Eleison Comments

Five “Dubia”

Five “Dubia” on November 26, 2016

In a scandal of a gravity unprecedented even in Pope Francis’ scandal-ridden reign as Catholic Pope since 2013, when challenged by four honourable Cardinals on his seeming denial of the very basis of the Church’s teaching on morals, he has just given answers in public which virtually affirm the freedom of man from the moral law of Almighty God. With this papal affirmation of the Conciliar religion of man as opposed to the Catholic religion of God, a schism in the Universal Church draws that much closer. For half a century since Vatican II, the Conciliar Popes have managed to remain in a way the one head of two opposing religions, but that contradiction could not last indefinitely, and it must soon result in a split.

In 2014 and 2015 Francis held Synods in Rome to consult the world’s bishops on questions concerning the human family. On March 19 of this year he published his post-synodal Apostolic Exhortation on “Love in the Family,” the eighth of whose nine chapters raised controversy from the very start. On September 15 four Cardinals in particular sent to the Pope a private and perfectly respectful letter in which they asked him as Supreme Pontiff to clear up five “dubia” or doubtful points of doctrine, left unclear in the Exhortation. Here is the essence of the five points:—

1 From the Exhortation’s #305, can a married person living like husband and wife with a person not their lawful spouse from now on be given sacramental Absolution and Communion while they continue to live in their quasi-married state?

2 From #304, need one still believe that there are absolute moral norms which prohibit intrinsically evil acts, and which are binding without exception?

3 From #301, can one still say that a person living in violation of one of God’s commandments, e.g. in adultery, is in an objective state of grave habitual sin?

4 From #302, can one still say that the circumstances or intentions surrounding an act intrinsically evil by its object can never change it into being subjectively good, or acceptable as a choice?

5 From #303, must we still exclude any creative role of conscience, so that conscience may still never authorize exceptions to absolute moral norms which forbid acts intrinsically evil by their object?

To these five designedly yes-or-no questions the answer of the Catholic Church from Our Divine Lord onwards has always been clear, and has never changed: Communion may not be given to adulterers; there are absolute moral norms; there is such a thing as “grave habitual sin”; good intentions cannot make evil acts good; conscience cannot make evil acts lawful. In other words, to the five yes-or-no, black-or-white questions, the Church’s answer has always been, 1 No, 2 Yes, 3 Yes, 4 Yes, 5 Yes.

On November 16, just ten days ago, the four Cardinals made their letter public (cf. Mt.XVIII, 15–17). On Nov. 18, in an interview given to the italian newspaper Avvenire, Pope Francis gave the exact opposite yes-or-no answers: 1 Yes, 2 No, 3 No, 4 No, 5 No. (He did affirm each time that “Such things are not black-or-white, we are called to discern,” but he was merely attempting thereby to confuse the unmoving questions of principle with moving questions of application of principle, which come after the questions of principle.)

All credit to the four Cardinals for obtaining light and truth for many confused sheep that wish to get to Heaven: Brandmüller, Burke, Caffarra and Meisner. They may be immersed in the Novus Ordo, but they have obviously not lost all courage or sense of their duty. There can be no question of their having acted out of any but the best of motives in pressing the Pope to make himself clear. And where does that clarity leave the Church? It must be on the brink of schism.

Kyrie eleison.

Excellent Communiqué?

Excellent Communiqué? on November 19, 2016

On October 31 Pope Francis held in Sweden an ecumenical meeting with leading Lutherans to prepare for next year’s 500th anniversary of Luther’s revolt against the Catholic Church. After the meeting the Pope signed with the President of the Lutheran World Federation a joint Declaration, which is yet another utter scandal, coming as it does from the man who is meant to be the Vicar of Christ. On November 2, in protest, the Superior of the French District of the Society of St Pius X issued a Communiqué to condemn that scandalous Declaration. Much of the Communiqué is excellent, and it should be what is needed from Society Superiors in order to place a serious obstacle in the way of the Archbishop’s Society being betrayed to the Roman neo-modernists, but the conclusion is weak, and so the Communiqué may have the opposite effect.

Fr Bouchacourt opens his Communiqué by stating that the scandal of the Pope’s pro-Lutheran Declaration is such that he “cannot keep silent.” And the whole passage where he denounces Luther is beyond reproach. Here it is:—

How can we be “profoundly thankful for the spiritual and theological gifts received through the Reformation” (quotation from the joint Declaration) , when Luther manifested a diabolical hatred towards the Sovereign Pontiff, a blasphemous scorn for the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass, as well as a refusal of the saving Grace of Our Lord Jesus Christ? He also destroyed the doctrine on the Eucharist by refusing Transsubstantiation, turned souls away from the Most Blessed Virgin Mary and denied the existence of Purgatory. No, Protestantism brought nothing to Catholicism! It ruined the unity of Christendom, separated whole countries from the Catholic Church, plunged souls into error, putting their eternal salvation in peril. We Catholics want Protestants to return to the unique fold of Christ which is the Catholic Church, and we pray for this intention. In these days when we celebrate all the Saints, we call out to Saint Pius V, Saint Charles Borromeo, Saint Ignatius and Saint Peter Canisius who heroically fought the Protestant heresy and saved the Catholic Church.

But compared with this denunciation, Fr. Bouchacourt’s conclusion is relatively lame:—

We invite the faithful of the District of France to pray and do penance for the Sovereign Pontiff so that Our Lord, whose Vicar he is, may preserve him from error and keep him in the Truth of which he is the guardian. I invite the priests of the District to celebrate a Mass of reparation and to organise a Holy Hour before the Blessed Sacrament, to ask pardon for these scandals and to beg Our Lord to calm the tempest which has been shaking the Church for more than half a century now. Our Lady Help of Christians, save the Catholic Church and pray for us!

Fr Christian Bouchacourt, SSPX French District Superior.

This conclusion is pious, and perfectly respectful towards Pope Francis, but does it give any idea of the gravity of the Pope’s disorientation when the Pope so praises one of the greatest anti-Christian heretics in all Church history? It is difficult to imagine Fr Bouchacourt not having obtained from Bishop Fellay prior permission to publish his Communiqué. Was it Bishop Fellay who had no problem with the Luther of 500 years ago being denounced, but insisted on toning down the criticism of the major wrecker of the Church here and now? In any case the Communiqué serves Bishop Fellay’s purpose of deceiving Traditional priests and laity and putting them to sleep by suggesting that the supposedly imminent Personal Prelature will prevent none of them from denouncing Papal scandals, etc . . .

Then does Fr Bouchacourt realize how, like his predecessor, he may be serving, even against his own will, the betrayal of the Society? Let us be “simple as doves” but also “as wise as serpents” (Mt. X, 16).

Kyrie eleison.

Churchmen Aware? – II

Churchmen Aware? – II on November 12, 2016

Last week these “Comments” raised the question whether the Superior General of the Society of St Pius X (SG for short) knows what he is doing when he constantly makes contradictory statements, now in favour of Catholic Tradition, now in line with the Romans and their Conciliar Revolution. At best the SG would be merely a confused and confusing liberal, torn between Catholicism and Conciliarism. At worst he could be a true wolf in sheep’s clothing, using words merely as political instruments to enable the Romans to absorb Archbishop Lefebvre’s once Catholic Society into their Conciliar Newchurch. The Faith is at stake. It is important for many priests and laity alike to see clearly whether the SG is shepherd or wolf, or somewhere in between. See the latest issue of the French bi-monthly magazine, “Sous la Bannière,” for a very clear answer by a Resistant French priest, Fr Olivier Rioult.

He starts out from the SG’s June 29 communiqué which followed on the SSPX Superiors’ meeting held just previously near Écône, and he quotes from it sentences which might re-assure some Catholics that the SSPX is coming back on Traditional track. But, says Fr Rioult, the SG has in the past so often said one thing and done another that his words are of no value so far as truth is concerned. They are, as for countless modern politicians, merely instruments of policy to be used or abused as the occasion requires, in this case to make the SSPX submit to Newchurch authorities without its even realizing what is happening. The proof is in the SG’s actions. Actions speak always louder than words. What the SG really means is best judged by his actions, which work steadily in favour of Conciliar Rome.

Here are some of them – the acceptance of the “excommunications” being “lifted” in 2009; the acceptance of official jurisdiction for confessions, and of official jurisdiction for the SG to deliver first instance judgments of cases within the SSPX; the submission to quoting of names for priestly ordinands in the USA, and acceptance of diocesan toleration for priestly ordinations in Germany. Going in the same direction within the SSPX is his steady demotion or purging of opponents to his Roman policy, and his promotion of docile substitutes, often youngsters relatively unfit for the heavier responsibilities. And Fr Rioult points out that this series of actions is clearly in line with the joint statement of the SG and Rome’s Number Two, Cardinal Müller, issued after their meeting in September of 2014, that they would “proceed in stages . . . taking the time necessary to iron out difficulties . . . with a view to achieving full reconciliation.”

This step-by-step procedure, says Fr Rioult, has the great advantage for both parties of avoiding any clear-cut moment such as the joint signing of a public document which would risk alerting followers of Tradition to what was going on. As it is, the SG’s contradictions create confusion, and if only they are “subtle” or “delicate” enough, put Catholics to sleep who are not watching and praying. Thus the SG’s words are merely laid down as a smokescreen to disguise especially from SSPX priests what he is really up to, because if enough of them were awake and aware, it would be that much more difficult for him to persuade Rome that he could bring the whole Society into the Newchurch, which is what Rome wants, to put an end to the main body of resistance to their New World Order religion. Already in 2012 the SG had the bitter experience of setting up everything, as he thought, for the sell-out, only to have Rome refuse the agreement because at that moment in time his three fellow-bishops in the SSPX were all against it, as Rome well knew. The Newchurch needs to cripple Tradition, once and for all.

Pray for SSPX priests, that they see through the Menzingen mafia, block it, and finally get rid of it.

Kyrie eleison.

Churchmen Aware? – I

Churchmen Aware? – I on November 5, 2016

A reader of these “Comments” just raised a question once often asked, now probably less often, but still of interest: is the Superior General of the Society of St Pius X (SG for short) aware of how he contradicts himself? – in July of this year he called for a new Rosary Crusade “exclusively” to obtain the Triumph of the Immaculate Heart through the Consecration of Russia, while more recently he claimed that Rome wants the SSPX to fill important positions in the Church to help it to overcome modernism. The contradiction is clear, because the churchmen presently holding position in Rome are certainly opposed to the Consecration as asked for by Our Lady, and the reasons for that run deep.

Write to Fr Guy Castelain at Le Moulin du Pin, F53290 Beaumont-Pied-de-Boeuf, France, for a copy of the excellent editorial in his SSPX bulletin of this month, where he lays out ten reasons why Vatican II is the main obstacle to Our Lady’s Consecration of Russia. In very brief, the Consecration represents political involvement against political neutrality, the reign of Christ against his dethronement, Catholicism against religious liberty, the Pope against collegiality, the one true religion against ecumenism, the Immaculate Heart against a glorification of human dignity forgetting original maculation or sin, the one true Church against salvation in other religions, peace by the Catholic Pope against peace by “the Spirit of Assisi,” and so on. No wonder Pope Francis told Vladimir Putin who came to see him and expressed an interest in the Consecration: “We do not speak about Fatima”!

Now human politics and politicians can solve by compromise many a human clash between man and man, but Fr Castelain’s ten reasons prove that the clash between Fatima and the Conciliarists is no less than the clash between the “old” religion of Rome, as fresh as eternity, and the “new” religion of Vatican II, as stale as sin. Here is one of those clashes between God and man where political compromise is out of the question. In 1973 had not Our Lady warned in Akita, Japan, that “. . . the Church will be filled with agents of compromise . . .” The question for the SG then becomes, is he aware that he is an “agent of compromise”? Does he or does he not see that he is promoting an irreconcilable contradiction? If he does see it, then he is a liar, either when he promotes Fatima or when he protects the Conciliarists, or both. If on the contrary he does not see it, then he is blind.

A number of Catholics are by now convinced that his latest call for a Rosary Crusade is merely a political ploy to deceive his more Traditional followers. Certainly in his first term as SG plenty of his words and deeds indicate that he did then see the clash as clearly as Archbishop Lefebvre saw it. But there must have come a turning-point since then when instead of holding to the interests of God he wished also to serve the interests of men. It cannot be done (Mt.VI, 24; Gal. I, 10), but like many of us, he wanted to have his cake and eat it, and nature is expert at dressing itself up as grace, says the Imitation of Christ. So there must have followed a time of transition when he was wilfully blind, but if wilful blindness goes on for too long, it turns into habitual blindness, which is a terrible punishment from God. Assuredly between 2006 and 2008 Our Lady obtained for him more than enough graces to see what he was doing, but like the Conciliarists and Macbeth, instead he “waded on in blood” (Act III, Scene 4) – that of the Church. Like the Conciliarists in Rome, he certainly needs our prayers.

Readers, if you wish to see clear, pray the Rosary, and if in our dark times you wish never to stop seeing clear, pray all 15 Mysteries of the Rosary every day. The Mother of God cannot fail you.

Kyrie eleison.

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.