Eleison Comments

Not a few e-mails that cross my electronic desk are worth sharing with readers of these “Comments.” Let me quote here from two (abbreviated and adapted as usual). The first is by a young layman, a former seminarian from Winona and now the father of a large family. He is one Catholic that could never be accused of underestimating the power of today’s universal apostasy, although he is resolute that something still can, and therefore must, be done. He writes:—

“Today’s institutionalised liberalism and the modern crowd’s deafening call for Barabbas may very well result in a crop of martyrs. I can appreciate where you are coming from when you wonder whether God still wants today a traditional institution like a seminary, and so on. In the 19^th century Don Bosco had to invent a new kind of lay ‘co-operator’ for his work with boys, neither a Confraternity nor a Third Order, because he said that the devil had changed his tactics, so he had had to do so as well. Good Catholics were taken by surprise, but his new adaptation of old means proved successful.

“I mention this because to keep the Faith today is like walking against the wildest rapids. Keeping all my family and myself on track for Heaven takes all that I am and all that I have. To adapt words of St Paul (II Cor. 11, 28–29), “Which of them is weak, and I am not weak?” I remember your telling us seminarians years ago that wherever we found ourselves later, we would have to bring order into flying chaos. That chaos is more intense now than it was 25 years ago, because daily life has greatly changed over the last 15, 30, 45 years. The world is now eating souls for lunch in a sophisticated and relentless way. Parents must adapt tried and true principles to meet the Devil’s new tactics, because what worked before won’t necessarily work today. It is these ‘slings and arrows’ of parenting today that make me wonder whether the need for different means to achieve the same ends might not apply to seminaries and vocations also.”

The second email comes from a “Resistance” priest who says that the old means are still good, but they do need to be faithfully applied. He writes:—

“It is incredible how many of our people are not doing the basic things of Catholic life. They want to be pleasing to God. Now special Catholic initiatives and undertakings are not bad in themselves, but they are far less important, difficult and meritorious than the daily grind. Our people want to avoid mortal sin, and that’s about it. How many times do I hear they “forgot” to say their morning/evening prayers, or those before/after meals. And the reading of the Bible, lives of the saints, catechism! This is why I work, in season and out of season, to try to convince my people to have a steady and regular Catholic life, to convince them that this is what is truly pleasing to God.

“The same applies to the ‘Resistance.’ I have told my people that the real test will be that of keeping going, of perseverance. It was relatively easy, two to three years ago, when we were in a pitched battle, hacking to left and to right, but now it is more like trench warfare. And we will hold our ground as a movement if every priest and Catholic layman holds his ground in his daily life.”

God created no soul for Hell (I Tim. II, 4). It follows that every soul can find the means to get to Heaven, if it wants. These means may be difficult, but they will not be complicated, otherwise they would be inaccessible to many. The old-fashioned means, especially the daily Rosary, are not complicated, but they do need to be applied.

Kyrie eleison.

These “Comments” keep coming back to the problem of subjectivism because they hold that today’s Church and world cannot be understood without it. Subjectivism means that rot of the mind whereby the person, or subject, has let his mind be disconnected from reality, or the object, leaving the person free to remake reality according to his own fantasy. Hence the fantasy-world in all its madness surrounding us today, including the fantasy of the Newchurch (Church and world are reconcilable) and the same fantasy of the Newsociety (Tradition and the Newchurch are reconcilable).

To keep one’s mental grip on reality and to keep one’s balance in the Faith, it is essential to keep distinguishing the subjective from the objective. For instance, the Conciliar Popes are gravely mistaken in the Faith, objectively speaking, but subjectively speaking thay have been convinced they were right, and they may well have been at least partly (God knows) well-intentioned. But if I fail to distinguish objective and subjective, then I easily fall into one of two familiar errors. Either I say they are objectively wrong so they must be subjectively wrong, therefore they cannot have been well-intentioned and they must have known what they were doing, so they cannot have been Popes, and I fall into dogmatic sedevacantism. Or I say they are convinced and they are convincing, so they are subjectively and therefore must be objectively right, so I must follow them, and I fall into liberalism (here is how Benedict XVI, for instance, has – objectively – deceived many a good Catholic, whatever were his intentions).

On the contrary if I have a clear faith and can distinguish between objective reality and today’s universal fantasy, then, measuring ultimately Rome by the Faith and not the Faith by Rome, I can see that the Conciliar Popes may have been convinced and they may at least in part – God knows – have meant well, but I will never follow them away from the true Faith and the true Church. On the other hand I will not exclude the possibility of a measure of good intentions on their part, nor will I take upon myself to judge of that measure, but I will wait for the Church to judge, after a hearing, of their pertinacity and heresy.

But today’s churchmen are so universally infected with the fantasy of liberty, equality and the rights of man as opposed to duty, hierarchy and the rights of God, that the prospects of such a hearing taking place any time soon are slim indeed. Therefore in my own mind I may have to leave in suspense the question of these Popes. Such suspense is not comfortable, but I know that God in his own good time will come to the rescue of his Papacy.

Meanwhile the structure of his Church, whereby all authority derives from the Pope downwards, has not changed. Therefore since Pope Francis is condemning Tradition whenever he gets a chance, Tradition can only be struggling to survive. As for Archbishop Lefebvre’s founding and on-going leadership of the Society of St Pius X, the local diocesan bishop’s official approval of its Statutes was of immense importance. That made of the SSPX the emergency lighting of the mainstream Church, and the “Resistance” movement can only be an attempt to repair that emergency lighting of the mainstream Church. The attempt is hindered by both mainstream and emergency electricians? So be it. But somebody has to keep at least a few lights on in the Church. However, against such hindrance from fellow electricians, let nobody expect from the “Resistance” wonders or marvels. Patience. God has everything under control.

Kyrie eleison.

N.B. I should be Confirming this summer: (in France) near Pau June 7, near Vichy June 14; (in Canada) Calgary June 29; and (in the USA) Denver July 1, Nashville July 2, Jacksonville July 5.

The weekend seminar held here in Broadstairs at the beginning of May on poems and plays of the famous modern poet, T.S. Eliot (1888–1965), was a great success. Eliot is a writer difficult to understand, because he insisted on making sense of the senseless modern world, but Dr David White’s six lectures (in 36 hours!) inspired in his more than two dozen Catholic listeners a real interest in Eliot. He was chosen as subject of the literary seminar because he wrote part of his most famous poem, the Waste Land, in nearby Margate. A high point of the seminar was an excursion to the seaside pavilion where Eliot did the actual writing, and where Dr White recited the Waste Land to seminar participants in front of a grey sea, beneath a grey sky – the atmospherics were perfect!

Many Catholics object to writers who are not openly Catholic, however famous they may be. But in the mid-1920’s, soon after writing the Waste Land, Eliot nearly became a Catholic, and from then on until his death the solution he presented in his writings for the modern world’s problems centred around Our Lord Jesus Christ. This may not be obvious at first view, either because he was writing for lukewarm Christians, or because he was still himself wrestling with modernity, but let his real belief in Christ be illustrated by a poem from his Four Quartets, singled out by Dr White for explanation, section IV of the fourth quartet, “Little Gidding”:—

1. The dove descending breaks the air
2. With flame of incandescent terror
3. Of which the tongues declare
4. The one discharge from sin and error.
5. The only hope, or else despair
6. Lies in the choice of pyre or pyre –
7. To be redeemed from fire by fire.

8. Who then devised the torment? Love.
9. Love is the unfamiliar Name
10. Behind the hands that wove
11. The intolerable shirt of flame
12. Which human power cannot remove.
13. We only live, only suspire
14. Consumed by either fire or fire.

During the Second World war, Eliot was living in London, and at night he acted as an Air Raid Warden, patrolling the streets to minimise the danger and damage of German air raids. The first of the poem’s two verses is like those plastic double images which contain two pictures, depending on how you tilt the plastic. The second verse draws the tremendous lesson from the double image.

Thus 1) the “dove descending” is both the Holy Ghost descending at Pentecost and the enemy bombers coming down on London. 2) The “flame of terror” is both the fire of the Holy Ghost and the enemy’s incendiary bombs. 3) The “tongues” are both those of the Holy Ghost on the heads of the Apostles and those of the fire-bombs, while 4) the “discharge” is both the Redemption by Christ and the releasing of the bombs by human politics. 5) The first of these is our only hope, the second is the hopelessness of war. 6) On which funeral pyre do we choose to burn? 7) The fire of Redemption is to save us from the fire of damnation.

Second verse: thus 8) it is God who designs World Wars to save us from eternal fire. 9) He is not well known, but it is 10) his Love which is allowing the politicians to cause 11) the torments of war, 12) which are redeemable by Christ alone. 13) In conclusion, human life ends only 14) in fire, either that of divine Love or that of eternal damnation.

The Third World War is coming. When it comes, how many Catholic preachers are there who will dare to preach that it is the divine Love which will have been behind its appalling sufferings, no less being necessary in order to put us back, by God’s design, on track to Heaven? The non-Catholic Eliot was saying it 70 years ago.

Kyrie eleison.

Whenever the claim is put forward that the Conciliar Popes may be at least partly in good faith, there are usually Catholics that protest. They will say that the Popes are intelligent and educated churchmen, so it is impossible that they do not fully realize what they are doing. The “mentevacantist” theory, according to which these Popes have vacant minds, partly ignorant of the consequences of their own actions, is for these critics absurd. One can understand the protest, but let me quote a friend who understands “mentevacantism” as it needs to be understood:—

“The idea that Popes can be mistaken in good faith because they hold that certain errors are not opposed to the Faith, gets little serious attention, because people have a concept of the papacy too detached from the world, whereas the whole history of the Popes is a history of men of their time being liable to share in all the good and bad habits and vices of their time. The difference lies in the power of the error, which has never been so mighty as it is today, mankind never having been, as one must not forget, so degenerate as today.

“For indeed liberalism is now everywhere and it is overwhelming, no longer a mere thought, or way of thinking, but a very way of being that permeates every man alive, be he an absolute liberal in himself, or an agent of liberalism and its subversion, or merely one of its tools. Such is the case of the Conciliar Popes. They think they are drawing close to the world to heal it. They do not realize that it is the world which is drawing them to itself to infect and control them.

“In such a situation as this, one can certainly speak of liberal Popes but not of non-Catholic Popes, insofar as there is lacking the prime requisite for such a condemnation, namely the personal will on their part to be liberals and not Catholics. All one can do is recognize the fact that in these Popes there is the personal will to be Catholics and not anti-Catholic liberals, since for them there is no contradiction between the two, far from it. According to their theologian and thinker, Joseph Ratzinger, liberalism is one of the good by-products of Catholicism, needing only to be cleansed of certain alien distortions imported into it. And so as for destroying the Church, it stands to reason that Popes believing in such a compromised Catholicism cannot help one of the consequences of their actions being the destruction of the Church.

“Concerning Archbishop Lefebvre, given that he grew up in a Church quite different from today’s Church, I can only conclude that for him it was impossible for a Catholic acting as an instrument of subversion not to realize what he was doing. Still less could a Pope not realize. From reading between the lines of certain of the Archbishop’s writings, I do believe that while his vision of the world certainly included the process of degeneration reaching down to the end of time, it did not include that process involving in any clear manner the Church as well.”

I can just hear readers objecting to this kind of analysis: “Oh, Excellency, please stop defending the Conciliar Popes. It’s black or white. If they’re black, I’ll be a happy sedevacantist. If they’re white, I’ll be a happy liberal. Your greys do nothing but confuse me!”

Dear reader, black is black, white is white, but rarely in real life do we find pure white, and never pure black (whatever is, has the goodness of being). If you want to understand this relative excusing of the Conciliar Popes, the key is to grasp that the world has never been so deeply bad as it is today. From this unprecedented degeneracy it is obvious that Conciliar Popes are in this respect more excusable for going astray in the Faith than any of their predecessors.

Kyrie eleison.

Immersed as we all are in the world around us, it is difficult, especially for young people, to realize into what an abnormal condition it has brought itself. Never in all human history has God been so discredited, disbelieved, and in effect discarded from men’s lives. And since all sin is primarily an offence against God, then as men lose all sense of God, so they lose all sense of sin. Therefore men are always right, and “God,” whoever he may be, is always wrong, so that whenever things go wrong “he” can always be brought back long enough to take the blame.

This widely spread attitude makes it virtually impossible to understand the apparent severity of God in the Old Testament, where for instance he commands the Israelites to exterminate whole peoples, as in the book of Joshua. But Catholic Scripture scholars who have not lost their sense of the true and unchanging God, put things back in perspective. Here for instance is a summary of the commentary by a modern Benedictine, Dom Jean de Monléon (1890–1981), on the slaughter of the Canaanites by the Israelites under their leader, Joshua:—

As far as Joshua himself is concerned, he was acting not out of hatred, racism, greed, ambition or whatever, but under strict, precise and repeated orders from God himself. St John Chrysostom says that Joshua might personally have preferred some less murderous solution, but certainly God had his own reasons. These we cannot know for sure, but we can make reasonable guesses. To begin with, all of us human beings, by our original sin (What is that?” cries modern man), have to pay the debt of death, the time, manner and place of which are decided by the Master of Life and Death, who is God. For sinners like the Canaanites, to die sooner rather than later can be a mercy, especially if the manner of death gives them time to repent and so save their souls for eternity.

Next, the Canaanites were indeed sinners, immersed in the committing of terrible crimes, and like mankind before the Flood, like the Sodomites and Gomorrhans, they had made the cup of God’s wrath overflow: prostitution of all kinds, bestiality, incest, witchcraft and in particular, the ritual murder of children, as proved by multiple archaeological excavations in Palestine, whereby tiny skeletons have been uncovered in surroundings clearly identifying them as sacrificial victims, etc.

Moreover if the Canaanites were allowed to survive, they would present a grave danger of corrupting the Israelites, as subsequent history only too clearly showed.

In more recent times, some 400 years ago (but still before the advent of liberalism!), the first missionaries in Canada found themselves bound to conclude that the only way to deal with a certain tribe was to exterminate them. A canonized Saint said, “After repeated experience of their treachery, whether for peace or for the Faith, there is nothing further to be hoped for from them.” (end of Dom Monléon summary)

This still shocks modern susceptibilities, but is it not simply tribal as opposed to individual capital punishment? The principle of capital punishment is that by such anti-social crimes as, for instance, murder, treason, counterfeiting, homosexuality, etc., men are capable of behaving in such a way as to render themselves unfit to live any more in society, and so society’s legitimate authority has the right to take their lives (one may object that not all the individuals in a tribe will be equally guilty, but it should go without saying that Almighty God can and will make all the distinctions necessary).

The problem all comes down to disbelief in the greatness and goodness of God, but let us just say that the Old Testament is neither as cruel nor as out of date as it is often made to appear.

Kyrie eleison.