Eleison Comments

Disintegration

Disintegration on October 29, 2016

Things fall apart, the centre cannot hold,
Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world.
The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere
The ceremony of innocence is drowned.
The best lack all conviction, while the worst
Are full of a passionate intensity.

These famous lines from The Second Coming, a poem written in 1919 in the wake of the First World War by the Anglo-Irish poet, W.B.Yeats (1865–1939), come to mind as a possible explanation of how the movement of resistance to the 2012 betrayal of Archbishop Lefebvre’s Society of St Pius X can be so strong in truth and yet weak in unity and numbers. 1919 is nearly a hundred years ago, and Yeats was neither Catholic nor particularly concerned with the condition of the Catholic Church, which did then seem to be flourishing. But poets can be visionaries, and Yeats caught in these lines an essential truth about Western civilisation as it emerged from that war that was “putting out the lights all over Europe” (Earl Grey): the Western nations were spiritually disintegrating in a process uninterrupted ever since.

Nevertheless many Catholics today who wish the Faith to survive are upset by the apparent weakness of the “Resistance” of Archbishop Lefebvre’s own priests in particular to the obvious betrayal of his principles by their present leaders, and they look for an explanation. Some think that the SSPX priests do not take a public stand against the false conciliation of Tradition with Vatican II because they are scared of being thrown out of the Society with nowhere to sleep and nothing to eat. But the priests have to know that there are layfolk who would be glad to support them. A deeper explanation might be that the priests are scared of cutting themselves out of that Society which is both their human family and the framework by which they belong to the structural Church. But again with a strong enough faith they would know that Providence can supply for both needs.

On the other hand if we set the 2012 sell-out of the Society in the context of the double disintegration of the two World Wars, followed by the far more terrible disintegration of the Catholic Church at Vatican II (1962–1965), then we must admire the heroic feat of Archbishop Lefebvre in gathering together flying fragments from that unprecedented explosion, but we can hardly be surprised if the Society of St Pius X should in turn explode from within, or if refugees from its disintegration should have difficulty in re-integrating without. Things have fallen apart, and minds and hearts with them. I think that there is not enough integrity or integration left in hearts and minds for us to be able to think of repeating the Archbishop’s feat. We are nearly 50 years downhill from 1970 when the Archbishop founded the SSPX.

What that means is not that there is nothing to be done, but that what is to be done must be worked out more from God’s point of view and less from man’s. At the very end of the world, God will allow the Faith almost to disappear (Lk XVIII, 8), but there will still be a few souls believing, hoping and loving. In 2016 he is giving us a foretaste of that disappearance, but souls should be able to recognize that they still have considerable freedom to believe, hope and love. And they should be able to foresee that even the most powerful of police states will not have the power to stop them from doing so. Moreover, the more heavily circumstances are made to weigh upon that freedom, the more glorious in Heaven will be the persevering devotion of any soul to God, to his divine Son and to the Blessed Virgin, and the greater will be the merits of that soul. Above all, the greater will be its unstoppable contribution to the welfare of the Church. All is by no means lost, and it can never be lost. God’s Church is not a merely human affair.

Kyrie eleison.

Iron Rations

Iron Rations on October 22, 2016

In military affairs, it is normal for generals and soldiers alike to have in mind rather the last war than the one they are now fighting. Who imagined trench warfare before World War I? Yet by World War II the inter-war development of tanks had made trenches obsolete. Similarly in religious affairs. The 21st is no longer the 20th century. Surely Resistant Catholics since 2012 are unwise to be hoping for anything like the establishment and expansion of the Society of St Pius X in the last century. For example, from two admirable Resistants of today come a general and a particular lament, neither perhaps altogether wise . . .

The general lament is that the “Resistance” is falling apart rather than making headway. These “Comments” often put inverted commas around the word “Resistance,” precisely to suggest that the Catholic resistance to the Conciliarisation of the SSPX is not yet any kind of organisation but rather a vague movement with a precise aim, to save the Catholic Faith, but with as yet little structure to help it to do so. However, let Resistants take heart, because while man proposes, God disposes, so that what can look like a human failure may not be a failure from the standpoint of Almighty God.

Thus in the 1970’s Archbishop Lefebvre proposed to rally half a dozen Catholic bishops so as to throw up a real roadblock in the way of the Conciliarists then destroying the Church, but God disposed differently. In this purpose of his the Archbishop would fail, but in trying he would succeed in building a worldwide treasure-house to safeguard the treasures of the Church’s doctrine, Mass and priesthood for better times. Similarly now there are Resistants proposing to build a replacement for the endangered SSPX, and their apparent weakness (at least up till now) may suggest that any such large-scale replacement is not in the plans or dispositions of Almighty God. However, in trying, Resistants are ensuring (at least for now) the survival of the Catholic Faith, which is certainly a disposition of Providence.

The particular lament is that if only the “Resistance” had schools, many SSPX parents would swell the ranks of the “Resistance” as they cannot now do, because their children would immediately be thrown out of the SSPX schools to which there is presently no decent alternative. But again, we are fighting for the Faith in the 21st, not in the 20th century. Back in the 1980’s there were still enough like-minded Catholic parents and teachers and priests to form that triangular frame within which the children almost have to grow up straight. But today? Today one learns of an SSPX boys’ school that has been in serious difficulties because of an outbreak within its walls of that sin against nature which cries to Heaven for vengeance. But what walls can stop adolescents from getting to know of that sin’s glorification among the mass of their country’s male adults, and of a new word invented to condemn the new vice of its condemnation – “homophobia”? And since when are adolescents not to imitate their adults? In fact, how can anyone run a boys’ school since the invention of the Internet, with pocket access to it? Are Catholic institutions still possible?

In today’s religious war, surely the order of the day is iron rations, meaning the soldiers’ strict necessary for survival, here to keep the Faith. This war must be won in the home, or it will be lost. God gives to parents a natural power to form their children that overwhelms by, say, five to two the power of any institution to deform them, but only as long as parents take hold of their power. A small rudder can steer a big ship, but not if the steersman lets go of it. If parents let go of their children, they cannot blame the world for steering them to Hell. And if any parents have wanted SSPX schools to qualify their children for the world rather than for Heaven, may not here be one important reason why the SSPX has slidden?

Kyrie eleison.

Catholics’ Distress

Catholics’ Distress on October 15, 2016

A world wanting less and less of God constantly wears down Catholics. Here is another reader’s cry:—

I ask myself, how is it possible to keep the Faith in the general situation of the Church today with its absolute lack of shepherds? For a few months we were with the Society of St Pius X, months which taught us the value of Tradition. We looked into the story of Archbishop Lefebvre’s struggle, and we saw how he is being betrayed. We followed the “Resistance” through the website of Non Possumus. For a few months we were deceived by Fr. C., who calls it “Desistence.” We were undeceived and left his group. Now we can no longer go to the Society because they insist that we join in certain activities, meetings of altar-boys and so on. They require information about us, and to find it out send our way married couples heavily committed to the Society. Much of the time we spend trying not to say things that would prevent us from receiving Holy Communion, as happens to some people because they are against Pope Francis, or for the “Resistance.” Right now we are going to the Catholic Maronite Church where at least the Consecration is valid. But we are disappointed to observe that they accept Vatican II in general, and they asked me to allow my girls to serve on the altar. When I refused, they said “We are all children of God,” and so on, to prevent discrimination against females serving on the altar.

I have nobody I can go to Confession to. I have a continual struggle at work where I never stop speaking of God and of current events, despite the school being secular and secularist, so that the personnel are all employees of the State. Following your advice to withdraw into the shadows to prepare for the descent into the catacombs I am wary of social contacts, but it is difficult to fight on your own. We are now in contact with prople of T.F.P. (Tradition, Family, Property). I am not sure what their doctrine is. But what can we do? The struggle is weighing down heavily upon me. In one school where I work one professor is to my knowledge a Freemason. Despite its being a State school, its whole orientation is religious, but in a deistic way, i.e. without Christ. What can I do? In this country there is nothing left, and we are at our wits’ end.

Amongst other things I wrote back to him that when the Church is being taken along the Way of the Cross to be crucified, as is happening today, then the only way not to have to carry a splinter of that Cross is not to be a Catholic. Obviously this reader wants to remain Catholic in order to get himself and his family to Heaven. So he should not be surprised to find himself suffering from splinters of Our Lord’s Cross. When he should be really worrying is when he would find himself at ease in this world around him.

As for his workplace, there is not much he can do about it. Social contacts should be maintained with prayer, charity and example, because we human beings are social animals, but let our limited energy and resources not be exhausted in throwing pearls before swine. Our Lord tells us not to condemn if we do not want to be condemned, but he also tells us to discern between wolves and true shepherds (Mt.VII, 15). So a Catholic is bound to exercise his best judgment on the variety of priests and layfolk that he meets with in the chaos of today’s Church. And in any case a family father must today lead his own family in the five-Mystery family Rosary every night (or better, morning). That will ensure that Our Lady will protect his family as only she can do through whatever grave events lie ahead of us.

Kyrie eleison.

Sedevacantism Again – II

Sedevacantism Again – II on October 8, 2016

For any Catholic soul realizing today the gravity of the crisis in the Church and agonizing over it, the simplicity of sedevacantism dismissing as invalid the Church and Popes of Vatican II can become a serious temptation. Worse, the seeming logic of the ecclesiavacantists’ and sedevacantists’ arguments can turn that temptation into a mental trap which can at worst lead a Catholic to lose his faith altogether. That is why these “Comments” will return in more detail to the main argument of the scattershot of arguments laid out in the article by BpS from 1991 mentioned here last week. Here again is that argument:—

Major: the Catholic Church is absolutely indefectible (it has God’s own guarantee that it will last to the end of the world – cf. Mt XXVIII, 20). Minor: But the Conciliar or Novus Ordo Church, overwhelmed by neo-modernism and liberalism, represents an absolute defection. Conclusion: the Novus Ordo Church is absolutely not Catholic and its Popes are absolutely not Popes. In other words the Church is absolutely white while the Newchurch is absolutely black, so Church and Newchurch are absolutely different. To minds which like to think in black and white with nothing in between, this argument has much appeal. But to minds which recognize that in real life things are often grey, or a mixture of black and white (without black ceasing to be black or white ceasing to be white), the argument is too absolute to be true. Thus in the Major there is an exaggeration of the Church’s indefectibility, and in the Minor there is an exaggeration of the Newchurch’s defection. Theory can be absolute, but reality rarely is absolute. Let us look at indefectibility and the Conciliar defection as they are in reality.

As for the Major, sedevacantists frequently exaggerate the Church’s indefectibility, just as they frequently exaggerate the Popes’ infallibility, because that is what they need to support their emotional horror at what has become of the Catholic Church since the Council. But in reality just as that infallibility does not exclude great errors of some Popes in Church history and only applies when the Pope is either, Ordinarily, saying what the Church has always said, or, Extraordinarily, is engaging all four conditions of the 1870 definition, so the Church’s indefectibility does not absolutely exclude some huge defections at given moments of Church history, such as the triumphs of Islam or Protestantism or of the Antichrist (Lk. XVIII, 8), it only excludes absolutely a total defection, or total failure (Mt. XXVIII, 20). Thus indefectibility is not as absolute as BpS pretends.

As for the Minor, it is true that the defection of Conciliarism is considerably more grave than that of either Islam or Protestantism because it strikes at the head and heart of the Church in Rome, which they did not do. Nevertheless even half a century of Conciliarism (1965 to 2016) has not made the Church totally defect, or fail. For instance Archbishop Lefebvre – and he was not alone – held high the Faith from 1970 to 1991, his successors did the same, more or less, from 1991 to 2012, and the embattled “Resistance” upholds his line still, and before the Church humanly collapses in a not too distant future, unquestionably its indefectibility will be divinely saved, just as before world’s end – Mt. XXIV, 21–22. Thus Conciliarism as a defection of the Church is not as absolute as BpS pretends, either.

So his syllogism needs to be recast – Major: the Church’s indefectibility does not exclude huge defections but only a total defection. Minor: Vatican II was a huge but not total defection of the Church (even if Catholics aware of its danger must totally avoid it, for fear of contamination). Conclusion: the Church’s indefectibility does not exclude Vatican II. In brief, God’s own Church is bigger than all the wickedness of Devil or man, even Vatican II. The Conciliar defection may well be of an unprecedented gravity in all Church history, but the Church’s indefectibility and the Popes’ infallibility come from God and not from men. Like liberals, the sedevacantists are thinking humanly, all too humanly.

Kyrie eleison.

Again, Sedevacantism – I

Again, Sedevacantism – I on October 1, 2016

It may irk a number of readers of these “Comments” if they return once more to the theme of the Conciliar Popes not being Popes at all, but the recent translation into French of an article from 1991 in English shows how the arguments for sedevacantism need repeatedly to be demonstrated as being not so conclusive as they may appear. Liberals need no such demonstration, because for them sedevacantism is no temptation. However there are select Catholic souls drawn by the grace of God out of liberalism towards Catholic Tradition for whom sedevacantism becomes positively dangerous. The Devil does not care whether we lose our balance to the right or to the left, so long as we lose our balance.

For indeed the error of sedevacantism may in theory be an error neither as deep nor as grave as the universal mind-rot of liberalism, but in practice how often one observes that minds snap shut with sedevacantism, and that what started out as an acceptable opinion (what Catholic can say that the words and deeds of Pope Francis are Catholic?), tends to become an unacceptable dogmatic certainty (what Catholic can judge with certainty of such a question?), and from there to impose itself as the dogma of dogmas, as though a person’s Catholicity is to be judged by whether or not he believes in our having had no real Pope since, say, Pius XII.

One reason offered by previous “Comments” for this often observed internal dynamic of sedevacantism may be the Gordian-knot simplicity with which it slices through an agonizing and faith-threatening problem: “How can these destroyers of the Church be true Catholic Popes?” Answer, they are not Popes at all. “Oh, what a relief! I need no longer agonize.” The mind snaps shut, sedevacantism is to be shared as though it were the Gospel with whoever will listen (or not listen), and at worst it can be extended from the Popes to all cardinals, bishops and priests, so that a once believing Catholic turns into a “home-aloner” who gives up attending Mass altogether. Will he succeed in keeping the Faith? And his children? Here is the danger.

Therefore to keep our Catholic Faith in balance and to avoid the traps laid today to its right as to its left, let us look at the arguments of BpS in the 15-page article mentioned above. (“BpS” is an abbreviation which many readers will identify at once, but it need not be spelled out here because we are more concerned with his arguments than with his person.) In his article at least he does think, and he does have a Catholic’s faith in the Papacy, otherwise the Conciliar Popes would be no problem for him. This logic and faith are what is best in sedevacantists, but neither BpS nor they are working from the whole picture: God cannot let go of his Church, but he can let go of his churchmen.

For here is his argument in a nutshell – Major: the Church is indefectible. Minor: at Vatican II the Church went liberal, which was a major defection. Conclusion: the Conciliar Church is not the real Church, which means that the Conciliar Popes who led or followed Vatican II cannot have been real Popes.

The argument looks good. However, from the very same Major and Minor can come a liberal Conclusion: the Church is indefectible, the Church went liberal, so I too, as a Catholic, must go liberal. That sedevacantism thus shares its roots with liberalism should make any sedevacantist think twice. BpS notices the common roots, and calls them “ironic,” but they are much more than that. They point to liberals and sedevacantists making the same error, which must be in the Major. Indeed both alike misunderstand the Church’s indefectibility, as they mistake the Popes’ infallibility. See these “Comments” next week for a more detailed analysis of BpS’s argument.

Kyrie eleison.

Beautiful Cheese

Beautiful Cheese on September 24, 2016

In Australia just one month ago the Superior General of the Society of St Pius X painted a glowing picture of his – as he hopes – imminent subjection of the Society to the officials of Conciliar Rome. From a long discourse here are a few significant remarks he made, summarised or quoted in full (in italics):—

[ . . . ] Rome is offering us a new structure. At its head will be a bishop, chosen by the Pope from a list of three Society members, named by the Society. He will have authority over priests, over any religious wanting to join the new structure and over Catholics belonging to the new structure. These will have an absolute right to receive from Society priests all the sacraments, including marriage. This bishop will be able to set up schools and seminaries, to ordain ( priests ), to establish new religious Congregations. The structure will be like a super-diocese, independent of all local bishops. In other words, for you faithful, there will be no change from what you are already enjoying with the Society. The only difference will be that you will be officially recognized as Catholics.

You can easily imagine that there will be clashes with the local bishops. So we must be prudent, but as things stand you cannot imagine anything better than this offer, which is such that you cannot think it is a trap. It is not a trap , and if anyone makes us such an offer it can only be because he wishes us well . He wants Tradition to prosper and to flourish within the Church. It is impossible that such an offer could come from our enemies. They have many other ways to crush us, but not that way [ . . . ].

The remarks highlighted here in heavy print call for comment:—

* A “new structure” means presumably that Archbishop Lefebvre’s structure for the Society will, essentially, be abandoned. Rome is creating a completely new entity. Good-bye, dear SSPX.

* A “bishop chosen by the Pope” is extremely important. And the head of the “new structure” will presumably go on being chosen by the Pope. Ask the Fraternity of St Peter what that means. It meant in the 1990’s their own choice of Superior General being overridden by Rome, so that Rome’s own choice was forcibly installed (Fr. A. D.), to bring St Peter’s to heel.

* Note also how this bishop will be able “to ordain (priests)” but not bishops. Rome will thus retain the whip-hand over the new entity.

* “There will be no change”? But of course there will! Rome will henceforth be in control.

* “You will be officially recognized” – but what Catholic needs any recognition by such destroyers of the Church as her present neo-modernist officials? Any such recognition can only be a bad sign.

* “Not a trap . . .”? This whole paragraph is truly remarkable. The author of these “Comments” feels obliged to turn to Mickey Mouse and to his beloved partner, Minnie Mouse, for comment:—

Mickey: Darling, can you smell that delicious cheese that I can smell? Oh look, here it is!

Minnie: But Mickey, it’s a mousetrap, set by the owner of the house to get rid of us. Can’t you see that?

Mickey: It cannot be a trap! I tell you, if anyone offers us such good cheese, it can only be because he wishes us well. It’s clear that he wants us mice to prosper and flourish inside his house.

Minnie: (imploringly) Oh darling, can’t you remember how many of our cousins died this way?

Mickey: For the last time, I tell you – and I am never wrong – it is impossible for such delicious cheese to come from our enemies! They could never use that way to crush us.

Minnie: (with a deep sigh) There is no better way to crush us! And how many more of our friends and relatives are going to follow your lead? Oh, masculine pride!

Forgive the frivolity, dear readers – there is reason to fear we are dealing with a real Disneyland!

Kyrie eleison.