Eleison Comments

Emotional Arguing

Emotional Arguing on March 21, 2015

An old-fashioned comparison has the advantage of being very clear: on the back of a mule a heavy pack can be difficult to balance. If it shifts to the left, one must push it to the right. If it tilts to the right, it must be pushed to the left. But such double pushing is not contrary – it has the single purpose of keeping the pack balanced. Similarly, for these “Comments” to argue repeatedly against sedevacantism is not to push towards liberalism, nor is it to suggest that sedevacantism is as bad as liberalism. It is merely to recognize that the outrageous words and deeds of the present occupant of the Holy See are tempting many good Catholics to renounce their reason and to judge of reality by their emotions. That is a common practice today, but it is not Catholic.

For instance sedevacantist arguments are, upon examination, never as strong as they can seem. Let us look at two that have crossed my desk recently, both from devout Catholics, strong in the Faith. Here is the first: Conciliar Popes, especially Francis, have not confirmed their brethren in the Faith. But it is of the essence of a Pope to do that. Therefore the Conciliar Popes are not essentially Popes. In reply one must distinguish a Pope in his being from a Pope in his action. A Pope becomes essentially Pope in his being by his valid election in a Conclave of Cardinals, or by his election, if it was invalid in itself, being convalidated by his subsequent acceptance as Pope by the Universal Church (which may have been the case for more than one Conciliar Pope, God knows). On the contrary, by confirming his brethren in the Faith a Pope is essentially Pope in his action. The two things are different and can be separated. Therefore a Pope can fail in action without necessarily ceasing to be a Pope in his being. That is surely the case of several, if not all, the Conciliar Popes.

And here is the second argument: for the individual and fallible Catholic to set himself up as judge of error by the Church’s infallible Magisterium is ridiculous. Faced then by obvious error (e.g. Conciliarism) by that Magisterium (e.g. the Conciliar Popes), he can only conclude that they have not been true Popes. But, in reply, the Pope is not necessarily the Church’s infallible Magisterium. If he neither engages all four strict conditions of the Extraordinary Magisterium, nor teaches in accordance with the Church’s Ordinary Magisterium, then he is fallible, and if he contradicts that Ordinary Magisterium then he is certainly in error, and can be judged to be such by any Catholic (or non-Catholic!) making the right use of his God-given mind. Otherwise how could Our Lord have warned us to beware of false prophets and of wolves in sheeps’ clothing (Mt. VII, 15–20)?

In fact both arguments can come from an emotional rejection of the Conciliar Popes: “They have so maltreated the Church that I simply cannot accept that they were Popes!” But what if I had been a bystander watching the original Way of the Cross? – “This is such maltreatment of Jesus that I simply cannot accept any longer that he is the Son of God!” Would not my emotional rejection of the maltreatment have been right, and yet my conclusion wrong? There is a mystery involved in the Conciliar Popes which sedevacantism passes by.

Now it may be, when the Church one day comes back to her senses, that the alone competent authority will declare that the Conciliar Popes were not Popes, but between now and then the arguments so far brought forward to prove the See of Rome to be vacant are not as conclusive as they can be made to appear.

Kyrie eleison.

Chaos Returned

Chaos Returned on March 14, 2015

A fascinating paragraph from the book Iota Unum, written by the Italian layman Romano Amerio and much admired by Archbishop Lefebvre, has already been quoted in these “Comments.” In the book Amerio takes apart in masterly fashion all the doctrinal errors of Vatican II. In section #319 he writes: (1) If the present crisis is tending to overthrow the nature of the Church, and if (2) this tendency is internal to the Church rather than the result of an external assault as it has been on other occasions, then (3) we are headed for a formless darkness that will make analysis and forecast impossible, and (4) in the face of which there will be no alternative but to keep silence (English edition, p.713; Italian edition, p. 594).

This is strong meat, if one thinks about it. Amerio is saying we are on the brink of chaos, because of course (1) the present crisis is both tending to overthrow the nature of the Church and (2) it is internal to the Church, when the Pope himself is making statements like, “There is no Catholic God,” and “Homosexuals need to be evaluated,” statements whose deliberate ambiguity opens the door wide to the overthrow of all Catholic dogma and morals. But why should (3) Catholic analysis and forecast become impossible, and (4) how can there be nothing more to say? How can Amerio draw such a dark conclusion?

Because Our Lord says, “I am the light of the world. He that followeth me, walketh not in darkness” (Jn.VIII, 12), which strongly suggests that the mass of the world’s population that does not now follow him is already in darkness. He also says to those that do follow him, “You are the light of the world” (Mt.V, 14), which strongly suggests that if convinced Catholics are fewer by the day, then the darkness in Church and world is growing darker by the day. Alright, one might say, but darkness is only a metaphor. Why should Catholic analysis and forecast become impossible?

(3) Because more and more people today are unable to think. Because ever since Our Lord with his Incarnation brought supernatural grace to the rescue of wounded and struggling nature, that nature has no longer been able to stand upright without that grace. So when men turn their backs on Jesus Christ and God, they are undermining their own nature, and they repudiate that common sense with which they are endowed by nature to think, as to the content of their thinking in accordance with reality, and as to its procedure in accordance with logic. They want freedom from reality and logic in order to defy God, by remaking the world in accordance with their fantasy.

It follows that if Jesus Christ came to the rescue of mankind and of human nature through establishing his Catholic Church, and if at Vatican II the Gentiles too finally repudiated that Church, then the process of men tearing themselves and their nature and their thinking to pieces took at the Council such a huge step forward that it is virtually irreversible. Here is how Amerio can see, implicit in Vatican II, a “formless darkness” of which the belligerent chaos of opinions proudly today prancing on the Internet might serve as an example and a foretaste.

But (4) why not cry out in that darkness? Why should there be “no alternative but to keep silence”? Because in a chaotic din the truth simply cannot be heard, except, one might add, by a few souls whom God has preordained to hear it (Acts XIII, 48). These souls are chosen by God, not by men, and they can come from the most surprising backgrounds. They do not like “formless darkness,” and Our Lord leads them to the Father (Jn.XIV, 6). They will be an important help for the Church and a hope of the world.

Kyrie eleison.

Sickness Unimaginable

Sickness Unimaginable on March 7, 2015

In the Society of St Pius X’s “hot summer” of 1976, after Paul VI “suspended” Archbishop Lefebvre for ordaining 14 priests for Tradition, the clash between Pope and Catholic Tradition was so sharp that one of the two moments occurred that August when the Archbishop most seriously considered whether the See of Rome might be vacant. As can be heard from the recording of words he then spoke, he was agonizing over that clash: how possibly could a true Vicar of Christ be so destroying the Church? The Archbishop never finally adopted the sedevacantist solution, but let us see how clearly he stated the problem, and then offer once more a line of solution which he may have been too sane in mind to think of. Here is a summary of his words in August of 1976:—

People ask me what I think of the Pope [Paul VI]. It is an incredible mystery. The true Pope is the unity of the Church, inspired by the Holy Ghost, and protected by the promise of Our Lord in upholding the Faith. But in the aftermath of Vatican II, Paul VI is systematically destroying the Church. Nothing is spared: catechism, universities, Congregations, seminaries, schools. Everything Catholic is being destroyed. One looks for a solution.

A series of false solutions can be dismissed out of hand, e.g. Paul VI is a prisoner, drugged, victim of his underlings, etc. For when he blessed the Charismatics or kissed the feet of the Orthodox Patriarch, did he have a revolver at his head? I have watched him in public audiences, speaking with the skill, presence of mind, pertinence and intelligence of a man in full possession of his faculties. Cardinal Benelli told me that it was the Pope himself who wrote those letters to me [crushing Tradition], that he is fully informed, that he knows exactly what he is doing, it is his will, they are his decisions. The Cardinal said that he reported to the Pope every day, and would do so again, straight after our own conversation.

Then can Paul VI be not a true Pope? That is one possible hypothesis. Theologians have studied the problem. I do not know. Do not put words in my mouth. But the problem seems theologically insoluble.

The Archbishop spoke of Paul VI, but the problem is essentially the same for all six Conciliar Popes (except perhaps John-Paul I). Let us divide the problem in two: how can the true God allow such destruction of his Church? How can his true Vicars be the main destroyers?

As for Almighty God, firstly the destruction will be still worse at world’s end (Lk. XVIII, 8). Secondly, God may easily be purifying his Church to prepare for the Triumph of his Mother’s Immaculate Heart. Thirdly, God did protect Paul VI from utterly destroying the Church, when for instance he arranged for the “chance” discovery to Paul VI of a plan to dissolve the Papacy by the text of Lumen Gentium. This enabled the Pope to block the plan by adding the Nota Praevia.

As for the Vicars, Archbishop Lefebvre never seems to have considered the solution which follows, which may be why in that August even he seems to have been nearly impaled on the horns of the sedevacantist-or-liberal dilemma. But if with each year liberalism comes closer to confusing the mind of every man on earth, how should the Popes escape the universal malady of being “sincerely” wrong? Because they are educated men? But liberalism reigns especially in the schools and universities. So if the miseducated Conciliar Popes are “sincerely” convinced that “truth” evolves, they will not even by their grave errors be pertinaciously denying what they know to be defined Catholic Truth, because even defined Truth, if it is to be for them “truth,” evolves in their direction.

Kyrie eleison.

Encouraging Sign

Encouraging Sign on February 28, 2015

After three issues of these “Comments” have tried to show the new way of thinking by which Archbishop Lefebvre’s Society of St Pius X is being poisoned to death, let us present one encouraging sign that his Society is not yet completely dead: quotes from a sermon given on January 1 of this year in Chicago by Bishop Tissier de Mallerais, one of the four bishops consecrated for the SSPX in 1988. People often ask why so little is heard of him, because he is known to be a timid but honest man with a strong faith, a clear mind and a great knowledge and love of the Archbishop. Maybe he has loved the Society “not wisely, but too well,” so that he has not seen, or has not wanted to see, how its leadership has for many years been slowly but surely betraying the Archbishop’s fight for the Faith. Has the Bishop been putting the Society’s unity in front of the Church’s Faith? But last month he said several things that could not be said better.

He quoted the Archbishop writing in his Spiritual Journey (Ch III, p.13): “It is, therefore, a strict duty for every priest wanting to remain Catholic to separate himself from the Conciliar Church for as long it does not rediscover the Tradition of the Church and of the Catholic Faith.” Then, for emphasis, Bishop Tissier said, “Let me repeat that,” and he read out the quote once more.

Next he referred to the evil forces occupying the Church. Then he warned against “false friends” who maintain wrongly that if the SSPX remains “separated from the visible Church,” it will turn into a sect. He declared on the contrary that “we are the visible Church” and that “we are in the Church.”

Finally he warned against “false friends” who claim that the SSPX is in an abnormal situation because we are not “recognized by the Church” and he declared that it is Rome’s situation, not ours, which is abnormal, that the Society does not need to “come back,” because it is these Romans who have to come back. “We do not need to be looking for what we can do in Rome, but rather for what testimony we can give to the whole Church by being a light on a candlestick and not under a bushel.”

Bishop Tissier’s line of thinking, as expressed in these quotes, is exactly that of the Archbishop. The modernist cuckoos now occupying the nightingales’ nest, i.e. the structures of the true Church, may present the appearance of nightingales, but their song, ie. doctrine, doctrine, doctrine, immediately gives them away. In reality they are nothing but cuckoos, with no right to be occupying that nest. The true nest does not make their doctrine true. Their false doctrine makes false their occupying of that nest. They may be visible in that nest, but, as their doctrine shows, they are not true nightingales. Wherever the remainder of the true nightingales are visibly gathered, in whatever makeshift nest, they are in the Church, they are the true visible Church, and their beautiful song testifies to anyone who has ears to hear that the cuckoos are nothing but cuckoos who have stolen the Catholic nest which they presently occupy.

Alas, the present leaders of the XSPX are tone deaf, will not distinguish the song of cuckoos from that of nightingales, and so judge of Catholicism by the appearances of the nest instead of by the reality of the song. What Bishop Tissier said here must have displeased them greatly. Without any doubt they will have brought pressure to bear, skilfully calculated, to make sure that he steps back in line, their line. And out of “obedience,” he risks doing just that. We must pray for him.

Newsociety Thinking – III

Newsociety Thinking – III on February 21, 2015

These “Comments” having declared (395) that the Newsociety’s First Assistant lacks doctrine, and (396) that this lack of doctrine is a problem as broad as broad can be, namely the whole of modernity against the whole of Truth, it remains now to show how this universal problem manifests itself in a series of particular errors in the interview that Fr Pfluger gave in Germany towards the end of last year. For brevity we will have to make use of the summary of his thinking (not essentially unfair) given here two weeks ago. Propositions from it are in italics:—

The Catholic Church is much broader than just the Traditional movement.

Yes, but the Traditional movement’s doctrine is no more nor less broad than the Catholic Church’s doctrine, being identical with it, and that doctrine is the heart and soul of the Traditional movement.

We will never make Tradition attractive or convincing if we remain stuck in the 1950’s or 1970’s.

To think of making Tradition “attractive or convincing” is too human a way of conceiving it. Catholic Tradition comes from God, and it has a divine power to convince and attract, so long as it is presented faithfully, without human change or alteration.

Tradition cannot be confined within the 19th and 20th century Church condemnations of liberalism.

True, but the Gospel could not then be defended without those doctrinal condemnations, and since the 21st century is more liberal than ever, Tradition cannot be maintained without them today.

Our time is different, we cannot stand still, much that is modern is not immoral.

Our time is not so very different. It is more liberal than ever (e.g. homosexual “marriages”), so it may not all be immoral, but Catholic doctrine is absolutely needed to sift moral from immoral.

So we must re-position ourselves, which is a practical problem and not a question of Faith.

Any re-positioning that the Church ever does must always be judged in the light of the Faith. The XSPX’s re-positioning since 2012 is clearly leaving behind the Archbishop’s fight for the Faith.

The “Resistance” movement has fabricated its own “faith” by which to condemn the Newsociety.

Whatever the human failings of the “Resistance,” it has, just like the Traditional movement in the 1970’s, arisen spontaneously all over the world in reaction against the Newsociety’s betrayal. The reaction may seem disjointed, but it is held together by the identical Faith held by Resistants.

SSPX HQ never betrayed Tradition in 2012 because its actions were attacked from both sides.

So the Truth is always in the middle, to be measured by human reactions? That is human politics, inadequate to judge of divine Truth, absolutely inadequate to solve today’s crisis of the Church.

The official Newsociety texts of 2012 were not dogmatic.

But the most official XSPX document of all in 2012 was the General Chapter’s six conditions for any future “agreement” with Rome, i.e. the six gravely inadequate conditions for submitting the defence of the Faith to its deadly Conciliar enemies. Is the whole Faith not dogmatic?

Rome was much less aggressive in 2012 to the XSPX than it was in 2006.

Because from 2006, and before, Rome could see the SSPX steadily turning into a paper tiger.

The Newsociety follows the Spirit and draws on Tradition.

The neo-protestant Charismatics “follow the Spirit.” The Indulterers “draw on Tradition.”

It should be clear by now that Fr Pfluger wants to leave behind the doctrinal anti-liberal Society of Archbishop Lefebvre, and to reshape it into a Newsociety that will harmonize with the Newchurch of Vatican II. Nor is it enough to say that no decisive step has yet been taken by the XSPX towards Rome, because unless there is a firm resistance, and soon, from within the Newsociety, its leaders are taking it, slowly but surely, into the arms of Conciliar Rome. Is that what Catholics want?

Kyrie eleison.

Newsociety Thinking – II

Newsociety Thinking – II on February 14, 2015

Some 650 words of a single “Eleison Comments” are by no means enough to make clear the enormous problem posed by the interview given by the Newsociety’s First Assistant to a Newsociety magazine in Germany towards the end of last year (cf. last week’s EC). Fr. Pfluger’s thinking springs from the poisonous modern mentality, so that it is not surprising if Archbishop Lefebvre’s Society of St Pius X (SSPX) is being poisoned from top to bottom and changed into Bishop Fellay’s Newsociety (XSPX). The poison consists in the move from God to man; from the religion of God to the religion of man; from the truths of God to the liberties of man; from the doctrine of Christ (“Going, TEACH all nations” – Mt.XXVIII, 19) to the uniting of mankind.

Like millions upon millions of modern men, thousands upon thousands of churchmen in high office and all too many priests and layfolk of what was once the SSPX, Fr Pfluger does not understand the crucial importance to the Church of Catholic doctrine. “INDOCTRINATE all nations,” Our Lord could have said. Why? Because all men are created by God to go to Heaven (I Tim. II, 4). This they can only do by Jesus Christ (Acts IV, 12), by firstly believing in Jesus Christ (Jn. I, 12), which they can only do by hearing about the Faith (Rom. X, 17), in other words by hearing Catholic DOCTRINE. For someone to be disinterested in Catholic doctrine means that he is not interested in going to Heaven. Good luck to him, wherever he will spend his eternity!

Now from start to finish Fr Pfluger’s German interview betrays his relative disinterest in Catholic doctrine, but as last week’s “Comments” declared, that disinterest is most clearly betrayed by his implicit disparaging (not too strong a word) of the great anti-liberal, anti-Masonic, anti-modernist documents, notably Papal Encyclicals, of the 19th and 20th centuries, let us say from Mirari Vos of 1831 to Humani Generis of 1950. To Fr Pfluger’s way of thinking, probably these “anti” documents seem merely negative, whereas Catholic doctrine is essentially positive. One might as well think that medicine is merely negative, while health is essentially positive. But medicine can be essential to preserving health, for goodness’ sake! However, why are the Encyclicals such necessary medicine for the health of the Church today?

Because man is not made to live alone (Rousseau’s noble savage), he is by nature a social animal (Aristotle) – observe the thousand ways in which men get together. Now the French Revolution of 1789, by spurning Aristotle and following Rousseau, overthrew the natural basis of society and placed it on merely man-made foundations instead, hostile to human nature as designed by God, and therefore hostile to God. Therefore as the Revolutionary ideas advanced, through France, Europe and the world, so the Catholic Church found itself in a more and more hostile social environment, because the profound influence that any society has upon the individuals belonging to it has been working more and more against God and against the salvation of souls.

For a long time the Catholic Popes were not deceived, and they revived the medicine of the Church’s true social doctrine to apply it through their Encyclicals to the sickness of Revolutionary mankind. Thus the Encyclicals teach nothing but the Church’s age-old doctrine on the nature of human society between man and God, that social doctrine which it had not been necessary to repeat for as long as it had gone without saying. Thus the Encyclicals are not an unfortunate accident of unfortunate times in the past. They are central to the defence of the Faith in the present, as Archbishop Lefebvre so well learned from Fr Le Floch. But then came “good” Pope John to declare that modern man is no longer sick, and now comes Fr. Pfluger. More next week.

Kyrie eleison.