’s “ordinary rite.” The NOM would never have gained acceptance in the Universal Church had it been obvious from the start that it was automatically invalid.

Kyrie eleison.

Liberalism = Religion

Liberalism = Religion on December 2, 2017

Not only is liberalism a serious sin that dishonours Our Lord Jesus Christ. It is in fact a religion. We are dying of liberalism and of its consequences. For two centuries it has spread everywhere, in our schools, in our societies. It is a poison that destroys the commandments of God, together with everything that makes the beauty and greatness of a Christian civilization. In his Encyclical Humanum Genus Leo XIII said about Freemasons: “We must tear off their mask and show them as they are, so that we avoid them and their errors.” I believe that liberalism is a fruit of Freemasonry which also needs to be unmasked, until we fully understand its dangers.

Liberalism has its goddess: it is liberty. At the time of the French Revolution, liberals worshipped the goddess of Reason in Notre Dame Cathedral in Paris, that is to say, liberty, the liberty of Man, this liberty which has its statue at the entrance of New York harbour, which they celebrated in an incredible way not long ago. Man is free, finally freed from all law, and in particular from the law of God. Liberty is the goddess of the religion of liberalism.

Liberalism has its priesthood, in the person of Freemasons, a secret, organized, extremely efficient priesthood. There are thousands and thousands of Freemasons. The exclusively Jewish sect of B’nai B’rith alone, with its very frequent access to churchmen in Rome, and its presence at the meeting of Assisi, has five hundred thousand members throughout the world. The Grand Orient is also widespread.

Liberalism has its dogmas: they are the Declaration of the Rights of Man. As the Popes have taught, these rights of liberalism are the instruments invented by Freemasonry to use against God, to free man from God. Henceforth man is free to sin, to disobey God . . . liberty of the press . . . is just one of several supposed Rights of Man which have been condemned by the Popes for a century and a half.

Liberalism has its morality which is simply immorality: no brakes on liberty. For twenty years liberals have succeeded in introducing into the legislation of almost every State all those principles which go against Catholic morality, such as abortion, free union, etc. – living in sin is favoured by tax systems.

Liberalism has its politics: notably democracy, the democracy of numbers. It is the people who are – supposedly – in charge. But in fact, “democracy” is about better subjugating them, dominating them, dispossessing them for the benefit of an omnipotent State, of a totalitarian socialism which gradually destroys the right of ownership, which makes the citizen work for a third of the year for the State. Citizens become in effect slaves of the totalitarian State. Liberty so-called is the politics of Liberalism.

Liberalism has its education: education must be atheistic, secular, and one throughout the nation. In France, it was not the bishops who defended the freedom of non-governmental education, but families. If there had not been two million people who went to Paris to defeat the socialist law on education, there would be in France today only government education, and private education would have disappeared.

Liberalism has its economics, directed by international financial associations. To the extent that States apply a liberal morality, a liberal economy, a liberal education, liberal laws, even if they incur enormous debts, they are supported by the International Monetary Fund. On the contrary States resisting liberalism are financially undermined and economically ruined, if possible. The Vatican itself was ruined by International Finance. Freemasons infiltrated the pontifical finances, and transferred the Vatican fortune to Canada, where it disappeared. Immediately the Freemasons and International Finance intervened with the offer of any financial support needed. Here are the pressures that can be exerted on Rome in the appointment of bishops or cardinals, on anything that the Pope does. He is now practically in the service of masonic liberalism. We have to say it like it is.

So said Archbishop Lefebvre (abbreviated) in Barcelona in 1986. Need one word be changed today?

Kyrie eleison.

How Discern? – II

How Discern? – II on November 25, 2017

After Joseph’s first question concerning confusion in the Church in general (cf. these “Comments” of last week), his second question concerned the Society of St Pius X in particular. Here it is:—

You wrote last week that judged by their fruits, Vatican II was not Catholic, while Archbishop Lefebvre was. However, in the Society of St Pius X which he founded, there seems to have arisen a new way of thinking which one might articulate in a series of propositions. For example –

1 However badly the Pope and bishops behave, they are still the valid authorities of the Church.

2 Pope Francis may be a modernist, but he still has the power to bring the SSPX back into the Church.

3 The Conciliar bishops are not all bad. They can have Christian reactions, show awareness of the Church crisis, defend Catholic morals in public, call for respect for God in the liturgy, show devotion to the Blessed Virgin Mary, and so on.

4 An agreement with Rome can be envisaged as long as we are “accepted as we are.”

5 We are at fault if we are systematically refusing any agreement whatsoever with Rome.

6 It is more useful to speak of Archbishop Lefebvre’s piety than of his opposition to the Council.

7 Better to be on good terms with the SSPX than to get on bad terms for the sake of fallible opinions.

8 Conciliarists are indisciplined and disobedient. SSPXers need to be disciplined and obedient.

In conclusion, given the complexity of the situation in which Catholics find themselves today, can members or followers of the Society be blamed for thinking along the lines of these propositions?

Answer, it all depends on how much those members or followers know. For instance, older SSPXers knew that the Council was a new religion, and that therefore the Archbishop’s opposition to it was a matter of Faith, intrinsically more important than piety, because how can there be piety without faith? Those veterans of the Society are much to blame (unless and until at last they react in public), because they are allowing what Joseph above calls “the new way of thinking” to take over the Archbishop’s Society, so that Society youngsters have that much less chance of grasping what is wrong with the eight propositions above. A new generation of Society priests is as pious as one could wish, but (always with exceptions) it is clueless as to the crisis now devastating the Church for more than half a century:—

1 True, the Pope and bishops, according to appearances, seem to be the valid authorities of the Church, but their behaviour as to the Faith is so bad that many serious Catholics call in question that validity.

2 Into what Church would the Pope bring the Newsociety? Into the Newchurch? “They have expelled me from the Newchurch?” said the “excommunicated” Archbishop – “So what? I never belonged to it!”

3 Indeed the Conciliar bishops are not all bad, but they are nearly all modernists, which means that many of them have lost their Catholic faith without even realising it. Modern man is so corrupt that when his Catholic religion is made to fit his modernity, he does not even realise that it is no longer Catholic.

4 “Accepted as we are” was for the SSPX one thing in, say, 1987. It is quite another thing in 2017!

5 If only Rome were to come back to the true Faith, there would be no further need for any agreement.

6 Thanks be to God for the Archbishop’s piety also, but by far his most important quality was his faith.

7 “Fallible opinions”? There is such a thing as truth! Has anybody of any importance in the Newsociety actually studied the documents of Vatican II? Do they deny it represents a new religion?

8 SSPXers must be disciplined and obedient to what? To the new Conciliar man-centred religion?

The problem with all of these propositions is that the SSPX was born in the thick of the great war being waged by the modern world on God, but since the Archbishop’s death in 1991, its leaders have lost all effective grip on who is waging that war, and how and why. Joseph, read “Pascendi,” again and again, until you fully grasp it!

Kyrie eleison.

How Discern? – I

How Discern? – I on November 18, 2017

A young man with a good mind is asking a good question about the crisis in the Church, and another good question about the crisis in the Society of St Pius X. Here is how Joseph frames his first question:—

On the one hand the Conciliar crisis was one is a series of crises afflicting the Church, such as Protestantism, Liberalism, and Revolutions, with two World Wars, and therefore errors made their way at the Council which were clearly condemned by the Church before Vatican II. And after the Council its novelties were applauded by classical enemies of the Church, such as Freemasons and Socialists, while the Church’s missionary spirit has clearly been extinguished. On the other hand the ideas of the Council are the work of highly intelligent and supposedly Catholic churchmen, and one cannot all the time say that the Pope is not Pope, or that the majority of modernist Bishops are invalidly consecrated. Therefore can one say that the Conciliar crisis involves shadowed areas which still make it difficult to see clear? And if we cannot arrive at definite conclusions, can we be sure we are holding onto the true Faith?

The best reply comes from Our Lord Himself, speaking in the Sermon on the Mount (Mt. VII, 15–20) – “By their fruits ye shall know them.” Obviously Our Lord knew that there would be constant attacks on His Church with repeated attempts of the Devil to sow confusion in His followers’ minds. The confusion that has followed on Vatican II is not different in kind from previous crises in Church history, even if by the defection of the churchmen at Vatican II the confusion today is unprecedented in degree – never before have the mass of Catholic shepherds been so lost, nor therefore the Catholic sheep.

Nevertheless, to find one’s way out of the confusion, the same infallible principle still applies: actions speak louder than words, and the fruits of a man’s actions are the surest guide to who he is and what he really intends. Especially in the case of modernism a man can be deceiving himself as to what he wants or intends, because nobody is so deeply detached from reality as a modernist. “The end of the world will be characterised by men doing evil while thinking they are doing good,” said Fr Faber in mid-19th century. In the 21st century we are at the wrong end of this centuries-long process of mankind deceiving itself as it has turned away from God. Then would God be leaving His sheep defenceless against such unprecedented wolves in sheep’s clothing as modernists are? No, because to judge by the fruits is something that anybody can do, with a minimum of common sense and upright will.

Therefore, Joseph, you observe that today’s Church authorities are highly intelligent men and supposedly Catholic, and you quite reasonably assume that they are the valid authorities of the Church, because even if you know that their fruits are so little Catholic as to make many a Catholic dispute that validity, notwithstanding who else is there who is authorised to speak and act for the Universal Church? But at the same time you observe that their ideas are in line with grave anti-Catholic errors from the past, and that they are now applauded by classic enemies of the Church, such as Freemasons. Arguments on one side and on the other. Doubts and shadows. How do you resolve the confusion?

Answer, by your own further observation that the missionary spirit has disappeared from the Church since Vatican II. Here are the fruits. The Council preached ecumenism ( Unitatis Redintegratio ), religious liberty ( Dignitatis Humanae ) and the relative acceptability of false religions such as Hinduism, Islam and Judaism ( Nostra Aetate ) – how could the Catholic missionary spirit not collapse after the Council? And have not countless monasteries, seminaries, convents, dioceses and parishes also emptied out and closed down since Vatican II? Did new ones open anywhere? Yes, under the leadership of the one Catholic bishop worldwide who from the beginning repudiated openly the Council and all its works, Archbishop Lefebvre. Here were the selfsame fruits of the selfsame Catholic principles, faithfully applied in defiance of Vatican II. Joseph, you need look no further.

Kyrie eleison.