Eleison Comments

Benedict’s Feelings

Benedict’s Feelings on May 7, 2016

When two months ago an interview given in October of last year by Benedict XVI to a Jesuit priest was published in Italy, some misguidedly “pious” Catholics took it to mean that the former Pope was returning to Traditional doctrine on the absolute need to belong to the Catholic Church for salvation. Alas, the interview shows in reality an unrepentant modernist measuring not modern man by Catholic Truth, but that Truth by what modern man can or cannot understand and accept. In fairness, the interviewer raised four serious questions, and Benedict did not dodge them. Here is another cruelly brief but not essentially unjust summary of the interview, with comments added in italics:—

Q: Does FAITH come through a community, which is in turn a gift of God?

A: Faith is a personal living contact with God, mediated through a living community, because in order to believe I need witnesses to God, i.e. the Church, which is not just a set of ideas (true, but a set of ideas is the very object of faith believed in. Benedict shares in modern subjectivism). Through the Church’s sacraments (in accordance with the Faith’s objective parameters) I enter into living contact with Christ .

Q: Can modern man understand Paul’s JUSTIFICATION by FAITH? (Notice modern man’s priority) A: For modern man, God cannot let most men suffer eternal damnation (same comment). The concern for personal salvation has mostly disappeared (so what? So the doctrine must change?). But modern man still perceives his own need of mercy, so he does know his own unworthiness. In fact he expects a saving love, which is God’s mercy, which justifies him (so man sins, expects God’s mercy, and that justifies him? This is sheer Protestantism!). On the contrary the classic idea of God the Father killing his own Son to satisfy his own justice is incomprehensible today. Rather, the Father and the Son had the same will (but Jesus as God and man had two wills!), and the mass of the world’s evil was overcome as it needed to be by God’s sharing in the world’s suffering, in which Father and Son shared alike (but the Father as God could not suffer, and only as man could Christ suffer! This new doctrine empties out the Incarnation, the Cross, mankind’s sin, God’s justice, our Redemption! What is left of Catholicism?).

Q: Has the Church’s teaching on HELL evolved in modern times?

A: “On this point we are faced with a profound evolution of dogma” (sic! But dogma cannot evolve. As a modern man, Benedict has no notion of a truth unchanging and unchangeable). “After Vatican II, the conviction that the unbaptised are forever lost was finally abandoned” (as though Vatican II could change Church teaching!). But then arises a problem – why still be a Christian (good question!)? Rahner’s solution of all men being anonymous Christians leaves out the drama of conversion (only “drama” – not “absolute necessity”?). The Pluralists’ solution whereby all religions suffice for salvation is inadequate (true). De Lubac’s solution is that Christ and the Church somehow stand in for all mankind, let us say by believing in, practising and suffering for the truth. At least a few souls are needed to do so.

Q: If evil must be repaired, does the sacrament of CONFESSION repair it?

A: Christ alone can repair evil, but Confession does always put us back on the side of Christ.

In view of such an interview, can any one still doubt that the Society of St Pius X leaders are seriously deluded who think the Society can safely put itself under these Romans? From humanism and Protestantism a false view of the Redemption has soaked into modern bones, and from modern bones finally into the Catholic churchmen. Vatican II teaches and preaches a Christianity without the Cross. It is highly popular, but utterly false. May God have mercy on these churchmen.

Kyrie eleison.

Bishops’ Declaration – II

Bishops’ Declaration – II on April 30, 2016

Here is the second and last part of the bishops’ Declaration at Bishop Thomas Aquinas’ consecration in Brazil on March 19, six weeks ago:—

Yet the gravest of all in our 21st century is perhaps the mass of Catholics, both clergy and laity, who are still docilely following the destroyers. As to the churchmen, how can the destroyers amongst them not be aware of what they are doing? It must be by that “diabolical disorientation” mentioned even before the Council by Sister Lucy of Fatima. And as for the laity, how can so many still not see that Catholic Authority only exists to establish Catholic Truth, and once it betrays that Truth it loses its right to be obeyed? It must be by the same “disorientation.” So in what exactly does this disorientation consist? In the loss of Truth, in the progressive loss of all sense of the very existence of objective truth, because men have wanted to break free from the reality of God and his creatures and to replace that reality with their own fantasy, so as to be able to do as they like. It is always false freedom at work.

But God does not abandon his Church, and so in the 1970’s he raised up Archbishop Lefebvre to come to its help. The Archbishop recognized that the Pope and his kindred spirits at the Council were for the sake of being modern leaving behind the Church’s Tradition, and that by so doing they would destroy the Church. By a sort of miracle he managed to set up within the Church a solid resistance to the on-going destruction, in the form of a Priestly Fraternity which he dedicated to St Pius X, a Pope who saw right through the corruption of modern times. But the Roman authorities would not put up with anyone refusing their supposed “renewal” of Vatican II, so they did everything within their power to make the Archbishop’s resistance disappear.

However he stood up to them, and in order to guarantee that his work of immense importance for the defence of Catholic Tradition would survive, in 1988 he proceeded to consecrate four bishops, against the express will of the mistaken Roman authorities, but in line with the implicit will of all Popes since the beginning of the Church, with the exception of the last four, all won over to the Council.

This heroic decision by by Archbishop Lefebvre was amply justified by events, notably the uninterrupted downfall of the Church authorities whose only wish was to bring the Church in line with today’s corrupt world. Of these four bishops, the Spanish-speaker was appointed to settle in South America to look after Catholics wishing to keep the Faith of all time in a whole continent, formerly so Catholic, but where there were now no more bishops that could be relied on to lead souls to Heaven.

Alas, the downfall has gone on ever since, only now it is the Archbishop’s Society of St Pius X that is in turn falling victim to the universal corruption by its General Chapter of 2012, where the Society’s leaders under their Superior General made the Society lurch towards the Council. Instead of insisting on the primacy of the Church’s unchanging doctrine, on Tradition, they opened the door to an agreement with official Rome, given over to the Council. And so since 2012, the same disorientation has been making its way within the Society, whose bishops can at least for the moment no longer be relied on. That is most sad, but altogether normal in the present state of Church and world. Hence once more, a reliable bishop needs to be consecrated to make sure that the unchanging Faith survives, especially where a whole continent of souls needs a true shepherd to save their souls for eternity.

May God be with him! Let us pray to the Blessed Virgin Mary that she keep him faithful under her mantle, faithful unto death.

Bishop Jean-Michel Faure.
Bishop Richard Williamson.

Bishops’ Declaration – I

Bishops’ Declaration – I on April 23, 2016

On March 19 a little over one month ago Dom Thomas Aquinas was quietly consecrated bishop for the benefit of souls all over the world wishing to keep the true Catholic faith. As when Bishop Faure was consecrated just one year before, the ceremony was beautifully organised by the monks of the Monastery of the Holy Cross in the mountains behind Rio de Janeiro, in the Monastery’s steel barn cathedral, handsomely decorated for the occasion as last year. The weather was dry and warm without being too warm. St Joseph made everything run smoothly. We owe him great thanks.

There were slightly more people attending than last year, but more of them were from nearby in Brazil. There were no journalists present and the event passed with barely a mention even in Traditional Catholic news sources. Was there a conspiracy of silence? Had a word gone out to pay no attention? It does not matter. What does matter is what Almighty God may be suggesting, namely the survival of the Faith is not right now calling for publicity or for making oneself known but rather perhaps for sliding into the shadows, from which the Church can gently lower itself into the catacombs to wait for its resurrection after the storm in the world, which promises to be humanly terrible, has played itself out.

In any case we have now another bishop, firmly in the line of Archbishop Lefebvre, and on the western side of the Atlantic. Like Bishop Faure he knew the Archbishop well and was a confidant of his. Bishop Thomas Aquinas never worked with the Archbishop directly from within the SSPX, but because he was not a member of the Society, the Archbishop may have felt that much more free to share his thoughts and ideas with him. Certainly he gave to the young monk invaluable advice on more than one occasion, which Bishop Thomas has never forgotten. Believing Catholics are not mistaken – there have been few exceptions to their overwhelmingly positive reaction to God’s gift of another true shepherd of souls.

At the time of the consecration the two consecrating bishops made a Declaration which has not yet had much publicity. It gives the in-depth background of the consecration, showing how such an apparently strange event is not really strange at all, but quite natural in the circumstances. Here is the first part of the Declaration. The second part will have to follow in next week’s “Eleison Comments.”

Our Lord Jesus Christ having warned us that at his Second Coming the faith will almost have disappeared from the face of the earth (Lk. XVIII, 8), it follows that from the Church’s triumph in the Middle Ages onwards it could only experience a long decline down to the end of the world. Three upheavals in particular marked out stages of this decline: Protestantism refusing the Church in the 16th century; Liberalism refusing Jesus Christ in the 18th century; and Communism refusing God altogether in the 20th century.

Worst of all, however, was when this Revolution by stages managed to penetrate inside the Church, thanks to the Second Vatican Council (1962–1965). Wishing to bring the Church back in contact with the modern world that had moved so far away from it, Paul VI succeeded in getting the Council Fathers to adopt “the values of 200 years of liberal culture” (Cardinal Ratzinger).

What the Fathers adopted was the triple ideal of the French Revolution in particular: liberty, equality and fraternity, in the triple form of religious liberty whose emphasis on human dignity implied lifting man above God; collegiality whose promotion of democracy undermined and levelled down all authority within the Church; and ecumenism whose praise of false religions implied the denial of the divinity of Our Lord Jesus Christ. And in the half-century following Vatican II the deadly consequences for the Church of adopting the Revolutionary “values” have become only more and more obvious, culminating in the appalling scandals disgracing almost day by day the pontificate of the reigning Pope.

Kyrie eleison.

Erroneous Vision

Erroneous Vision on April 16, 2016

Fr. Franz Schmidberger, former Superior General of the Society of St Pius X from 1982 to 1994 and present Rector of the Society’s German Seminary in Zaitzkofen, Bavaria, has recently put into circulation “Considerations on the Church and on the Society’s position within the Church.” In three pages firmly promoting the acceptance by the Society from Pope Francis of a Personal Prelature which would bring the Society back into the official Church underneath the Pope, Fr Schmidberger shows a very inadequate grasp of the problem in Conciliar Rome, hardly mentioning Vatican II.

He begins by presenting the Catholic Church as containing human and fallible elements which required Archbishop Lefebvre to found in 1970 the SSPX to save the priesthood, the Mass and the Social Kingship of Christ the King. In 1975 the SSPX was condemned by the official Church, but it thrived. The consecration of four Society bishops in 1988 manifested the contradiction between Rome and the SSPX, but the Archbishop still strove, after as before, for a solution. From 2000 Romans, honest or dishonest, also sought for a solution. Now in 2016 they are easing up on their demands for the SSPX to accept the Council and the New Mass.

COMMENT: This is a relatively superficial view of the utterly radical attack launched against the Faith and Truth itself by Freemasonic churchmen during and after Vatican II. Fr. Schmidberger sees merely misguided Roman churchmen whose coming to their Catholic senses can be seriously helped forward if only the SSPX is officially recognized. Does he have any idea of that leprosy of the modernist mind which the SSPX would much more likely catch than cure if it went in with these Romans?

Secondly, Fr Schmidberger presents half a dozen arguments in favour of accepting the Personal Prelature. The SSPX must regain normality. It must not by its present “exile” lose the sense of the Church. Doors would open in Rome. The SSPX urgently needs Rome’s permission to consecrate more bishops. A good sign is the anxiety of some modernists at the prospect of the SSPX’s normalisation. And finally, how else can the Church’s present crisis be solved than by the SSPX coming out of its “exile” and converting the Romans?

COMMENT: The SSPX convert these Romans? What an illusion! Again, Fr Schmidberger has little to no idea of the deep perversion of modernism which he is up against. It is not “normal” for Catholics to submit to modernists. “Exile” need not mean loss of the sense of the Church. No important doors would open in Rome. The Faith does not need bishops approved by modernists. Any anxious modernists are naive – the real modernists know that they will convert the Society and not the other way round, once they can close the trap. And finally the Church crisis will certainly not be solved by a deluded SSPX joining Rome, but only by God, whose arm is not shortened by the wickedness of men (Isaiah, LIX, 1).

Finally, Fr Schmidberger answers some objections: Pope Francis may not be a good Pope, but he has the jurisdiction to normalize the SSPX. The opinion of the “Resistance” does not matter since it has no sense of the Church and is divided. The SSPX will not be muzzled because Rome will “accept it as it is” (illusion), nor will it lose its identity, because with God’s help it will convert Rome (illusion). Nor will it fail to resist like all other Traditional Congregations have failed that have gone in with Rome, because it is Rome that is begging while the SSPX is choosing (illusion), and because the SSPX has resistant bishops (illusion), and because it will be given a Personal Prelature (to bring it under modernists).

COMMENT: In other words the Roman trap will be lined with cushions. What a series of illusions! Poor SSPX! Let us pray for the saving of whatever can still be saved of it.

Kyrie eleison.

Divine Solution

Divine Solution on April 9, 2016

The last two issues of these “Comments” concluded that in today’s confusion in the Universal Church, descending from Popes possessed by Revolutionary ideals, Catholics should turn to God for God’s own solution, because he cannot abandon souls that have not first abandoned him. This solution exists, not complicated, accessible to all, guaranteeing eternal salvation, requiring only a little faith, humility and effort. It is the Devotion to the Sorrowful and Immaculate Heart of Mary by the practice of the Five First Saturdays, in a spirit of reparation for the insults, blasphemies and outrages committed against the Mother of God.

Why reparation to the Blessed Virgin Mary? Because God, knowing from eternity how perverse the world would become towards its end, gave to his Mother, as St Grignion de Montfort foresaw in the 18th century, a special motherly part to play from the upheaval of the French Revolution (1789) onwards. Through the 19th century she was indeed able, for instance through Lourdes, to reach a multitude of souls that liberalism and scientism could otherwise have damned, but by the 20th century too many souls were spurning even her motherly care. So as God had given to his Church in the 17th century the Devotion to his own Sacred Heart, so in the 20th century he gave the Devotion to his Mother’s Immaculate Heart, with the warning to mankind that this would be his last such gift before world’s end. And insults being for him worse to his Mother than to himself, then men’s spurning of her special efforts to save them called for special reparation.

She herself from May to October of 1917 in Fatima, Portugal, presented her Heart as the remedy for the ills of mankind which were about to be made much worse by the outbreak of the Russian Revolution that same October. And as the world plunged downhill in the 1920’s, to the point where today countless Catholics are holding onto their faith only by their fingertips, she gave to any soul a sure and easy means of ensuring its eternal salvation if only it will take, for once in its life, a little trouble on her behalf: to make reparation on five first Saturdays of the month successively for outrages against 1) her Immaculate Conception, 2) her perpetual Virginity, 3) her universal spiritual Motherhood, 4) her images and statues and 5) the little children being cut off from access to her. Press HERE to see the attached flyer for precise details.

The offer of so much in exchange for so relatively little is incredible, but as the flyer says, it makes sense. God has known from eternity all the chaos now closing in on us in which the Fifth Age of the Church is drawing to its close. We are losing our health, our families, our freedom, our countries, our priests, our sacraments, our Church, and soon very possibly our lives. Our world is sinking into a chaos organized by the enemies of God to wipe out the last traces of him. All this of course he knows, and the growing difficulty, even seeming impossibility, of leading Catholic lives. Therefore he offers us the guarantee of salvation if we will make just a little effort to make reparation to his Mother. Thereafter we may go crazy, go to prison, go to our deaths, even lose the faith, but at the moment of death we have God’s promise that she will be there with all graces necessary for salvation. How can any believing Catholic not take up on the offer? There are certainly priests in all parts of the Church who will do their best to help.

But the least we can do for our part is fulfil exactly what Heaven requests, notably the five distinct intentions of reparation, and here is where the flyer must help. Ordered in bulk on paper from the Fatima Centre in Canada, or downloaded on paper, it presents 20 little boxes to tick for the diagonal climb from modern storm to Heavenly calm. Children love ticking boxes. It does no harm to adults. All aboard for Heaven!

Kyrie eleison.

Archbishop’s Legacy – II

Archbishop’s Legacy – II on April 2, 2016

In 2012 the Archbishop’s successors at the head of his Society of St Pius X, having failed to understand his fundamental putting of Catholic Truth before Catholic Authority, claimed falsely to be following his example when at the Society’s General Chapter of that summer they prepared to put Truth back under Authority by opening the door to some political and non-doctrinal agreement with the liars of Rome – “Catholicism is Revolutionary” is a monstrous lie. For years now these successors have been spreading rumours that the agreement is imminent, but Rome has them where it wants them, by their own fault, and risks continuing to extract concessions such as, possibly, the disastrous interview of March 2 granted by the Superior General to a professional predator. Conciliar Rome never forgets what the SSPX seems no longer to want to remember – Catholic Tradition and Vatican II are absolutely irreconcilable.

However, the Archbishop has disciples who have not forgotten this. They are going under the name of the “Resistance,” which is a movement rather than an organization, as is only logical. Clinging to Truth against the false Authority both of Rome and now of the SSPX, any internal authority amongst them can at best be supplied, i.e. an abnormal authority supplied invisibly by the Church in case of emergency for the salvation of souls. But such authority, by the invisibility of its transmission (contrast the visible ceremonies by which many kinds of authority amongst men are transmitted), is that much weaker and more contestable than normal authority in the Church, which descends always, ultimately, from the Pope. Therefore the “Resistance” has the strength of Truth but a weakness of Authority normally essential to protect Catholic Truth.

Surely resistant Catholics, inside or outside of Tradition, have to take into account the many consequences of this split between Truth and Authority, imposed by Vatican II on the entire Church. God’s Supreme Shepherd being supremely struck by Conciliar folly, how can God’s sheep not be supremely scattered (cf. Zach. XIII, 7: Mt. XXVI, 31)? Not to be suffering, Catholics would have to not belong to the Catholic Church. Is that what they want? Then Catholics for the time being should be neither surprised by betrayals nor disappointed by divisions. The Devil is being given for the moment almost a free hand to cause divisions (“diabolein” in Greek), and when Catholics are all fighting for eternal salvation the divisions are frequently bitter. Patience.

Next, from Conciliar Popes there can no longer be the lifeblood of true Catholic Authority flowing down into Catholic institutions, and so Catholic persons can no longer depend upon Catholic institutions like they should normally be able to do. Rather, any such institutions have to depend for Truth upon the persons, as we have seen the SSPX depending on Archbishop Lefebvre. But persons without institutional backing or control are always liable to be fallible, and so it seems unwise to expect that any grouping of Catholics today for Truth is going to attract large numbers. Catholics may naturally long for structure, hierarchy, Superiors and obedience, but these cannot be fabricated out of thin air. Surely remnants are the order of the day. Patience.

In conclusion, Catholics striving to keep the Faith must take their well-deserved punishment, renounce all human illusions and fabrications, and beg in prayer for Almighty God to intervene. When enough souls turn to him for his solution instead of theirs, they will recognize that his Providence provided it for them in the form of the Devotion of the First Saturdays of the month, to make reparation to his Mother. For when enough reparation is made, then he will give to his Vicar on earth the grace to Consecrate Russia to her Immaculate Heart, and then order begins to be restored, as he has promised. For the practice of that Devotion, do not miss next week’s “Comments.”

Kyrie eleison.