Eleison Comments

Defending Marriage

Defending Marriage on May 27, 2017

Many of you must already know of the Open Letter of seven senior priests of the Society of St Pius X, a Letter co-signed by Superiors of three other Traditional Congregations, in which all ten protested three weeks ago against an attempt by Roman authorities to interfere in marriages celebrated within Tradition by Traditional priests. As usual, Society authorities have taken the side of Conciliar Rome, and are in the process of punishing their seven “subversive” priests. But the true subversion is coming from that Rome which is subverting Christian family and marriage, for instance by Amoris Laetitia. Society leaders are giving yet another proof of their suicidal blindness. Here is the gist of the well-written Letter:—

Addressed to Society lay-folk to prevent them from being confused by Rome’s interference, the Open Letter begins by establishing that marriages celebrated within the Society for the last 40 years have been and are certainly valid. This is because, to strengthen marriages, the Council of Trent decreed that they must be witnessed by a parish priest or his delegate to be valid. However, if for 30 days it is not possible without “grave inconvenience” to find such a priest, then the couple may marry validly in front of merely lay witnesses, by what is known as the extraordinary form of marriage (Canon 1098, Old Code).

Now for 40 years the Society has been fighting the neo-modernism of Vatican II which is poisonous for the Faith and highly infectious, and which has infected almost the entire Church since the 1960’s. So the Society has instructed souls to stay away from the Novus Ordo Church and its clergy, as a whole. For instance in Amoris Laetitia the Pope himself made statements and proposals directly harmful to families and Catholic marriages. Here is the “grave inconvenience” for the Faith which is why for 40 years, when couples have wished to get married, the Society, seeing the danger for their Faith, has steered them away from Novus Ordo parish priests and towards the extraordinary form of marriage, usual within the Society and certainly valid.

However, how could neo-modernist Rome see a “grave inconvenience” in exposure to their neo-modernising priests? Therefore in future, says the Ecclesia Dei Commission, as one more step in Rome’s absorption of the Society into the Newchurch, the extraordinary form of marriage is no longer to be used by Society priests, and instead Society marriages are to be witnessed by a Novus Ordo priest appointed or delegated for that purpose by the local Novus Ordo bishop, without whose participation Society marriages will continue to be judged invalid by the Newchurch authorities. This means bringing the extraordinary form of marriage under the local bishop’s control. But after repeated bitter discussions, even the framers of the New Code of Canon Law (1983) judged that such a measure was too opposed to the natural right of couples to get married, and New Canon 1116 maintains the extraordinary form. That is why the ten senior priests who signed the Open Letter conclude that they will continue to use the extraordinary form, without resorting to any Newchurch bishop. Nor, they add, will they resort to Newchurch tribunals to judge of marriage cases, because these tribunals all too easily grant annulments for inadequate reasons. All ten priests who signed the Open Letter are to be congratulated!

And the Society’s reaction? On April 4 the document of the Ecclesia Dei Commission on SSPX marriages became known, spitting in effect on the Society. Immediately Society Headquarters in Menzingen welcomed the document, treating it in effect as rain from heaven. On May 7 the ten senior priests made public their protest against the Ecclesia Dei interference. On the same day the Society’s French District Superior branded their protest as “subversive,” and on May 10 the seven Society priests who signed the Open Letter he stripped of their senior rank within the District, and Fr. de la Rocque, pastor of the Society’s flagship parish in Paris, St Nicolas du Chardonnet, he gave three days to clear out.

Such leadership proved that the Society is sinking. The Open Letter proved that it is not yet sunk.

Kyrie eleison.

Consecrations Achieved

Consecrations Achieved on May 20, 2017

Thanks in part, no doubt, to readers’ prayers, the two Consecrations, of Bishop Zendejas and of Russia, took place successfully in Vienna, Virginia, USA, on May 11 and 12 respectively. The weather was not good on May 11, because the rain poured down, but the outdoor tent was watertight and accommodated perfectly a congregation of around 500 people coming from all over the United States, and a few from even further afield. The weather was a little better on May 12 for the new bishop’s first Pontifical Mass with the Consecration of Russia, and with a congregation only a little smaller than on the previous day.

Special thanks went to Fr Ronald Ringrose, Traditional parish priest of Vienna, on whose Rectory grounds the double Consecration took place. He has maintained the parish of St Athanasius as a bastion of Catholic Tradition within easy striking distance of the capital city of the United States for well over 30 years, which is a considerable achievement in these troubled times for the Catholic Church. “Ad multos annos” says Mother Church to her devoted servants – may Fr Ringrose thrive for many years yet.

As for the purpose and scope of the two Consecrations, it is necessary to be both modest and clear. Ever since Vatican II (1962–1965) when the mass of Catholic churchmen surrendered to liberalism (the worship of liberty) and to modernism (the adaptation of God’s Church to the godless modern world), the Church has been in serious trouble. In 1970 Archbishop Lefebvre created the Society of St Pius X to act as an emergency lighting system for the mainstream Church going dark, but his successors at the head of the Society are doing all they can to make the emergency lighting go dark. Let us then compare Bishop Zendejas’ Consecration to a candle being lit, or a match being struck, in the increasing darkness. It has no ambition either to save or to convert either the Newchurch or the Newsociety.

What it should do is contribute to the saving of that Oldtruth, so to speak, which is at the heart of the true Church and the true Society. Working mostly in the USA, but with no territorial jurisdiction of any official kind, Bishop Zendejas will help to look after many souls in the USA that have the true Faith, and want to keep it. Accessible by car or train from anywhere in North America if anything happens to ground the aeroplanes, he is a relatively young bishop with the fullness of certainly valid Holy Orders, able to Confirm or Ordain, with or without condition, and who is by the grace of God, at least for the moment, sensible and sane – in English the word “sanity” is three quarters of the word “sanctity.” Let us lend him our prayers that he may stay sane for many years to come, or at least until a truly Catholic Pope turns on the lighting once more. At that moment Bishop Zendejas puts his episcopacy back in the hands of Catholic Rome, for the Pope to do with as he wishes. Meanwhile may the new bishop be a candle lit in the darkness, a point of reference for any soul seeking the complete and uncontaminated Truth.

As for the Consecration of Russia led by all four bishops present on the eve of the first of Our Lady’s great apparitions in Fatima, there was not the remotest pretence that their Consecration could replace that of the Pope with the bishops of the entire world, which is what Our Lady requested. There was merely the hope that by doing what lay in their power, with the support of all the congregation present, they might help to obtain from Heaven the graces necessary for the Pope to perform at last the Consecration of Russia, exactly as Our Lady requested so long ago. That Consecration will eventually take place because Our Lord said so in 1931, and then begins the Triumph of the Immaculate Heart, so necessary and so long delayed.

Kyrie eleison.

God’s Weapons

God’s Weapons on May 13, 2017

On this 100th anniversary day of the beginning of the great series of apparitions of Our Lady to the three children of Fatima in Portugal in 1917, it may be well to remember that Our Lord warned mankind through Sister Lucy that the Devotion to His Mother’s Sorrowful and Immaculate Heart would be the last major Devotion given to mankind, together with the Holy Rosary, for the salvation of souls. Towards the end of the 17th century when Protestantism and Jansenism were making charity grow cold, Our Lord had given to His Church the Devotion to His own Sacred Heart to remind men of God’s burning love for them. Towards the beginning of the 20th century, just as Communism was about to overwhelm Russia, He gave us, especially through Fatima, the Heart of His Mother as our last major recourse before world’s end.

But another half century passes from 1917, and Our Lord’s own churchmen are preparing to give the Church over to the demons of Modernism, the equivalent of Communism inside the Church. Sister Lucy of Fatima just then warned Fr. Fuentes that Catholics could no longer be relying on the clergy to save their souls. Sure enough. In 1962 Vatican II launched the pre-apocalyptic devastation of the Church, the worst in all its history. And in the 1970’s an Italian critic of Vatican II and of all its pomps and all its works, Professor Romano Amerio, wrote, as readers of EC 400 may remember, that if the Conciliar crisis was internal to the Church like no crisis before it, then we were “headed for a formless darkness ( . . . ) in the face of which there will be no alternative but to keep silence.”

A full century after Fatima we are well on our way to that darkness. Such are the disputes, divisions, confusion and chaos in Catholic hearts and minds being caused by the churchmen’s hollowing out of their authority by their abandoning of God’s Truth, that many a clear-sighted Catholic can already be preferring to keep silent rather than attempt to argue or to teach. A mass of modern minds are so incapable any longer of thinking or reasoning that any attempt to dispel their errors can seem to risk only increasing their confusion. Now, one reader of these “Comments” disagrees strongly with Amerio: how can Catholic Truth fall silent, he asks, and how can Catholics stop fighting? But he needs to recall the Gospel, especially the Passion.

Our Lord tells us not to throw pearls in front of swine, in other words not to teach people unfit to learn, and He tells His Apostles to shake off from their feet the dust of a town that will not listen (Mt. VII, 6; Lk. IX, 5). Our Lord gave the example of keeping silent, in front of the Sanhedrin (Mt. XXVII, 12, 14), Herod (Lk. XXIII, 9) and Pilate (Jn. XIX, 9). Many souls today are likewise unfit to hear the truth. And when it comes to fighting, Our Lord Himself in the Garden of Gethsemane told Peter to put up his sword. Such was not the will of God (Mt. XXVI, 54). Peter’s problem was that he had not done what Our Lord had told him to do, which was to “watch and pray.” As a result, when his manly will to fight was frustrated even by his beloved Master, he abandoned him and ran away (Mk. XIV, 50). Beware, fighters for Our Lord – if your fighting does not work, you risk running away from Him!

Today what Our Lord does ask us to do is to make reparation to the Sorrowful and Immaculate Heart of His Mother, especially by the Rosary and the Devotion of the First Saturdays. If only enough Catholics were listening to Him, then Our Lady of Fatima could soon obtain from Him the grace for the Pope to consecrate Russia to Her Heart, exactly as She asked, and then the “formless darkness” would immediately begin to grow light and regain its form. Order from the Fatima Centre in Ontario, Canada, copies of their excellent flyer on the First Saturdays. Immaculate Heart of Mary, pray for us!

Kyrie eleison.

Double Consecration

Double Consecration on May 6, 2017

As a commentary upon the Consecrations of a new bishop and of Russia due to take place next week in Vienna, Virginia, on the eastern coast of the USA, here is a testimony from another reader of these “Comments,” coming from Brazil. His testimony places the Consecrations of May 11 and 12 in their context of today’s crisis of world and Church, a context which gives them neither too much nor too little importance, but highlights the central role to be played in both cases by the Immaculate Heart of Mary. He writes:—

“I read you in the ‘Comments’ constantly referring to all 15 Mysteries of the Holy Rosary. In a letter from the 1930’s Sister Lucy of Fatima wrote that if only other nations like Portugal were solemnly consecrated to the Immaculate Heart of Mary, then “Heaven would grant them graces as great or even greater.” Clearly God wishes to save the nations of the world through the Heart of Mary, and whoever can see that will have received a special grace from God. Yet what other nation than Portugal has performed with all its bishops such a Consecration? None that I know of.

“But if most men are not profiting by the marvels of the Immaculate Heart, She is still deigning to bestow grace upon humble layfolk, as we can testify, here in our part of Brazil. In 2011 our chapel was consecrated to the Immaculate Heart, and a chain on the wall symbolizes the holy slavery of our chapel to the Blessed Virgin. In particular for some years now we have been doing the Five First Saturdays. When we have no Mass, we do what we can with a Rosary, spiritual Communion, the 15-minute meditation on Mysteries of the Rosary and an act of reparation to the Immaculate Heart, as Our Lady asked us to do.

“Her Rosary, all 15 Mysteries, has been prayed every day since 2012 in front of the Blessed Sacrament by one group of us or another, every day, and the countless graces we have received are hardly to be believed. This Devotion of the Rosary and the First Saturdays is very special to God even in these wicked days of ours. It is the light of our times of darkness and apostasy. We need to practise the Devotion, to study the whole background of the apparitions of Fatima, and apply what we learn to our own lives and in groups of the “Resistance.”

“Given all the difficulties of living in a liberal world without Christ, given the Revolution destroying the fortress of Tradition that was the Society of St Pius X, given our own great misery and numerous sins, it would be no exaggeration to say that it is thanks to the Rosary and the First Saturdays that we are maintaining a miniature Christendom, a Catholic group with a Catholic atmosphere, with good friends and a solid and spiritual doctrinal formation, both anti-liberal and Counter-revolutionary. We have our human problems, to be sure, but we receive many graces from the Immaculate Heart. With the 15 Mysteries every day, we are witnesses to the marvels wrought by the Blessed Virgin in a person, a town, a city, even a country. Blessed be the Rosary of the Virgin Mary!”

Here are the greatness and the littleness of next week’s consecrations . The littleness lies in their helping to maintain at the humblest level, in a world given over to the Devil, corners of Christendom. Such corners are possible anywhere, and are infinitely worthwhile everywhere, because there is an infinite greatness in any contribution to the saving of souls for all eternity. And special thanks for both of the coming Consecrations go to the Immaculate Heart of the Blessed Virgin Mary.

Kyrie eleison.

God Enlists

God Enlists on April 29, 2017

Fr Jean-Michel Gleize, Theology Professor at the Écône seminary of the Society of St Pius X, has written on burning problems of today two articles which throw interesting light on their solution. Firstly, can the Pope fall into formal heresy? Answer, maybe, because Popes have not always been held to be so free from error as they have been held to be in the last few centuries. And secondly, does the Papal document Amoris Laetitia show that Pope Francis has fallen into formal heresy? Answer, strictly speaking, no, but in effect, one may say so, because neo-modernism undermines doctrine while pretending to uphold it. This second question will have to wait for another issue of these “Comments,” but if Fr Gleize did not want to be caught between sedevacantism and liberalism, he had to broach the first question first.

In the first and shorter article, he says that from the Protestant “Reformation” onwards, Catholic theologians in general, notably St Robert Bellarmine, have held that the Pope cannot fall into conscious and stubborn denial of Church dogma, i.e. formal heresy. They quote Our Lord telling Peter to confirm his brethren in the Faith (Lk. XXII, 32), which presupposes that Peter cannot lose it. And they argue that never in Church history has a Pope fallen into formal heresy. On the other hand prior to the Protestant revolution, says Fr Gleize, Catholic theologians from the 12th to the 16th century generally judged that a Pope can fall into formal heresy, and this opinion has continued into modern times, albeit less commonly.

Fr Gleize concludes that especially in view of the Conciliar Popes, the later theologians have not proved their point. As for Peter always being protected by Our Lord from formal heresy, faith is an act of the mind pushed by free-will, and God rarely interferes with free-will. And as for Popes in history, Honorius for example was anathematised by his successors for having favoured the Monothelite heresy. This conclusion is for sure disputable and disputed, but if one looks at the question from the historical standpoint of the Seven Ages of the Church, it does make sense.

By three Ages (Apostles 33–70, Martyrs 70–312, and Doctors 312 to about 500 AD), the Church climbed to the Fourth Age, the 1,000 year triumph of Christendom (about 500–1517). But by the late Middle Ages the Devil and original sin were eating into Christendom, and men launched into the Fifth Age of Apostasy (1517-?), whereby degenerating Christians invented one form of hypocrisy after another (Protestantism, Liberalism, Communism amongst others) to pay homage to Christian virtue and civilisation even while “liberating” themselves for the latest vice, e.g. same-sex “marriage.” Now God could have made the Middle Ages go on for ever, but He would have had to interfere with free-will. As it was, He gave to His Church a special crop of Saints to lead the Counter-Reformation, and over the next half-millennium He obtained, to vary the population of His Heaven, a harvest of post-medieval Saints. But to counter-act the corruption of post-medieval man, God chose to re-inforce authority in His Church, so that souls wishing for salvation but no longer enough so by inner virtue, could at least be directed by outer authority towards Heaven. Then of course the Devil set to work especially on churchmen in high positions of authority and after nearly half a millennium it is as though the Lord God said, “If you do not want My Church, then have your own Newchurch,” and that was Vatican II.

So now Church authority is damaged beyond all human repair, and He will use some other means to wring out of our spiritually exhausted world yet another harvest of souls. A Chastisement will ensure the initial brilliance of the Church of the Sixth Age, but the Devil and original sin will have a human nature to work on that has been weakened in depth by the Fifth Age’s liberalism, so that it should not take too long to bring on the Seventh Age of the Antichrist. But that will be an Age of some of the greatest Catholics of all Church history – a crop of especially great Saints.

Kyrie eleison.

Church Predictions

Church Predictions on April 22, 2017

As might have been expected, there has been not a little reader reaction to the portrait of the “slowly declining” Society of St Pius X, as presented in two recent issues of these “Comments.” Reaction shows that not all Catholics are blind or unthinking. Here are two readers speculating, one on the Society’s near future, the second on the Church’s more distant future. Here is the first:—

“The destabilisation, confusion and softening of the minds of Society priests and laity will, alas, continue, and for many become even more painful, because the present leadership of the Society will persevere and continue straight on with the game it has set up with the Semiconservatives. Consecrating the bishops “urgently needed” (Bishop Tissier) will not be mentioned. And when the election of the Society’s top officials can no longer be avoided at the General Chapter normally due in July of 2018, the Society’s present leaders will do all in their power beforehand to make sure that their pursuit of recognition by Rome will continue uninterrupted.”

Depending on how many prayers are said for the rescue of the fortress of the true Faith built by Archbishop Lefebvre, Almighty God may intervene with a miracle to save it, but humanly speaking one would say that the rot is indeed too far gone for it to be saved. Thus the Society’s worldwide apostolate urgently needs some new and younger bishops, but how can they be chosen to serve the true anti-Conciliar Faith without alienating the Conciliar Romans who alone can give the Society the recognition so desperately pursued by Society HQ in Menzingen? Archbishop Lefebvre said in 1988 that that pursuit would be the Society’s “Operation Suicide,” but since when have crusading liberals ever backed down? The crusade for their Brave New World Order is their real religion, forget about Catholicism.

The second reader assumes that the Society’s suicide is a done deal, and he looks forward to the future of the Faith without the Society, more from a divine point of view.

“The silence coming from Econe concerning the ‘regularization’ at present is deafening. It would appear that the deal is, in actuality, a ‘fait accompli.’ In which case, may we now turn our attention to the long road of recovery and care that the Traditional Catholic Refugees will surely need. A restoration of order out of chaos and a life-raft to grasp, as the sinking ship of Rome sucks the weak in faith to the bottom of the sea. Is the Faith shrinking or just purging itself of those who have been unfaithful? God help us!”

When we think of the future of the Church today, let us bear in mind that the situation is so dramatic that “all bets are off,” meaning, nobody knows, because if the Society is indeed sinking which has acted as a buoy for the true Faith for 40 years, then what indeed still prevents Conciliar Rome from sucking those weak in the faith down to the bottom of the sea? But God is God, and He can intervene at any moment and in a variety of ways to interrupt His Church’s headlong course to destruction. Nevertheless, this reader’s human pessimism does seem well justified right now.

Less easy to understand is his optimism for the future of a restoration of order and the launching of a life-raft, if the Popes stay Conciliar. For if there is any lesson to be drawn from the history of the “Resistance” since 2012, it is the extreme difficulty of founding a Catholic work without approval from what at least appears to be the official Church. Catholic Truth is immensely strong in itself, but without the backing and protection of Catholic Authority, which is Our Lord’s authority, Truth remains highly vulnerable. For instance, within a framework of authority a priest can easily submit to a proposition he disagrees with, but outside any such frame, he can easily dispute the wisdom of the wisest of propositions.

Patience. The problem is insoluble. Let us pray, and wait for Almighty God to stun us all with His solution!

Kyrie eleison.