Eleison Comments

“Facts are stubborn things,” is a famous quote of the United States’ second President, John Adams (1735–1826), “and whatever may be our wishes, our inclinations or the dictates of our passion, they cannot alter the state of facts and evidence.” Concerning the New Order of Mass imposed upon the entire Latin Rite Church by Paul VI in 1969, there are some stubborn facts, apt to perturb the “wishes and inclinations” of Catholics cleaving to Catholic Tradition. Let successive issues of these “Comments” first of all present some of these facts; secondly let us see how they may be explained in view of the disastrous role played over the last 46 years by the NOM in helping Catholics to lose the Faith, and thirdly let us deliberate as to what conclusions a wise Catholic needs to draw. First of all, some facts:—

On august 18, 1996, in St Mary’s parish church in the centre of Buenos Aires, Argentina, Fr Alejandro Pezet was finishing distributing communion (of a new Mass, for sure) when a woman told him of a discarded host at the back of the church. A parishioner having received communion in the hand must have dropped it on their way out of church and abandoned it as being too dirty to be consumed off the floor. Fr Pezet picked it up, put it correctly in a vase of water and placed it in the tabernacle where in a few days it would normally dissolve and could be properly disposed of. However, when on August 26 he opened the tabernacle, what was his surprise to find that the host had turned into a bloody substance. Photographs taken on Bishop Bergoglio’s orders 11 days later showed that it had significantly increased in size. For three years it was kept under strict secret in the tabernacle, but in 1999 then Archbishop Bergoglio decided to carry out a scientific analysis. On October 15, 1999, in the presence of witnesses he allowed Dr Ricardo Castañon, a neuro-psycho physiologist approved of by Rome, to take a sample for testing.

Dr Castañon took the sample firstly to a forensic laboratory in San Francisco which recognized human ADN. A Dr Robert Lawrence located white globules. A Dr. Ardonidoli in Italy thought it was probably heart tissue. An Australian Professor, John Walker, recognized muscular tissue with white globules intact.

To remove all doubt Dr Castañon resorted to a renowned cardiologist and forensic pathologist from Columbia University, New York, Dr Federico Zugibe,without telling him where the specimen came from.

Looking down his microscope Dr Zugibe is quoted as having said, “I can tell you exactly what it is. It is part of the muscle found in the wall of the heart’s left ventricle which makes the heart beat and gives the body its life. Intermingled in the tissue are white blood-cells, which tells me firstly that the heart was alive at the moment when the sample was taken because white blood-cells die outside of a living organism, and secondly that white cells go to the aid of an injury, so this heart has suffered. This is the sort of thing I see in patients who have been beaten about the chest.” When asked how long these cells would have remained alive had they come from a sample kept in water, DrZugibe replied that they would have ceased to exist in a matter of minutes.

When in June of 1976 Archbishop lefebvre was on the brink of ordaining the first large batch of SSPX priests despite Rome’s disapproval, a Roman official came to promise him the end of all problems with Rome if only he would celebrate one NOM. On principle, for doctrinal reasons, he refused. Then how can Almighty God have worked eucharistic miracles with and for this new Mass? Read here next week a suggested answer.

Kyrie eleison.

As the faltering remains of Christendom face today a Muslim invasion organized by the millennial enemies of God, and made possible by the Western nations’ wretched politicians and vile media, it is well to remember how often in times past Christendom was threatened by Muslim invasions, and how Christendom then defended itself, by turning to God. In the summer of 1683, a huge Muslim army of anything from 150 to 300 thousand soldiers besieged Vienna and threatened to engulf Europe from the south-east. The Muslims even envisaged capturing Rome, for the glory of Islam.

With the help of a saintly Capucin, Fr. Marco da Aviano, Pope Innocent XI succeeded in putting together a Christian army from several European nations to relieve Vienna. Here is the prayer of the Capucin just before the battle:—

“O Lord God of Hosts, Behold us prostrate at the feet of your Majesty, to obtain forgiveness for our sins. Well do we know how we have deserved that the infidels take up arms to oppress us, because the iniquities committed by us every day against your goodness have justly provoked your wrath. O great God, from the depth of our hearts we ask you to forgive us; we execrate sin because you abhor it; it pains us that we have often angered your supreme goodness. For love of you we would rather die a thousand times than commit the least act to displease you. Come to our aid, O Lord, with your grace, and let not your servants break the pact which we have made with you alone. Have pity upon us, have pity on your Church, which the fury and strength of the infidels are even now preparing to oppress. Even if it is by our own fault that they have broken in on the serenity of these Christian countries, and even if all the ills coming upon us are none other than the consequence of our own wickedness, still be propitious towards us, O God of all goodness, and despise not the work of your own hands. Remember how, to save us from the slavery of Satan, you shed all of your Precious Blood.

“Will you allow it to be trodden underfoot by these dogs? Can it be that you will permit the precious pearl of the faith, which you sought out with such zeal and rescued with so much suffering, to be thrown to these swine to be trampled on? Forget not, O Lord, that if you allow the infidels to prevail over us, they will blaspheme your holy Name and mock your power, crying out a thousand times, “Where is their God, the God who was powerless to save them from our hands?” Let it not be held against you, O Lord, that you gave way to the fury of the wolves, just when we were calling upon you in our misery and anguish. Great God of battles, come to our aid! If you favour our cause, the armies of the infidels cannot harm us. Scatter these people that have wanted war! For our part, we ask no more than to be at peace with you, with ourselves and with our neighbour . . .”

The prayer continues with the request for the Christian army’s leaders and soldiers to be strengthened with God’s grace, with the spirit and courage of the heroes of the Old Testament, so that they may reduce to nought the enemies of the Christian name, and show forth God’s power. Let God look down on the Christian soldiers’ faith, hope and charity. On His behalf Marco will bless them on their way to battle. Let God hold back the arm of his wrath raised over them, and let His enemies know that there is no other God beside Him. Like Moses, Marco will lift his arms to bless the Christian soldiers. May God grant them victory, and the ruin of His and their enemies, Amen.

How politically incorrect! “Dogs” and “swine” – How racist! Intolerable! But the fact is that God granted to the Christians a sensational victory which threw back the Muslims for 300 years. Now they are back. And this time there is virtually no repentance left to call upon Almighty God . . .

Kyrie eleison.

I have just been re-reading Michael Davies’ Pope John’s Council, written in 1977 and hardly needing to be up-dated nearly 40 years later. If anything, Michael Davies was too kind to the Council, but there are many home truths in the book, so that it can be warmly recommended to anybody beginning to study the Council. Especially interesting is the Appendix VI consisting of a review by Professor Louis Salleron from 1936 of the French philosopher Jacques Maritain’s (1882–1973) then recently appeared book, Integral Humanism. This book so interested an Italian priest, Giovanni-Battista Montini, that he translated it into Italian. Later he became Pope Paul VI, the main architect of Vatican II. Thus Salleron uncovers the roots of the Council, 26 years before it began.

Integral Humanism presents Maritain’s vision of a new future for a remodelled Christendom. Bourgeois civilisation is doomed, but instead of the Church continually condemning the man-centred humanism which gave rise to the French Revolution (1789) which gave rise to that bourgeoisie, the Revolution needs to be recognised as part of an on-going and inevitable historical process with which Christianity can and must come to terms. By this means, while the whole course of modern history cannot be stopped, nevertheless by Christ the humanism can be made truly, fully human, becoming “integral humanism.” Christianity thus rebuilt on modern foundations will bring Christ to modern man and modern man to Christ, the admirable intention of Maritain and Paul VI and Bishop Fellay.

But “the way to Hell is paved with good intentions,” says the wise old proverb. Salleron admires all kinds of things in the book of Maritain, who was a philosopher skilled in Thomism and knew well, says Salleron, how to present any idea in such a way as not to contradict Catholic doctrine. But Salleron objects strongly to Maritain’s reading of modern history and calls it “Marxist.” Karl Marx (1818–1883) also started out from the rot of bourgeois civilisation but concluded that it must be completely torn down by on-going Revolution to make way for the dream of the classless society, which worked out in reality as the nightmare of Communism. So Maritain rejected Marx’ conclusion but accepted his analysis of history, so as to fashion a new compromise Christianity that would work for modern man: neither modernity on modern foundations (Marx – and Wagner), nor Christ on Christ’s foundations (Pius X – see especially his Letter on the Sillon – and Archbishop Lefebvre), but Christ on modern foundations. The result is that Newchristianity which is to be found throughout the documents of Vatican II, namely Christ is the true fulfilment of man – not man is ordered to Christ and to God, but God and Christ are ordered to man.

Alas, compromise solutions do not work with Our Lord. He says, “Let your speech be yes, yes or no, no: and that which is over and above these, is of evil” (Mt. V, 37). And “He that is not with me, is against me” (Mt. XII, 30). A man-centred religion of the true God is a contradiction in terms. Salleron points out that there is nothing inevitable in the march of modern history such as Marx and Maritain imagined. If modern man is going to the Devil, it is by man’s own free choice. What liberals like Maritain and Paul VI and Bishop Fellay do not grasp is the reality of evil. They do not grasp that modern man simply does not want Christ, and God will not force man to do so. Liberals will diminish God so as to make him appealing to modern man, but most modern men will turn away, in indifference or disgust. Vatican II has been a colossal failure, and “integral humanism” has been just one more example of disintegrating humanism, because it is not centred on God.

Politics, economics, the banks, finance, the arts, medicine, law, agriculture, the whole of modern society must come back under the Social Kingship of Christ the King. That was Archbishop Lefebvre’s solution. It is the only solution.

Kyrie eleison.

A reader of the ‘Comments’ questions again the value of non-Catholic culture when she attacks them for praising Wagner (EC 9) and T.S. Eliot (EC 406, 411). For her, T.S. Eliot is to be dismissed as a Protestant, while Wagner is a Jacobine devil in love with Buddhism, whose music is loaded with gnostic impurity. Now both Eliot and Wagner have their faults, grave faults when measured against the fullness of Catholic truth, as the ‘Comments’ mentioned above pointed out. But in our sick age they have their utility, which can be summed up in a few words, attributed to St Augustine: “All truth belongs to us Christians.”

Eliot and Wagner both belong to yesteryear’s “culture.” Culture we will define for our purposes here as the stories, music and pictures that men of all ages need, to nourish their minds and hearts. Thus defined, culture reflects and reveals, it teaches and moulds. It reflects, because it is the product of some writer, musician or artist who had the talent to give expression to what was going on in the souls of his contemporaries. If it was popular in its time, it revealed part of what was going on in their souls, and if it has become a classic since, like Eliot and Wagner, that is because it reflects and reveals part of what goes on in the souls of men of all time. Thus Eliot from the very poverty of his Unitarian upbringing was enabled to draw his daunting portrait of modern man, while Wagner by a towering talent, aside from any buddhism or gnosticism, filled his operas with a wealth of true human psychology that thousands of commentators have not ceased to interpret since.

Culture also moulds and teaches, because the writer or musician or artist gives expression and form to movements, until then formless, in the minds and hearts of his contemporaries. Shelley called poets “the unacknowledged legislators of the world.” Elvis Presley and the Beatles had a huge influence on modern youth, for generations to come. Picasso almost created modern art, and thereby fashioned to a large extent how modern people visualise the world around them. These modern examples of the huge influence of literature, music and the arts on human beings are hardly rejoicing because modern man is so godless, and there is in him so litle of value to be reflected or expressed, but the huge influence cannot be denied.

In brief, culture is based in, and issues from, men’s souls. And the Catholic Church is in the business of saving men’s souls. So how could it neglect culture? Its own writers have directed men’s thoughts, and its artists and musicians have filled its churches with beauty to uplift men’s souls to God ever since the Church began. Of course that is true for Catholic culture, somebody might object, but neither Eliot nor Wagner were Catholics. Then of what use can they be to the Church?

In man there are three things: grace, sin and nature. As coming from God, our basic nature can only be good, but as flawed by original sin it is weak and inclines to evil. Nature is like the battlefield of the war to eternity between grace and sin for the possession of that nature. Grace lifts it up and heals that nature. Sin pulls it down. Hence the never-ending war. Now Eliot and Wagner may have been lacking in grace, but they were given by God to be masters of nature. The Church is commander-in-chief on the side of saving souls. How could it fail to study the battlefield, and to draw all possible profit from the masters of nature, to know the souls of the time and to teach them?

Kyrie eleison.

When the three-week meeting of Catholic bishops from all over the world opened in Rome on October 4 to discuss questions on the family, many Catholics feared that it would undermine the Church’s unchangeable moral doctrine, especially since Pope Francis is so intent on reaching out to immoral modern man. However, traditionally minded Catholics have been encouraged by the emergence before and during the Synod of substantial resistance by many Newchurch prelates to any such undermining. Only tomorrow will the Synod’s results be known, but certain things are clear, whatever those results may be.

Firstly, let nobody say that there is nothing Catholic left in the mainstream Catholic Church. Conciliarism may well have infected the faith and morals of many, even most, of its prelates, but to claim that all of them are utterly corrupt is a gross injustice and over-simplification. Obviously a number of them are doing their best to uphold God’s moral law.

Secondly, however, these (in this respect) good men are fighting from a weak position because dogma is the foundation of morals, and with Vatican II the Newchurch abandoned dogma. Dogma founds morals because, for instance, if God, Heaven and Hell (dogma) do not exist, then why should I obey the Ten Commandments (morals)? And Vatican II by its Declaration on Religious Liberty wrecked dogma because if, as it taught, a State must recognize the right of all its citizens to practise in public the religion of their choice, then Jesus Christ cannot be God, because if he is, then the State, coming from God just as much as all the men composing it come from God, can grant no such right to religions denying that he is God, and for it to grant such a right is implicitly to deny that Jesus is God. Thus 50 years before the Synod, Vatican II undermined in advance all subsequent defenders of Christian morals, however decent as men they may be, unless they repudiate Vatican II.

That is why, thirdly, as John Vennari argues (one need not agree with everything he says), the essential trick of those at the Synod seeking to change Catholic morals has been the “turn towards man” underlying all of Vatican II. Here is the trick: “God’s Church is for man. True, God cannot change, but his Law must fit man, and yesterday’s Law no longer fits today’s man. Therefore that Law must be adapted to modern times.” However the Catholic Church was purchased by the Blood of Christ not to pull God down to man, but to raise man up to God, and to provide him through Christ with the means of being thus raised.

And fourthly, as Michael Voris says (one need not agree with everything he says), the Synod has been full of “bishop babble.” This is because many Newbishops will never have been properly taught Catholic doctrine, in fact they may well have learned that there is no such thing as unchanging truth. Thanks to Vatican II their minds are adrift among the morals and anti-morals of all the religions of the world. It can be no wonder then if they are hardly capable of thinking, and if they run loose at the mouth.

And fifthly, as an honourable colleague from the Society of St Pius X says (he has been criticised before now in these “Comments”), even if the Synod were to close tomorrow with entirely Catholic conclusions, still God’s moral law will have been undermined by the mere fact of its having been questioned on major points for a length of time, officially and in public. Moreover this Synod seems sure to rest even true conclusions not on their objective truth, but on the bishops’ vote, so that the liberals can come back next year or the year after, for one vote after another, until they finally get what they want. Today the voting game belongs to them.

Kyrie eleison.

Your Excellency,

I am sorry to bother you, but I am a father responsible for getting many little souls that God has entrusted me with to Heaven and I’ve never been so lost or confused about how to do it as I am now. I am trying not to feel hopeless as I see both my Catholic world and the rest of the world in a tail-spin, about ready to crash and burn. A clerk in today’s United States gets sent to jail if they refuse to issue a license for a same-sex marriage. What next? But I do go on hoping because God has given us many children, and another is on its way. Why is God allowing us to bring more children into this world when it seems as if it’s about to end? Should my wife and I be preparing ourselves to see them martyred? I have not up till now found devotion to Our Lady too easy, but now even I find myself turning to her.

The immediate problem is what we have found to be happening with our local Traditional Catholic parish. We moved here to guarantee for the children especially, but also for ourselves, the true Mass and a Catholic formation. Alas, many things have come to light that have left us shocked, confused and feeling defeated. There seem to be demonic influences at work, and we have had to wonder if even the priests are not under their evil grip, because they are not the same priests we knew a year ago. For the past year we have done our best to help, but to no avail. We have continued to attend Mass there, all the while praying, fasting and doing Novenas in the hope that things would change. We have “watched and prayed,” and like the spouse of an alcoholic we have made excuses for them for as long as we could. But finally things have occurred which are driving us to look elsewhere if we do not want our children to be confused about their faith.

So where do we go from here? Obviously I want the children to have the Sacraments and to continue to grow in the faith by attending a valid Mass, so long as it is there. To raise these children’s souls for Christ my wife and I also have an essential need of the graces of the Mass. We want to stay away from major cities. My work situation is such that I could seek work anywhere in the United States. Where do we go?

Dear Father of a large family,

First and foremost, as I read everything you write, let me advise you to count your blessings. Almighty God is not making things easy for you, but nor did he do so for his own Son on earth. This is a “valley of tears,” but amid the tears, God is giving to you and to your family many graces. You are keeping the faith, you have been given to see the need for true Tradition, and your making it your first priority to get your family to Heaven is another huge grace. The Devil may have thrown quite an obstacle in your way, but you have seen it was him. Count on it, there will be many more such obstacles before this crisis is over, and the worst of them are liable to come from the priests (“We carry our treasure in vessels of clay,” says St Paul). Never be surprised by evil today, the Devil is running wild. Therefore above all, keep well in mind how much God is doing for you, as he did for the Holy Family, despite all the apparent hardships. That will put them in the right perspective. And do not be surprised if as the man of the family, God wants you to take some manly decisions for its future. He is not going to take these decisions for you.

Alright, you say, but the question remains, where do we go? Answer, wherever you are sure of finding firstly, work for yourself and secondly, the true Mass, in that order, because the family cannot survive without a breadwinner. As for the Mass, 20 years ago one might not have hesitated to say, it must be a Society of St Pius X Mass. Today, that is no longer so sure. I would say, go rather by the priest than by his Congregation, or label. Expect failures and betrayals. We are all adrift in a sea of apostasy. But have a boundless, a boundless confidence in Our Lord and his Mother. They will never let you go unless you want to be let go. Have compassion on your fellow human beings. And God bless you.

Kyrie eleison.