Eleison Comments

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.

So we have reached a new year without either the Church having completely collapsed, or the world having crashed into its Third World War, but both disasters have been brought significantly closer. What path are we on? What chance do we have of avoiding disaster?

As for the world, Syria in particular is being turned into a powder-keg where the powder is being piled up for a bigger and bigger explosion. America and Russia, each with their allies, are ready to fight for either of two contending visions of the world’s future: the banksters presently controlling the USA want a unipolar world where their New World Order will exercise a worldwide hegemony; the Russians on the contrary want a multipolar world where they can retain their national independence and look after their own interests. And who can blame the Russians if they want to prevent the NWO from taking over the world? So far they have acted with great restraint in the face of vile provocation from the West.

But as ever, man proposes while God disposes. If men will not stop sinning, then at the moment chosen not by them but by him the dogs of war will be let loose. As usual, men will know why they started the war, but God alone knows how it will end. The Russians have some remarkable weapons, so that the West is by no means sure of “winning,” especially if enough prayers go up from all of us to Heaven for the Consecration of Russia to the Immaculate Heart of Mary, because then the Russians might obtain for all of us an interruption of the world’s march to the abyss. In any case the war will be just as long and as devastating as God needs for his purpose of saving not civilisations (so called) but souls. Will souls learn their lesson? If not, God may need to allow them to wreak even more havoc upon themselves.

As for the Church, its influence on world events is decisive. Wherever true Catholic priests are administering true Sacraments, they are extinguishing those sins which are the cause of war (James, IV, 1). But what have we seen through 2015? The churchmen presently controlling the Church have shown little to no sign of wanting to return to the true doctrine of the New Testament from the false principles of Vatican II, and Pope Francis in particular by his unrestrained application of those principles seems intent upon nothing so much as upon destroying the Catholic Church. Now back in the 1970’s when the Council’s work of devastation seemed irresistible, God in his mercy gave to his Church an Archbishop who would raise a new generation of Catholic priests to witness to the true Faith and show in real life that it was not out of date, thereby acting as a brake upon the devastation. But Archbishop Lefebvre died in 1991, and his successors at the top of his Society soon began losing his grip on the necessity of resisting the modern world with its sinister Council. Through 2015 we saw only one sign after another of the Society drawing closer and closer to neo-modernist Rome.

We are driven to ask, do these successors still have any understanding of why the Archbishop set up his Society of St Pius X in the first place? Do they still have a sense of the true Faith? Do they realize their grave responsibility to witness to that Faith, and not let it be blurred into the world? Let them think hard in 2016, before it is too late, before the Society finally dooms itself to lose all its savour by joining in the Conciliar apostasy, by no longer acting as a thorn in the side of the neo-modernists and by ceasing to sustain that true Church which alone has the secret of world peace, Our Lord Jesus Christ, “yesterday, today and for ever, neither liberal nor modernist” (quotation of Archbishop Lefebvre).

Kyrie eleison.

Whereas arguments at best prove, comparisons at best illustrate. So comparisons do not prove but they can throw a lot of light from what one does know onto what one does not know. Now concerning the present crisis of the Church, half a century old, we need all the light we can get, because with each day that passes it becomes less and not more understandable. So here is a fruitful comparison sent to me recently by a recent convert to Tradition. He compares the Catholic Church and the Conciliar Church, or the Newchurch, to the legitimate and illegitimate families of one and the same man. Let us apply the comparison to his marriage, to his authority and to his children.

By a lawful marriage to his true wife a man starts a family and has legitimate children. But after a while he is unfaithful to her and divorces her to live with his mistress, by adultery with whom he also has children, who are bastards. Similarly by a Cardinal’s lawful canonical election as Pope, the Cardinal becomes the legitimate father of the Catholic Church and the spiritual father by the true Faith of a multitude of true Catholics. But after a while as a Conciliar Pope he goes whoring after the modern world, and by adultery with it he engenders a new family of Conciliar bastards. Thus as one man can be the father of both a lawful and an unlawful family, so one Pope can at the same time be head of the Catholic Church and of the Newchurch.

Secondly, as the family father has true authority over his true family but no true authority over his second family because it is not his true family, so the Conciliar Pope has true authority over all true Catholics but no true authority over the Newchurch with its Conciliar Catholics. And as the first family needs its true father, and both wife and children do all they can to bring him home, but he clings to his partner in adultery and to his illegitimate children who also do all they can to hold onto him, so each Conciliar Pope is still respected by Traditional Catholics who call upon him to do his duty by them, but he prefers Conciliar Catholics who have little real respect for him but who also hold onto him to cover their unlawful status.

And thirdly, as no true wife will accept to be put on the same footing as the adulterous partner that has supplanted her, nor will the true children (if they are mature enough) accept to be adopted by the false family and thus likened to the bastards, so Tradition is absolutely incompatible with the Newchurch, nor can true Catholics accept to be incorporated into it by any kind of sell-out or betrayal of Tradition. It is not for them to go whoring after their true father in his adulterous environment, even if he is their true father and they truly need him. It is for the father to return to his true family. Nor can the lawful children reasonably expect to bring their father home by joining him in his seductive surroundings. The much greater likelihood is that they too will be seduced.

This comparison of any Newpope to a father of two families is fruitful on many more points becaue it is in the nature of a Pope to be a father. But « Every comparison limps » (another brilliant comparison), and the bad leg of this comparison consists mainly in the fact that whereas the distinction between the two families of the one father is perfectly clear in real life, on the contrary the distinction between the Catholic Church and the Newchurch, while perfectly clear in theory, is very difficult to disentangle in practice, because they are almost hopelessly intertwined in real life.

To keep a Catholic head on one’s shoulders it is as necessary to know the clear distinction in theory as it is to recognize the desperate confusion in practice.

Kyrie eleison.

What a contrast there is between today’s Christmas scene in the once Christian nations, and the prophecies of the Messiah to come, which are scattered throughout the Old Testament! It is the contrast between the beginning and the end of those nations. It was the coming of Christ, prepared by the Jews over two thousand years, which through his Church forged those nations (Gentiles) to take up the service of God when the Jews mysteriously chose to abandon it. Today is the end of the time of those nations because they are now abandoning God in their turn. Let us remind ourselves of the glory and infinite greatness of the Messiah’s mission, and of the seriousness of turning our backs on him, by a random selection from the hundreds of messianic quotes in the Old Testament:—

1. David (1000 B.C.) – the messiah would be disowned by the Jews (Ps. XXI, 7–8). He would convert the Gentiles (Ps. XXI, 28). He would be betrayed by a disciple (Ps. XL, 10). He would be mocked in His agony (Ps. XXI, 7–9). His enemies would pierce His hands and His feet, and cast lots for his garments (Ps. XXI, 17, 19). They would give Him vinegar to drink (Ps.LXVIII, 22).

2 Isaias (720 B.C.) – The Messiah would convert the nations (II, 2–3). He would be born of a virgin (VII, 14). He would be adored as a child by kings (IX, 6–7). He would have a precursor; the precursor would prepare the people for Him (XL, 3–4). He would be mildness itself (XLII, 1–3). He would be a man of sorrows (LIII, 3). He would give His life to expiate for our sins (LIII, 5). He would never complain (LIII, 7). He would be made to seem a criminal (LIII, 12). He would reign over the world (LV, 5). His Church, His spouse, would give Him a multitude of children (LXVI, 18–23).

3. Osee (600 B.C.) – The Messiah would return from Egypt by order of His Father (XI, 1). He would convert the nations (II, 19–24). The Jews would be scattered throughout the world for denying Him (IX, 17).

4. Micheas (600 B.C.) – The Messiah would be born in Bethlehem and he would be both God and Man (V, 2). He would convert the nations (IV, 2–3). He would be our reconciliation (VII, 18–20).

5. Joel (600 B.C.) – The Messiah would send the Holy Ghost upon His Church and the faithful would prophesy (II, 28–29). The Messiah would come to judge the world in Power (III, 2).

6. Jeremias (600 B.C.) – The Messiah’s birth would be known by the slaughter of innocent children for whom their mothers would weep (XXXI, 18). He would convert the nations and establish a new covenant with the people, more perfect than the first (XXXI, 31–34).

7. Ezechiel (580 B.C.) – The Messiah would be of the race of David (XVII, 22). He would receive the crown of the royal house of David (XXI, 27).

8. Daniel (500 B.C.) – The Messiah would come in 490 years from the decree to rebuild Jerusalem after the Babylonian captivity; He would re-establish the reign of virtue; He would be denied by the Jews and put to death; the temple and the city of Jerusalem would be destroyed; the Jews would be in a state of desolation until the end of time (IX, 24–27).

To read these quotes again is to be reminded how inseparable the Messiah was from his people, the Jews, and yet how they have separated themselves from him ever since. By him God raised a new people, chosen by faith instead of race, and now that people also is wallowing in materialism. Lord, grant us at this time of year to remember how he changed the world, and how, without him, it is changing catastrophically back.

Kyrie eleison.

In two months’ time, from 18h00 on Friday evening of Feb. 19 to Sunday mid-day of Feb. 21, there will be held here in Broadstairs a three-day blast of the music of Beethoven. A young American pianist who can read at sight any of his 32 piano sonatas, and loves them all, is crossing the Atlantic to play some of them for us, we do not yet know which.

No doubt he will play the three great favourites, the Pathétique, Moonlight and Appassionata, also the Waldstein, but there will be time for him to analyze and present many others. Right now there will be no fixed programme for the three days. There will be room for plenty of questions and discussion and improvisation. A certain bishop will also be contributing to the analysis in some depth of his favourite composer. The purpose of the weekend will be for participants to take away with them an understanding they may not have had before, of how classical music ticks and of what makes Beethoven in particular one of its most famous composers.

But, somebody will object, what has music, especially Revolutionary music, to do with the defence and propagation of the Catholic Faith? The answer here has to be brief. Firstly, let nobody despise music. Both the Catholic Church and the Devil are acutely aware that it is a language uniquely capable of expressing and of shaping what goes on in the human soul, and therefore of influencing the direction which a soul is taking, towards Heaven (by Gregorian chant, for instance) or towards Hell (were not the victims of the recent shooting in Paris just then partaking in a Rock song that called on the Devil?). Almost every human being has some music or other in his soul, and that music normally runs deep, for good or ill. It would hardly be an exaggeration to say that if a man does not have in him the music of his religion, he will have in him the religion of his music, e.g. the Devil. Catholics who realize that the music they love flies not much higher than Pop or Rock, may well seize the opportunity to get a handle on classical music, via a studious blast of Beethoven.

Now it is true that there is a great deal of music higher than Beethoven. He was born under the Old Order, 19 years before the French Revolution broke out in 1789, but he died 38 years later when the modern Revolutionary age was well under way, in 1827, so that his life straddled that tremendous upheaval which he expressed musically in a number of his masterworks, notably in the Appassionata piano sonata and in his Eroica Symphony, originally dedicated to that hero of the Revolution, Napoleon Bonaparte. However, while the relative serenity of the musical masterworks prior to the Revolution is free of its agitation and Romantic disturbance, at the same time it is that much further removed from our own world of today, marinated in the Revolution. Therefore Beethoven can speak to souls of today that find little or no interest in music of the earlier masters. Nor is Beethoven only Revolutionary. The unique power of his best loved masterpieces derives from their Romantic wine being contained and ordered within the classical skins which he inherited from Haydn and Mozart.

To give us an idea of numbers, please let us know if you plan to attend the Beethoven weekend. Off season, local boarding-houses should have plenty of room to overnight. And if male readers would prefer something more directly Catholic, let them sign up as soon as possible for the Ignatian Exercises to be given here by Fr Abraham and myself between 18h00, December 26 and 18h00, December 31.

Kyrie eleison.

If the evidence for eucharistic miracles taking place within the Novus Ordo Church (see EC 436 and 437) is as serious as it seems, then Catholics must conform their minds to the mind of God, and not the other way round. And Catholics cleaving to Tradition have a special need to work out what God meant by the miracles, because they will not easily understand what he can have meant, when they know how distasteful to him the Novus Ordo Mass (NOM) must be in itself.

For many centuries God has been working such miracles. The primary reason has always been to strengthen the faith of Catholics in a truth of the Faith not easy to believe, but very close to the Heart of God. That after the Consecration at Mass of the bread and wine God himself takes the place of their substance is an occurrence so outside the normal course of nature that this invention of the love of God wishing to give himself as food and drink to his sheep may be practical, but it seems also incredible. So in due time and place God has wrought visible miracles in some shape or form to help doubting souls to believe. A secondary reason for these miracles, especially where there has been some profanation or other of the Holy Eucharist, is to remind Catholics of the sacred treatment and adoration always due to the humble appearances behind which hides God himself.

Both of these reasons apply today when the NOM has severely diminished the sense of the Real Presence without always nullifying it (see EC 437). Who can deny that the rite of the NOM and its practice throughout the Novus Ordo Church, e.g Communion standing and in the hand, have set countless Catholics on their way to disbelieving in the Real Presence, and countless priests on their way to a lack of due respect in their handling of the Holy Eucharist? Who can deny that both disbelief and disrespect towards it have hugely increased since the NOM was introduced in 1969? Humanly speaking, the wonder may be not that there have been miracles at all within the framework of the NOM, but that there have not been many more. In any case, God knows best.

However, these miracles – always assuming they are authentic – have lessons also for the Catholics of Tradition who have to some extent or another stood back from the Novus Ordo framework. The lesson most obvious is that not all Novus Ordo Masses are invalid, nor all Novus Ordo episcopal Consecrations nor all priestly Ordinations, as “Traditionalists” can be tempted to think. This is surely because while since the 1960’s a mass of Catholic sheep have become too worldly to deserve to keep the true rite of Mass, they have loved the Mass enough not to lose it altogether. The NOM may have been allowed by God to make it easier for Catholics to leave the Faith if they wanted to, but not impossible to keep it if they wanted to.

Therefore the NOM and the Novus Ordo Church as a whole are dangerous for the Faith, and Catholics are right who have clung to Tradition to avoid the danger. But as they have had to put a distance between themselves and the mainstream Church, so they have exposed themselves to the opposite danger of an isolation leading to a sectarian and even pharisaical spirit, disconnected from reality. There are true sacraments in the Novus Ordo and true Catholics, for whom God cares, and “Traditionalists” should be happy that there are. Let Traditionalists’ relative isolation not make them feel that they are bound to deny that there is anything Catholic at all left in the Novus Ordo. That is unreal, and reality’s pendulum will swing back, as with the leadership of the SSPX, presently failing to see the on-going need for isolation from the mainstream Church. No. Tradition still needs isolation, but with a generous and not an isolationist spirit.

Kyrie eleison.