Eleison Comments

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.

Constant Enemies

Constant Enemies on March 17, 2018

Many readers of these “Comments” – by no means all – must be shocked and incredulous when these “Comments” keep referring to the Jews as being one major source of the problems in today’s Church and world. That is because ever since the French Revolution (1789), when the Freemasons emancipated the Jews and gave them liberty to occupy all positions of influence in society, the Jews by their progressive control of politics, universities and the media in particular have more and more taken over people’s minds, and they have used this control granted to them by unwary Gentiles to persuade everybody that Jews are the victims rather than the cause of the constant tensions between themselves and the rest of the world.

Yet in the Middle Ages, when the Faith enlightened men’s minds with the Way, the Truth and the Life, Catholic Popes and Church Councils issued a stream of documents to make Christians wary of Jewish trickery, even forbidding Christians, for the sake of their eternal salvation, to associate with Jews. Was that merely “anti-Semitism”? In our own day an Italian professor has just argued – and he is not alone – that Jews are the controlling force within the Conciliar Papacy and Church. There follows a brief summary of the professor’s argument, that can be found in full at:—http://​www.​unavox.​it/​ArtDiversi/​DIV2277_​Lamendola_​Scacco_​in_​tre_​mosse.​html

The neo-modernism presently ravaging the Catholic Church is the modernism condemned by St Pius X, but with a new element added: Talmudic Judaism. The Jews have always striven to neutralise the divinity of Our Lord Jesus Christ, because if He is not God then Catholicism is nothing, and then the main obstacle to their own ruling of the world is out of the way. For instance in 2009, why was there such a worldwide fury over a few remarks on Swedish television casting doubt on the existence of homicidal gas-chambers in Germany during World War II? The problem cannot have been merely the one bishop who made the remarks. In fact the uproar was designed secondarily to cripple the Traditional Society of St Pius X to which the bishop then belonged, but primarily to force Pope Benedict XVI to back away from that Catholic Tradition which is in line with the Faith of the Middle Ages. Thus Cardinal Ruini, Pope’s Vicar Emeritus for the diocese of Rome, declared at the time, “Nobody who denies the ‘Holocaust’ can be a Catholic bishop.”

The professor goes on to say that a great step forward to this placing of the “Holocaust” at the centre of the Catholic religion had been taken back in 1965 when Vatican II declared in its document Nostra Aetate that the covenant of God with the Israelites in the Old Testament was still valid, meaning that redemption by Jesus Christ is no longer necessary for salvation, in other words His Catholic Church is no longer in unique possession of the complete Truth and no longer the only means of eternal salvation. Whereupon the religious importance of Our Lord Jesus Christ, dropped by Vatican II, was immediately picked up by the Jews and attached to their “Holocaust.” Said B’nai B’rith’s Abraham Foxman in New York, “The Holocaust is not merely an example of genocide, but it is an almost successful attack on God’s chosen people, in other words on God Himself.”

Thus for Jews, the “Holocaust” is a theological event, central to the new religion which is to be imposed on the entire world, and before which all other religions must bow, starting with Catholicism. Here is why Catholic bishops calling the “Holocaust” in question must be silenced and banned, and the Catholic Church must do what its Talmudic masters tell it to do. And the Italian professor concludes that the “Elder Brethren” have succeeded in making themselves into the indisputable guardians of the Church of Christ.

Notice that this thesis perfectly exemplifies Tertullian’s statement that only the weakness of Catholics is the strength of the Jews. The propaganda in favour of the “Holocaust” took off only after Vatican II. Before the Council, people still had a little too much common sense to believe that about twice as many Jews were exterminated in Europe as there had been in Europe before the war.

But “fear not little flock” (Lk. XII, 32). Every Catholic knows that it is God and not His enemies who will have the last word. This catastrophic end of the Church’s Fifth Age through which we are now living is preparing and paying in advance for the Church’s greatest triumph in all its history, the brief Sixth Age, or Triumph of the Immaculate Heart of Mary. Some time thereafter may come the greatest triumph in all the world’s history of God’s enemies, the three and a half year reign of the Antichrist (Jn. V, 43), or the Church’s Seventh Age. But then follows the last word to end all last words, the General Judgement, belonging to God, and perfectly re-establishing His universal justice.

Kyrie eleison.

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.