Eleison Comments

What does the Catholic Church think of “racism”? Or of “anti-semitism”? Or of “sexism”? Or of “homophobia”? And so on and so on. In a liberal world where everybody is supposed to be nice to everybody, is it not surprising how “political correctness” seems to come up regularly with a new class of people for all of us to hate? The Catholic Church, following its divine Master, says we are to love our neighbour and to hate nobody, but it does not say we should love all our fellow-men indiscriminately. Let us see how a great Catholic theologian puts order into our love of God and man. Here are the bare bones of the 13 Articles of St Thomas Aquinas’ Summa Theologiae, 2a 2ae, Question 26:—

1 Charity does have an order, because it is a friendship in supernatural bliss, and that bliss has its starting-point in God, and wherever you have things following from a starting-point, you have an order. (Notice how the Catholic immediately refers a major question to God. What might liberals immediately refer to as the starting-point of their “niceness”? Hatred of Nazis? Seriously . . . )

2 Charity must love God above neighbour, because charity is a friendship in bliss, and all bliss for myself or my neighbour has its source in God. (Where do liberals place the source of their happiness? In self-fulfilment? In their fellow-men? These are relatively poor forms of happiness.)

3 God must be loved above self, because all (unspoiled) creatures, each in their way, naturally love the common good above their particular good, and God is the natural and supernatural common good of all.

4 Spiritual self must be loved above spiritual neighbour, because I am closer to me than I am to my neighbour so that if I do not love me (spiritually), I am unlikely to love my neighbour. But –

5 Spiritual neighbour must be loved above corporal self, i.e., my own body, because spirit comes before body, because spirit partakes directly in bliss, while body partakes only indirectly (through spirit).

6 Some neighbours must be loved more than others, because they all vary in their closeness to one of the two poles of charity, objective to God, or subjective to me. Saints are closer to God, neighbours to me.

7 Objectively, Saints will be loved more than relatives, but subjectively neighbours will be loved more intensely than Saints, because in a variety of ways they are closer – “Charity begins at home.”

8 Essentially, blood-relatives will be loved above non-relatives, because blood-ties are natural, fixed and substantial. Accidentally however, other ties of friendship can be more powerful.

9 Objectively, parents are to be loved more than children, because as sources of life and of many benefits, parents are closer to God, but subjectively children can be closer to us for several reasons.

10 Father should be loved more than mother, as such, because by the part each plays in giving us life, the father is formal and active whereas the mother is material ( maternal ) and passive (St Thomas was writing about human beings who are normal and not de-natured as they are today).

11 Objectively, parents are to be loved more than wife, because as sources of life and of many benefits they are closer to God, but subjectively she who is “one flesh” with her husband is to be loved the more.

12 Objectively, somebody doing good to us is to be loved more than somebody we do good to, because they are a source of good to us, but by subjective closeness we love the more somebody that we do good to, for various reasons, e.g. “It is more blessed to give than to receive.”

13 There will still be an order of charity in Heaven, especially the loving of God above all. Also the objective grading of neighbour for his closeness to God will count more there than it does here on earth.

“Racism”? – which races are closer to God, or to me? They are not all the same. “Anti-semitism”? – are “Semites” friends or enemies of God? “Sexism”? – do today’s women help or hinder me on my way to God? “Homophobia”? – how do “homos” stand with God?

Kyrie eleison.

Rumours coming from the Society of St Pius X seem to confirm the speculation of these “Comments” last week (see EC 423 of Aug. 22) that Rome wants an agreement with the SSPX.The rumours tell of a secret meeting held at the beginning of this month where SSPX leaders discussed finances and a “doctrinal preamble.” Was it the same preamble mentioned by Cardinal Müller on August 3? Drawn up by Rome for the SSPX to sign? The Cardinal said that that would be necessary for any agreement, while Bishop Schneider saw no doctrinal problem because Vatican II was merely “pastoral.” With or without rumours, let us review unchanging basics.

The 16 official documents of the Second Vatican Council present together a new vision of God, life and man, a new religion in tune with the man-centred modern world, but clashing with the God-centred Catholic religion that had not changed essentially for over 1900 years. Both religions teach their vision of God, life and man, both are doctrinal, but the two doctrines clash. However, by skilful ambiguities – ambiguity is the hallmark of the 16 documents – the Council Fathers were persuaded that there was no clash, and so when they voted in favour of the documents, there were three reasons why Catholics worldwide went along with the new religion: its clash with the true Faith was skilfully disguised, it was imposed on Catholics by almost all Church authorities from the Popes downwards, and it was rather easier to practise than the pre-Conciliar religion.

But God raised one true shepherd, Archbishop Lefebvre, to insist on the doctrinal clash, to stand up to the unfaithful Church authorities, and to continue the practice of the pre-Conciliar religion for any souls wishing to take the trouble. And these were enough in number for the Archbishop’s Society to have spread all over the world by the time he died in 1991. But his successors at the head of his Society were born after World War II into a very different world from that of the Archbishop, born before World War I. They did not see the world or doctrine as he saw them, so they had not the same motivation as he had to go on standing up to the Church authorities, even if they were not yet themselves wanting the Conciliar relaxation of Church discipline (wanted now by more and more Traditionalists). It was simply a matter of time before the magnetism of Rome would exert its pull.

As for the Romans, they were obdurate in their new Conciliar religion, and so from 2000 onwards they openly welcomed all approaches being made by the SSPX, because its doctrine and practice of unchanged Catholicism were a standing rebuke to their Freemasonic novelties, and a constant threat to them, like an unconquered pocket of the enemy in the rear of an otherwise all-successful invasion. Therefore as the Romans want to absorb the SSPX into their Newchurch, so the SSPX’s present leaders want to put themselves back under Rome’s official Church authority. It is a marriage made in Hell, and sweet Newchurchmen like Bishop Schneider can see no problem, because they have not seen, or have not wanted to see, the underlying clash of basic doctrine.

So Cardinal Müller is right in this respect. If two men have different visions of God, life and man, any agreement between them can only be relatively superficial. So if the SSPX cannot be brought by Rome to abandon dogma, or rather to undermine all Catholic dogma with the Masonic super-dogma that all dogma is mush, then the SSPX is bound to act within the walls of Rome like a Trojan horse. That is why the Cardinal will insist on a preamble, whether written by Rome or by the SSPX is of no importance, so long as the mass of Traditionalists, just like the mass of Catholics after Vatican II, will let themselves be deceived by the doctrinal ambiguities. Brilliant these will be.

Kyrie eleison.

Two Roman churchmen have seemed to contradict one another in remarks made recently about relations between Rome and the Society of St Pius X, but one explanation of the contradiction may be that Rome is playing on the Society a police trick as old as the hills. By the “good cop, bad cop” routine, when the police want to get a confession out of a criminal, firstly a brutal policeman is sent in to beat up the criminal until he is in a very sorry condition, requiring all kinds of sympathy. Then a really nice policeman is sent in, oozing with a sympathy which often makes the criminal open up and confess his crime.

The “bad cop” in this case would be no less than the Prefect for the Congregation of the Doctrine of the Faith, Cardinal Müller, who early this month in an interview with katholisch.de, official website of the German Bishops’ Conference, said about a Rome-SSPX agreement that “There is no substantial new development. The Holy Father wishes that we keep trying: “con tenacia e pazienza” – “with tenacity and patience.” The precondition for a full reconciliation is the signing of a doctrinal preamble in order to guarantee a full agreement in the essential questions of the Faith. In the past months, there were encounters of different ways which are meant to strengthen the mutual trust.”

Here it is clearly stated that the SSPX will have to sign a doctrinal text agreeable to neo-modernist Rome if it wishes for an agreement with Rome. The Cardinal is also being a “bad cop” when he reveals that there were “encounters of different ways” between Romans and the SSPX “to strengthen mutual trust.” Or is the SSPX happy that Rome is shedding the light of day upon contacts otherwise unknown? Yet who that has the Catholic faith is re-assured by mutual trust being established with neo-modernists? But now comes the “good cop.”

Earlier this year Bishop Athanasius Schneider visited two seminaries of the SSPX “in order to conduct a discussion on a specific theological topic with a group of theologians of the SSPX and with His Excellency Bishop Fellay.” Just recently he conducted an interview with a Hispanic website, Rorate Caeli en español, in which among other things he commented favourably on these visits. He himself was treated with cordial respect, and he observed a respect all around for the reigning Pontiff, Pope Francis. After his visits he could see “no weighty reasons to deny the clergy and faithful of the SSPX the official canonical recognition, and meanwhile they should be accepted as they are.” Bishop Schneider confirmed that he saw no doctrinal problem in the way of an agreement by downplaying the importance of Vatican II: the Council was primarily pastoral, and of its time, he said.

So who represents the real Rome? Cardinal Müller or Bishop Schneider? Certainly both. If the “good cop, bad cop” routine is not conscious, it is certainly instinctive. Rome, by keeping its options open, can continue to play the SSPX like a fish, reeling it in, letting it out, raising hopes and then dashing them, bending the wire and straightening it out again, and again, until finally it snaps. Alas, one may suspect that by “encounters” the leaders of the SSPX are complicit in this game of Rome.

Kyrie eleison.

A reader of these “Comments” forwarded to me in May a video-clip from the Internet (to be found here) which she said was then circulating widely on Facebook and was having “a massive influence on people.” The clip presents a well-known black American entertainer, Will Smith, being interviewed on “Progressive Thought Patterns,” which is a pompous title for a pile of nonsense. But then who ever resorted to Facebook or to icons of entertainment to hear sense? The interest lies for Catholics in seeing how the exact same Kantian nonsense that has overwhelmed the Church (see Pascendi, as the key to Vatican II) is also fermenting at street level amongst ordinary people without the least knowledge of Kant or of Pascendi. Here is what Will Smith says to his interviewer (with a few comments inserted in italics):—

“I don’t wanna’ (want to) be an icon (which he certainly is, as having been highly successful in Hollywood), I wanna’ be an idea. You know, I wanna’ represent an idea. I wanna’ represent possibilities. I wanna’ represent magic, right, that you’re in a universe, and two plus two equals four. Two plus two equals four only if you accept that two plus two equals four. Two plus two is gonna’ be what I want it to be, you know, and there’s a redemptive (note that word – so what is Redemption?) power that making a choice has, you know, like feeling you’re an effect (perhaps he means “cause”) to all things that are happening. Make a choice, like you just decide what is gonna’ be, who you’re gonna’ be, how you’re gonna’ do it. Just decide, and then from that point the universe is gonna’ get outa’ your way. It’s water, it wants to move and go around, and stuff, you know, so for me I wanna’ represent possibilities. I wanna represent the idea that you really can make what you want.

“One of my favourite books is The Alchemist by Paul Coelho, and I just believe that. I believe that I can create whatever I wanna’ create. If I can put my head to it, study it and learn the patterns ( . . . ), I feel very strongly that we are who we choose to be. I consider myself an alchemist. An alchemist is basically a mystical chemist, right, and one of the great feats that alchemists used to do is that they would take lead, take a chunk of lead, and make it turn from lead into gold. So I connect it (my idea, presumably) symbolically to being able to turn lead into gold. My grandmother used to say, ‘Life give you a lemon, you go ahead and make lemonade’ (that of course is good old-fashioned common sense, two generations back. But for Will Smith –) To me that’s alchemy. That’s the same concept behind The Alchemist.”

All the above is a close reproduction of Will Smith’s own words, not in order to make fun of him, but in order to show Kant at work amongst ordinary people who are far from being readers of Kant.

Notice that Will Smith is not completetly devoid of common sense. If the word “alchemy” really means making lemonade out of lemons, then it respects reality. But if the word stands for making gold out of lead, as it often does, then it stands for a dream which has been dreamt down the ages and represents escaping from reality, or, worse, the refusal of natural reality and even a resorting to devils for a preternatural bending of it.

Now Will Smith is an entertainer, and his video-clip is quite entertaining, so nothing obliges us to take too seriously anything he says. But just recently a professional mathematician, one who is at the top of his profession, told me what scorn for objective reality he observes amongst his colleagues. The real problem goes way beyond mere entertainment.

Kyrie eleison.

I hate to be a prophet of doom, but what a retired US Government employee with numerous national awards for his services sees coming, and wrote to me, must be told, because I am sure it is the truth.

“The West is hurtling to destruction as it continues to abandon God and His Holy Apostolic Church. My family and I live in a Novus Ordo wasteland. We attend Mass at an SSPX chapel, but we are watching and praying, because the SSPX appears to be reconciled to its absorption and destruction by the modernists. The solution to the problem is the Consecration of Russia to the Immaculate Heart of Our Mother. But right now the Pope has no interest in doing it, nor does the Curia. Our Lord has informed us that the Consecration will be done, but it will be late. I believe this may mean after the beginning of the Chastisement, which will be unlike anything imaginable.

“I stay abreast of the news concerning the world economy, or should I say, the central banking Ponzi scheme. It cannot go on for ever. Debt is neither currency, nor money, nor wealth. It is slavery, a noose to be placed around the common people’s neck for the control of their labor and wealth. I believe an economic collapse will occur within a couple of years. It will be like the tulip bulb crash in 1637 in Holland when people realized that tulip bulbs really were just that, and not gold. Every world power is printing as much unbacked fiat currency as it can, and is lying about its economic figures. All economies will crash like an avalanche and be wiped out.

“Modern man having become a creature of extreme comfort and extreme ingratitude, one can only imagine how people will react when there is no more free stuff, Internet, television, cell phones, or food stamps on demand. It will be chaos. The powers that be are conditioning people for this moment by creating scapegoats. This has been done many times before, to justify the poor or destructive decisions by the criminal elite, and to provide cover for those that truly caused the trouble, notably those exposed by Father Denis Fahey.

“The US Government expects staggering life loss as a result of the collapse, and yet does nothing. Evil will be unleashed as people realize the incredible breadth and depth of the crisis, and turn their cities into unspeakable zones of violence and depravity. The population without God and morals will be hell-bent on personal survival. In an instant the modern world will be stopped in its tracks. Man will be faced with the stark reality of his weakness, his utter lack of control, his true dependence on God.

“Your Excellency, people are at a point that they can do anything with a cell-phone, but are unable to grow a potato, hammer a nail, or perform rudimentary plumbing. When the Ponzi scheme collapses, only skilled trades and the true priesthood will have any value. Carpentry, Plumbing, Electrical, Water Management, Waste Management, mechanics, farming, animal husbandry (not factory farms), that’s about it. Young Catholic men should be encouraged to enter these trades and then to create a new Guild system. Today’s corrupt universities, presently propped up by the debt market, will be clearly worthless. The truth is needed now more than ever. Traditional Catholics must be told to embrace traditional skills, traditional roles, and traditional lives. Indeed we must abandon the Bing-Crosby-Sunday-Mass-Only-Catholicism, but we must also embrace the daily work necessary to restore Christ and the Blessed Virgin Mary as Our King and Queen in our daily lives. The faithful must be advised to prepare for the safety of their families and others in need. This involves the securing of food and water, because most supermarkets only contain a 36-hour supply of goods for the local population.”

Kyrie eleison.

Good souls regularly wish me to “step up to the plate” and assume a position of authority at the head of today’s “Resistance” movement. Let me propose, without imposing, the reasons for my serious reluctance to attempt any such thing.

Authority in the Church is “shot,” from the top downwards. The present Pope (I am no sedevacantist) is out of his Catholic mind, if ever he had one. But even if his election as Pope was invalid for one reason or another, it was convalidated by his virtually universal acceptance as Pope throughout the worldwide Church. In any case nobody else is Pope, or can be, and therefore he has the supreme authority in the Church. Now the Church was so designed by Our Lord as to be a monarchy, with all authority descending in it through the Pope from God. For by definition authority can only come from above. As Jefferson says in the United States’ Declaration of Independence, authority given from below can always be taken back from below. Authority from below is in fact a contradiction in terms. It is no real authority at all.

Therefore unless this Pope were to give me authority to lead the “Resistance,” which is obviously inconceivable, I will never have official Catholic authority to head up the resistants. Can I have supplied authority due to the emergency? In theory, yes, but supplied authority is relatively weak. It is supplied from above (by the Church) when for instance a penitent asks a priest in unusual circumstances to hear his confession, i.e. when normally the priest would have no jurisdiction to do so. So supplied authority descends from the Church above, but it is triggered only by the demand from below. No demand, no supplied authority.

Take Archbishop Lefebvre’s own case. Firstly, it was very important to him that the Statutes of the original SSPX were officially approved by the diocesan bishop of Geneva, Lausanne and Fribourg. Secondly, for instance, if a priest of the SSPX wanted to quit the SSPX, to right or to left, the Archbishop had no power to stop him or to punish him except by having nothing more to do with him. And if that priest departed towards the Novus Ordo Church, he was often greeted, as one can imagine, with open arms. The SSPX under Bishop Fellay has more and more wanted to be normal and has pretended it is normal, but actually it is a weak structure insofar as it has never had any jurisdiction more than supplied (this is one reason why Bishop Fellay so wants to be re-integrated into the mainstream Church).

Now that was the Archbishop! And I am no Archbishop Lefebvre. Therefore a certain number of good souls can turn to me for guidance, as they do, but it is not in me to claim even a supplied jurisdiction, because of the enormous confusion reigning in the Church. At present I am more and more disinclined to impose even a true viewpoint on anybody, because souls are now so confused that the least imposition is liable to increase rather than decrease that confusion. “I WILL STRIKE THE SHEPHERD AND THE SHEEP WILL BE SCATTERED” (Zachary XIII, 7), quoted by Our Lord in the Garden of Gethsemane (Mt. XXVI, 31), and that is how it is going to be in the Church, more and more, until God in his mercy restores the Shepherd, which he will do only when mankind will appreciate a true Shepherd of God. Until then God’s gift of such a Shepherd would risk doing more harm than good. So in the meantime we must all take our just punishment: the universal confusion!

That is why I will give to anybody who asks me my reasons for acting as I do, but I will propose those reasons rather than impose them, and I will not usually object to people disagreeing with me.

Kyrie eleison.