Eleison Comments

“Modernism is necessarily, by its very nature, a uniquely slippery animal.” Modernism being the present deadly enemy of the Catholic Church, it can never be analysed enough. As enemy of the Church in particular, it can be defined as that movement of thought and belief which holds that the Church must be adapted to the modern world by the appearance of Catholicism being maintained while its substance is changed. It has infected Catholics without number since it gained official approval from the very top of the Church at Vatican II, and it has set many cardinals, bishops and priests on the road to eternal perdition, let alone laity, by undermining their Catholic faith. Let us see again why it is slippery, and uniquely slippery.

It is a slippery animal because like all heresies it had to disguise itself to seem acceptable to its target, believing Catholics. So it is constantly using ambiguous formulae of words interpretable in a Catholic or anti-catholic sense. The Catholics piously accept the Catholic sense and swallow the words, only to have the modernists turn them to poison by exploiting the anti-catholic sense. Vatican II is ambiguous from start to finish, choosing formulae of words that can slip and slide between the Church and the modern world, so as to hide the intrinsic mutual contradiction of these two. To Paul VI, believing profoundly in both Church and world (as he conceived them), such formulae came instinctively and abundantly. The documents of his Council, Vatican II, are shot through with ambiguity. Yet by these ambiguities Paul VI really thought he would save both Church and world, exactly as Bishop Fellay now hopes that by talking out of both sides of his mouth he will save both Catholic Tradition and the Council. Vain hope! God “detests the double tongue” (Prov. VIII, 13). It has always served to trick Catholics into abandoning their faith.

But more than just slippery, modernism is amongst all heresies uniquely slippery, because as Pius X said in “Pascendi,” it is the heresy of heresies, like a main sewer collecting in itself all the filth of all the minor sewers, or particular heresies. This is because it is the product (and producer) of minds that have slipped anchor from anchorage in any truth whatsoever, so that any counter-truth or heresy is entirely at home in modernism. And this is because its fundamental principle is philosophical, the human mind’s supposed inability to know anything whatsoever beyond what appears to men’s five external senses. Such a mind is like a dirty wine-bottle. It dirties anything poured into it, even the finest of wines or the sublimest of truths. For while any other heresy attacks a particular truth of the Faith, the philosophical error at the root of modernism undermines universal truth, even while it can pretend that it is not attacking any truth in particular. For instance Benedict XVI would no doubt be horrified if he were accused of disbelieving any Article of the Creed, but that does not stop him from being ready to “up-date” them all.

Now never have so many minds slipped all anchor in objective truth as today, such slipping being man’s final liberation, whereby reality can no longer impose itself on me, but I can impose myself on all reality. I have taken the place of God. Thus too many Catholics were infected by today’s world and welcomed modernism when it reared its head again at Vatican II, because here was the Pope himself giving the apparent seal of Catholic approval to their undermining of all Catholic Truth. They were free, and still Catholic. Cry freedom throughout the Church!

Then how deal with this “uniquely slippery animal”? Certainly not by going down to Rome to mix with its main victims and perpetrators, the present officials at the top of the Church. Satan himself might not have a long enough spoon to sup safely with these (objective) foxes and sharks and wolves, all the more dangerous for their possible (subjective) unawareness of their own condition. Pray the Rosary for Our Lady to build around your heads and hearts her own protective armour.

Kyrie eleison.

Two weeks ago these “Comments” stepped back onto a minefield, and defended the position that there is still something Catholic in what has become of the Catholic Church since Vatican II. That position is highly disputed. For example on the one side the present leaders of the Society of St Pius X act as though the official Church in Rome is still so Catholic that the SSPX cannot do without its official recognition. On the other side many souls that really have the Catholic faith utterly repudiate the idea that there is still anything Catholic whatsoever left in the “Church” now being led by “Pope” Francis. What follows is just one attempt to discern what truth may be on both sides.

At the heart of the problem is modernism, which was the essential disease of Vatican II. Modernism is necessarily, by its very nature, a uniquely slippery animal. This is because its basic principle is to adapt Catholicism to the intrinsically anti-Catholic modern world. Thus Conciliar Popes like Paul VI and Benedict XVI wanted both to break and not to break with Catholic Tradition. For any sane mind this is impossible, because it is contradictory. But since these Popes get elected to correspond to the modern world, then they do not have sane minds, instead they have the contradiction of reality in their bloodstream. And since they have had nearly 50 years to conform the Church to their insanity, from top to bottom, then there has emerged a Church so different from the pre-conciliar Church that it is a reality deserving the name of Newchurch.

Moreover, even where a pre-conciliar Catholic practice, like for example Benediction of the Blessed Sacrament, is maintained in today’s Newchurch, the mental foundation on which it rests in the heads of those attending is liable to be anything but solid, because the doctrine of the Real Presence is now both Traditional and not Traditional, it having been consecrated by up-dated priests, who are both priests and not priests. They are priests if you want, but also and at the same time merely presiders if you want. Whatever you feel like is what is true, because the mind is unhooked from objective reality. It is swimming in nice subjective feelings, and unaware of what it is doing, because everybody (almost) is doing it. To anyone having the real Faith, such lack of objectivity is far from nice, it is nauseating. No wonder such souls can repudiate the totality of the Newchurch.

But if one respects reality, one is bound to admit that there is still faith in the Newchurch. A layman tells me that his father has faithfully attended the NOM for the last 45 years, and still has the faith. A priest tells me that he can remember a laywoman presenting to Archbishop Lefebvre himself her reasons for needing to attend the NOM, and he merely shrugged his shoulders. And I could multiply these testimonies that have come to me of the Catholic faith surviving the onslaught of all that is wrong in the NOM. The reason for these testimonies being real should be obvious. As an essential part of the subjective and ambiguous religion, the NOM can be what you make of it. A priest can celebrate it “decently,” a Catholic can attend it “devoutly.” The inverted commas are to placate the hard-liners who will insist that with the NOM there can be neither true decency nor true devotion, but when they say such things, I think that they are flying in the face of reality. Thank goodness, God is judge! No doubt the NOM as it stands is undermining and eroding Catholic decency and devotion all the time, but to say that there is by now nothing at all of these left in the “Newchurch” seems to me to be a gross exaggeration.

Not that the SSPX leaders are right to be wanting to be re-incorporated in the Newchurch, far from it. Whatever sheep therein are not yet infected by subjectivism are wide open to the terrible danger, nor are shepherds immune. Woe to the bishops who failed to keep subjectivism outside of the Catholic Church. They bear a tremendous responsibility.

Kyrie eleison.

Music is gravely misunderstood and its power seriously underestimated by liberals. They are still human enough to enjoy some music or other, logically some kind of trash – and to see how much music matters to people just try telling them that theirs is trash. But in any case liberals’ subjectivist ideology, whereby man is the master of reality (up to and including Almighty God), makes them deny that there is anything objective about music. So for liberals there is no such thing as a composer using certain means to attain certain ends, and there can be no saying that any one piece or kind of music is “better” than another. Music, they will say, is purely a matter of the listener’s mood or taste – “Beauty is in the eye of the beholder,” and horribly discordant music is just as “good” as the most famous music from the past.

Of course such liberals are completely wrong. A Chinese proverb says that “when the mode of the music changes, the walls of the city shake,” a truth amply illustrated by the advent of Rock music in the 1950’s and 1960’s. Plato knew so well the moral influence of music for good or ill that in his ideal Republic certain kinds of music would have been banned. Woe to parents today who do not care what music their children listen to! “It’s only music,” they will say, and so saying they will deserve to lose their children to the Pied Pipers of Rock. Music is supremely important, and it is objective in nature – is it not common sense that all military music and no lullaby will emphasize rhythm? But what do liberals care for common sense? They are doing everything possible to wipe it out. It is too real for their dream.

A major turning-point in modern times between men’s recognition and their refusal of the objective order of reality planted by God in all his works was the French Revolution (1789–1794). Because Beethoven’s life straddled that Revolution and gave to it its outstanding musical expression, some of his best-known works can be used to illustrate clearly certain objective truths concerning music. From Haydn and Mozart he inherited the objective order of the 18^th century. To his successors it was mainly Beethoven who bequeathed the increasing musical disorder (not without its beauties) of the 19^th century, to be followed by the musical chaos and disintegration (with exceptions) of supposedly “serious” music in the 20^th and 21^st centuries. Beethoven might then be called the grandfather or great-grandfather of Rock. That statement may so shock many a lover of Beethoven that it must immediately be qualified by saying that it took a great musician to launch the destruction of music.

Fast approaching – February 19 to 21 – is the “Beethoven Blast” to be held here in Broadstairs from the Friday 18h00, to the Sunday mid-day. A young American pianist who can sight-read nearly all of the 32 piano sonatas and Liszt’s piano versions for two hands of the nine symphonies, has offered to play as many of the sonatas as can be made to fit into one weekend, together with extracts from the symphonies chosen to illustrate the nature of music and how Beethoven works. The idea of the “Blast” originated in sheer self-indulgence, but then there occurred the temptation to throw it open to whoever might like either just to listen to the music (which should be a feast in itself for lovers of Beethoven), or to find out why liberals are so wrong, in music as in everything else.

So if anyone is interested besides readers who have already signed on, let them come between the times mentioned above. Bed and breakfast in the off-season of Broadstairs should be findable on the Internet, and if you let us know when you may plan to come, we may be able to manage in-house lunch and supper. In all things may God be served.

Kyrie eleison.

The purpose of saying half a year ago that a priest is not obliged in every case to forbid a Catholic to attend the New Mass (NOM) was obviously not to say that the NOM is perfectly alright to attend. The NOM rite is, in itself, the central act of worship of the false man-centred religion of Vatican II, in whose wake it followed in 1969. In fact the obligation to stay away from the NOM is proportional to one’s knowledge of how wrong it is. It has enormously contributed to countless Catholics losing their faith, almost without realizing it.

But there are two factors which even to this day have made it easy for Catholics to be deceived by the NOM. Firstly, it was imposed on the entire Latin-rite Church by what Paul VI did all he could to make look like the full force of his Papal authority, which in 1969 seemed immense. Still today the NOM passes for the “ordinary” rite, while the Mass of all time is officially discounted as the “extraordinary” rite, so that even 47 years later an honest Catholic can still feel obliged in obedience to attend the NOM. Of course in reality there can be no such obligation, because no Church law can oblige a Catholic to put his faith in danger, which he normally does by attending the NOM, such is its falsity.

And secondly, the NOM was introduced gradually, in a series of skilfully graduated changes, notably in 1962, 1964 and 1967, so that the wholesale revolution of 1969 found Catholics ready for novelty. In fact even today the NOM rite includes options for the celebrant which make it possible for him to celebrate the NOM either as a full-blooded ceremony of the new humanist religion, or as a ceremony resembling the true Mass closely enough to deceive many a Catholic that there is no significant difference between the old and the new rites. Of course in reality, as Archbishop Lefebvre always said, better the old rite in a modern language than the new rite in Latin, because of the diminution or downright falsification of the Catholic doctrine of the Mass in the NOM.

Moreover these two factors, the official imposition of the changes and their sometimes optional character intrinsic to the NOM, more than suffice to explain that to this day there must be multitudes of Catholics who want and mean to be Catholics and yet assume that the right way to be Catholics is to attend the NOM every Sunday. And who will dare say that out of these multitudes there are none who are still nourishing their faith by obeying what seems to them (subjectively) to be their (objective) duty? God is their judge, but for how many years did easily most followers of Catholic Tradition have to attend the NOM before they understood that their faith obliged them not to do so? And if the NOM had in all those years made them lose the faith, how would they have come to Catholic Tradition? Depending on how a celebrant uses the options in the NOM, not all the elements that can nourish faith are necessarily eliminated from it, especially if the Consecration is valid, a possibility which nobody who knows his sacramental theology can deny.

However, given the weakness of human nature and so the risk of encouraging Catholics to go with the new and easy religion by the least word said in favour of its central rite of worship, why say a word in favour of any feature of the Newchurch? For at least two reasons. Secondly, to ward off potentially pharisaical scorn of any believers outside of the Traditional movement, and firstly to ward off what is coming to be called “ecclesiavacantism,” namely the idea that the Newchurch has nothing Catholic left in it whatsoever. In theory the Newchurch is pure rot, but in practice that rot could not exist without something not yet rotted still being there to be rotted. Every parasite needs a host. Also, had this particular host, the true Church, completely disappeared, would not the gates of Hell have prevailed against it? Impossible (Mt.XVI, 18).

Kyrie eleison.

A thinking reader of these “Comments” from the United States made several months ago some shrewd remarks. Here they are:— “Religious Liberty” is really coming home to roost over here in the colonies. A “Catholic” federal judge has jailed a Protestant county clerk, for refusing to issue same-sex marriage licences. The well-meaning defenders of the clerk keep citing “religious liberty,” not realizing that religious liberty is precisely the problem, not the solution. Amazing. We descend into moral chaos, and no one seems to understand why. “We descend into moral chaos, and nobody seems to understand why.” Well said, indeed! But “Traditionalists” who take Tradition seriously should be able to sort it out.

This is because if I take Tradition seriously, I understand that DOCTRINE comes first, in other words the Catholic religion is not mind-mush, morality and the Mass, but it is doctrinal realities that govern both morals and the Mass. These realities start with the existence of Almighty God, on whom all creation depends every moment for its being upheld in existence, whereas He could let it all drop out of existence without in the least way changing Himself. He creates every human soul by Himself at the moment of its body’s conception for the purpose that it will use the free-will with which he endows that soul to choose to live and die in accordance with His unchanging moral Law, so that it can spend in Heaven its eternity in bliss with Himself. The free-will, to be genuine, means that souls can choose to break His Law, and if they do not repent, they will be choosing to spend eternity defying Him in Hell. So they themselves will be broken, but not His Law. That Law is summed up in the Ten Commandments, and it is not an arbitrary law, but it fits the human nature for which it was made, just as the manufacturer’s operating manual for a machine corresponds to the machine for which it was made.

Now the Sixth and Ninth of those Commandments instruct human beings to make the proper use of the reproductive mechanism built into their bodies. This mechanism is not a toy, but a sacred instrument designed by God for the forming of human families here below to populate Heaven above. Neither two men alone nor two women alone but only a man and a woman together can have children and form a family, and since the populating of Heaven is a sacred affair, then any breaking of those two Commandments rapidly becomes grave enough to deserve eternal damnation. “God is not mocked” – Galatians VI, 7. Therefore same-sex frustration of the act of marriage is one of the four offences against God crying to Heaven for vengeance, as the Catholic Church teaches, and same-sex “marriage” is a mockery of God’s holy institution into the bargain. In all of this doctrine there is not one iota of chaos.

Then where does the chaos come from? From liberalism. From the false religion of liberalism. From making an idol of liberty. For in Romans I St Paul hammers home the point that this particular sin crying to Heaven for vengeance derives from idolatry. It is after men break the First Commandment that God gives them up to disgraceful practices against the Sixth Commandment, no doubt in the hope that the unmistakeable foulness of their breaking the latter will wake them up to the foulness much greater in itself, but less easy to recognize, of breaking the former. That our liberty has become from an ideal an idol is in our own day more and more difficult to recognize, because idolizing religious liberty has been going on now for well over 200 years, and nothing seems more natural. Men have lost all sense of the true God. On the contrary, religious liberty is the supreme liberty, without which all other liberties seem little.

And liberty ends by lifting people’s minds right off their hinges:—“Any truth or reality pretending to impose itself on my mind is a diminution of my liberty, so I refuse to recognize it, unless it suits me. Many moral rules do not suit me. I refuse them, in the name of liberty. I descend thus into moral chaos, convinced that I am exercising a sacred right of mine, so that I cannot understand why I end up in chaos, mental then social. But I have myself unhinged my mind, and cut my society adrift.” The chaos is wholly comprehensible.

Kyrie eleison.

Here is another good letter from a reader of these “Comments.” He takes a sane view of an insane scene. Readers may be discouraged by what he describes, or they may be encouraged by how he describes it. A number of readers must recognize what they are up against every day when they go to work, and this letter may help them to see why and how their place of work is eroding their Catholic faith. He writes:—

I have worked in a factory building cars for over two years now and while it does pay well the environment is a sort of microcosm of the world at large. Let me explain . . .

1) Mixing up of the sexes – men and women work together in close proximity. Such work completely destroys a woman’s femininity. Of course, there are certain jobs which women cannot do, but because of this false sense of equality, the company needs to allow women to work there. The stories that I have heard about the transgressions against the 6th and 9th commandments are truly disturbing. I need not elaborate. But what else did anybody expect? Why would a woman even want to work in such a place?

2) Men’s minds are incapable of making moral judgments – I generalize of course, but most of the men I have talked to do not think in terms of morality (i.e. good and evil) but in terms of what pleasures can keep them entertained. I have talked to several co-workers and have tried to bring up questions of morality in a way that they might understand, but it seems to go over their heads. When a man has steeped himself in the things of the flesh, he is incapable of thinking of the soul. Worse, some of these co-workers have absolutely no shame in boasting of their sins. Once upon a time men had shame. No longer, it would seem.

3) I am my own god – False liberty is exalted as the guiding principle in men’s lives. I have had a few discussions with some of my co-workers and what I get every single time is that truth and morality are purely a subjective affair. What you believe to be truth is fine for you, but you cannot impose your way of thinking on anyone else. I told a supervisor of mine that such thinking is nonsense. I said, what if someone thinks that having more than one wife is fine? He said, belief is up to the individual. If a man denies such a basic principle as that truth is not subjective, then there is no point in talking to him. In essence, every individual becomes his own god because HE has constructed his own reality instead of submitting to something outside of him.

The environment of a modern factory breeds a sort of godlessness. I don’t expect factory workers to be examples of stellar virtue but I would say that modern factories are exponentially worse than what Charles Dickens wrote about in his times. I can go on and on, but the point I am trying to make is this: how can grace operate in lives which are destroyed through sin and a life of seeking pleasure? How does one reach out to men who cannot even grasp the most elementary norms of morality? It is frustrating to say the least. Please pray for us in the trenches.

Woman freeing herself from femininity and family, man freeing himself from objective morality and objective truth – how indeed can one reach out to, or even talk with, such a “faithless and perverse generation” (Lk. IX, 41)? By example, charity and prayer. I advised the writer to take a finger rosary to work to be able to pray discreetly decade after decade to pray for his fellow-workers and to protect himself spiritually from his work environment. But he will need to be discreet.

Kyrie eleison.