Eleison Comments

To present Fr Calderón’s arguments for the Newrite of Consecration of Bishops being “most likely valid” does not mean defending the Novus Ordo as a whole, nor saying that there is no problem with this Newrite. It does mean that the problem must be weighed not by hothead emotions but by the Church’s sacramental theology, a domain in which it is apt to happen, as the proverb says, that “Fools rush in where angels fear to tread.” Here are Fr Calderón’s arguments, still heavily summarized:—

What is needed to guarantee the validity of a sacramental Rite is its long-standing approval by the Church. Because the Newrite of Episcopal Consecration (NEC) is an entirely new rite, fabricated under Paul VI in the wake of Vatican II, it has no such guarantee. Moreover that Council’s anti-liturgical spirit, quasi-heretical collegiality and anti-authoritarian spirit, forming the context in which the NEC was fabricated, combine to raise a doubt as to its validity: has the new Matter in the NEC been so changed as to invalidate the sacrament? Does the NEC show its promulgator’s new Ritual Intention to make a Rite to consecrate bishops to “do what the Church does” (and always has done)? And has the Form been officially established by the Church, and does it sufficiently express not necessarily the grace of the bishopric to be conferred, but at least the episcopal order which necessarily implies that grace?

The new Matter of the NEC raises no doubts, because it has not been significantly changed from the Traditional matter. On the other hand the promulgator’s new Ritual Intention is problematic, because Paul VI may have been the highest authority in the Church, nevertheless all his liturgical reforms are shot through with his typical modernist desire both to “do what the Church does” and at the same time not to do it. This contradiction characterised almost his entire pontificate, causing untold confusion throughout the Church. Thus the NEC as a whole betrays his democratic spirit, altering radically in several places the Traditional concept of a Catholic bishop and his authority. This new Ritual Intention is ambiguous.

As for the NEC’s new Form, it was established by the highest Church authority, Pope Paul VI, but not with his Extraordinary infallibility, nor with the Church’s Ordinary infallibility (which never breaks with Tradition), so that a final Church judgment upon its validity must wait for the restoration of the Church’s sane Magisterium, presently eclipsed. Meanwhile as a sacramental Form it does seem valid, because “Accept the Principal Spirit” is a Form similar to other Forms approved by the Church, and any intrinsic ambiguity as to the order of bishops is wholly clarified by the immediately surrounding extrinsic Rite.

However, since Paul VI established this Newform both meaning and not meaning to break with the Traditional concept of a Catholic bishop, then in accordance with the doctrine of Leo XIII’s “Apostolicae Curae,” had his dissolving of episcopal authority been clear and explicit, his NEC consecrations would certainly be as invalid as Anglican Orders. As it is, the modernist errors are only implicit in the context of the NEC’s institution. But it is a dark shadow overhanging the validity of the NEC.

Fr Calderón’s conclusion was given here last week: the Matter, Form and Ritual Intention of the NEC are certainly illegitimate because of their break with Tradition, but they are most probably valid because they signify what needs to be signified and most of their elements come from Rites accepted by the Church. However, that validity is not certain because the Ritual Intention to break without breaking with Tradition is illegitimate, the NEC is only similar to Church-approved Rites, and the changes go all in a modernist direction. But the sacraments call for absolutely certain validity, especially the consecration of bishops on whom the Church hangs. Therefore newbishops and newpriests were best conditionally re-consecrated and re-ordained.

Kyrie eleison.

A recent study by a competent Society of St Pius X theologian concerning the validity of the Newrite of Consecration of Newbishops introduced in 1969, provides remarkable confirmation of the second point of Freemasonry’s three-point plan to destroy the Catholic Church, which the dying Cardinal Liénart (1884–1973) allegedly revealed on his death-bed. The Cardinal was a leading neo-modernist at Vatican II, and surely a Freemason himself. Before quoting from the summary of the Cardinal’s testimony which appeared in these “Comments” (#121 of October 31, 2009), let us remind readers that the validity of a Catholic sacrament requires, besides a valid Minister, a valid Form and Matter (words and actions at the heart of the ceremony) and the sacramental Intention to do what the Church does. All other words to be spoken at the ceremony constitute the Rite, surounding and framing the Form. Now from EC 121:—

According to the Cardinal, Freemasonry’s first objective at the Council was to break the Mass by so altering the Catholic Rite as to undermine in the long run the celebrant’s Catholic Intention: “to do what the Church does.” Gradually the Newrite was to induce priests and laity alike to take the Mass rather for a “memorial” or “sacred meal” than for a propitiatory sacrifice. Freemasonry’s second objective was to break the Apostolic Succession by a Newrite of Consecration that would eventually undermine the bishops’ power of Orders, both by a Newform not automatically invalidating but ambiguous enough to sow doubt, and above all by a Newrite which as a whole would eventually dissolve the consecrating bishop’s sacramental Intention. This would have the advantage of breaking the Apostolic Succession so gently that nobody would even notice ( . . . )

Do not today’s Newrites of Mass and Episcopal Consecration correspond exactly to the Masonic plan as unveiled by the Cardinal? Ever since these Newrites were introduced in the late 1960’s and early 1970’s, many serious Catholics have refused to believe that they could be used validly. Alas, they are not automatically invalid. How much simpler it would be, if they were. They are worse. Their sacramental Newform is Catholic enough to persuade many a celebrant that they can be validly used, but the Newrite and Newform are designed as a whole to be so ambiguous and so suggestive of a non-Catholic interpretation as to invalidate the sacrament over time by corrupting the catholic Intention of any celebrant who is either too “obedient,” or is not watching and praying enough. Newrites thus valid enough to get themselves accepted by nearly all Catholics in the short term, but ambiguous enough to invalidate the sacraments in the long term, constitute a trap satanically subtle.

There is no room left in this week’s “Comments” to do justice to the recent article of Fr Alvaro Calderón, but let us present its grand lines (whose justification will have to wait for another issue of these “Comments”): the Newrite of episcopal Consecration is an entirely new Rite. As such, is it valid? It is certainly illegitimate, because no Pope has the right to make such a break with Catholic Tradition. On the other hand in the context of the Newrite and its institution, the Newmatter, Newform and Newintention are very probably valid, because they signify what needs to be signified and most of their elements come from Rites accepted by the Church. But the validity is not certain because the break with Tradition is not legitimate, and because the Newrite is only similar to Rites approved by the Church, and all the changes go in a modernist direction. Therefore the absolute need for certain validity in sacramental Rites applies: until the restored Magisterium of the Church pronounces that the Newrite of Consecration is valid, then to be safe, Newbishops should be reconsecrated conditionally, and Newpriests ordained only by Newbishops should be re-ordained conditionally.

Neo-modernism is “uniquely slippery.” It was designed to be so.

Kyrie eleison.

Ever since the General Chapter of July, 2012, when under Bishop Fellay’s direction the Society of St Pius X took a decisive lurch towards a compromise agreement with Conciliar Rome, Catholics of Tradition have wondered where the two other SSPX bishops stand, Bishop Tissier de Mallerais (BpT) and Bishop de Galarreta (BpG), because both have been rather discreet in public since that time. However, firm words spoken by each of them last month have raised hopes for the future of the SSPX. Are the hopes justified? Catholics may need to remain on their guard . . .

The Confirmations sermon of BpT given on January 31 in Saarbrücken in Germany could not have been more upright or clear. For instance: In the SSPX’s confrontation with Rome, it may never go in for compromise or double-dealing. We can never negotiate with Rome so long as the representatives of the Newchurch (sic) cling to the errors of Vatican II. Any talk of ours with Rome must be unambiguous, and have as its purpose the conversion of the Newchurch representatives back to our one and only truth of Catholic Tradition. No compromise or double-dealing until they have got over their Conciliar errors, and have converted back to the Truth.

Admirable words! Uprightness is not BpT’s problem. He is no politician, God bless him. His problem is that when it comes to putting words into action, his “Fiftiesism” makes him obey his Superior and fall back in line with the politicians of SSPX HQ in Menzingen. Nothing indicates that this will not happen again this time, but we may always pray that, as the proverb says, “Even a worm will turn.” BpT is far from a worm, but he is hiding from himself, or genuinely cannot see, the full malice of Menzingen’s action. It is not just the unity and welfare of the SSPX which is at stake, but the Catholic Faith.

On the contrary BpG is a politician. Unfortunately we do not have the full text of the conference he gave in Bailly, France, on January 17, because his exact words count, so we can only quote from a summary of his main thoughts: Rome’s latest theological and canonical proposals for a Rome-SSPX agreement remain unacceptable, but the Pope certainly wants an agreement and he is perfectly capable of overriding his own officials and of imposing a “unilateral” recognition on the SSPX. Such a recognition could definitely harm the SSPX internally, but if the SSPX had done nothing to obtain it, then there is nothing that the SSPX could do about it. However, Providence would once more watch over the Archbishop’s work.

But, your Excellency, Menzingen has now for many years been doing all it can by political negotiation to arrive at official recognition by Rome, and its eventual “unilateral” arrival would be a mere pretence to deceive Traditionalists so as to sell out the SSPX under cover of claiming, no doubt with Rome’s permission behind the scenes, that it was all Rome’s fault. But the fact would remain that the Archbishop’s Society would finally be betrayed, and you with your own “No, no, a thousand times no . . . but possibly, yes” would have to answer for not having done all you could and should have done to block its betrayal.

In brief, that emergency lighting system of the Universal Church in Conciliar darkness, which is the SSPX, is itself flickering and in danger of no longer giving light. Therefore that repair team to sustain the emergency lighting, which is the “Resistance,” is still needed, and that team needs a sufficiency of good foremen. A third bishop for the “Resistance” is planned, as last year for March 19 at the monastery near Nova Friburgo in Brazil. He is its Prior, Fr Thomas Aquinas, faithful warrior and veteran of the post-Conciliar war for the Faith. May God be with him, and with all the humble and faithful servants of God.

Kyrie eleison.

“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.