Eleison Comments

Archbishop’s Sense – II

Archbishop’s Sense – II on December 27, 2014

Twelve weeks ago (Oct. 5) “Eleison Comments” presented a first series of extracts from the last public interview of Archbishop Lefebvre, given to Fideliter magazine in early 1991. Here follows a second and last series of extracts, slightly edited but only for the sake of brevity and clarity:—

Q: What conclusions can we draw from the Society of St Pius X after 20 years of its existence?

A: The Good Lord wanted Catholic Tradition. I am deeply convinced that the Society is the means that God wanted to keep and maintain the Faith, the truth of the Church. We must continue faithfully to keep the treasures of the Church, hoping that one day they may resume the place which they should never have lost in Rome.

Q: You often say that, more than the liturgy, it is now the Faith which opposes us to modern Rome.

A: Certainly the question of the liturgy and the sacraments is very important, but the most important is the question of the Faith. This is not a question for us. We have the Faith of all time, of the Council of Trent, of the Catechism of St. Pius X, of all the Councils and all the Popes before Vatican II. For years they have tried in Rome to show that everything in the Council was fully consistent with this Tradition. Now they are showing their true colours by saying there is no longer any Tradition or Deposit to be transmitted. Tradition in the Church is whatever the Pope is saying today. You must submit to what the Pope and the bishops say today. Here is their famous ‘Living Tradition,’ which was the only basis for our condemnation in 1988.

Now they have given up trying to prove that what they say is consistent with what Pius IX wrote or with what the Council of Trent promulgated. No, all of that is over; it’s outdated, as Cardinal Ratzinger said. It is clear, and they might have said so earlier. There was no point in our talking, in our discussing with them. Now we suffer from the tyranny of authority, because there are no longer any rules from the past.

They are showing more and more that we are right. We are dealing with people who have a different philosophy from ours, a different way of seeing, who are influenced by all modern subjectivist philosophers. For them there is no fixed truth, there is no dogma. Everything is evolving. This is really the Masonic destruction of the Faith. Fortunately, we have Tradition to lean on!

Q: You have emphasized that you are sure that the Society is blessed by God, because at several points it could have disappeared.

A: Indeed. It has kept coming under very difficult attacks. That is very painful, but we must nonetheless believe that the line of Faith and Tradition that we are following, is imperishable, because God cannot allow his Church to perish.

Q; What can you say to those of the faithful who still hope in the possibility of an agreement with Rome?

A: Our true faithful, those who have understood the problem and who have precisely helped us to continue along the straight and firm path of Tradition and the Faith, told me that the approaches I was making towards Rome were dangerous and that I was wasting my time. Yet I hoped until the last minute that in Rome we would witness a little bit of loyalty, so I cannot be blamed for not having done the maximum. So now too, to those who say to me, “You’ve got to reach an agreement with Rome,” I think I can say that I then went even further than I should have.

Kyrie eleison.

Psalmist’s Cry

Psalmist’s Cry on December 20, 2014

The season of Our Redeemer’s coming amongst us is surely a suitable moment to remind ourselves how much we need God. Of course it has always been so. Before Christ, God came into the ever more wicked pagan world specially to the Israelites with the Old Testament to prepare for the coming of his own Son. Here is Psalm 43, all of which applies both to the Israelites and to Catholics, God’s people in Old and New Testaments (Revised Standard Version, titles and brackets added):—

A. GOD USED TO PROTECT HIS PEOPLE.

1 We have heard with our ears, O God, our fathers have told us, what deeds thou didst perform in their days, in the days of old: 2 thou with thy own hand didst drive out the nations (pagans), but them ( our fathers ) thou didst plant; thou didst afflict the peoples ( pagans), but them (our fathers) thou didst set free; 3 for not by their own sword did they (our fathers) win the land, nor did their own arm give them victory; but thy right hand, and thy arm, and the light of thy countenance; for thou didst delight in them. 4 Thou art my King and my God, who ordainest victories for Jacob. 5 Through thee we push down our foes; through thy name we tread down our assailants. 6 For not in my bow do I trust, nor can my sword save me. 7 But thou hast saved us from our foes, and hast put to confusion those who hate us. 8 In God we have boasted continually, and we will give thanks to thy name for ever.

B NOW HE HAS REJECTED THEM.

9 Yet thou hast cast us (Israelites) off and abased us, and hast not gone out with our armies. 10 Thou hast made us turn back from the foe; and our enemies have gotten spoil. 11 Thou hast made us like sheep for slaughter, and hast scattered us among the nations. 12 Thou hast sold thy people for a trifle, demanding no high price for them. 13 Thou hast made us the taunt of our neighbors, the derision and scorn of those about us. 14 Thou hast made us a byword among the nations, a laughingstock among the peoples. 15 All day long my disgrace is before me, and shame has covered my face, 16 at the words of the taunters and revilers, at the sight of the enemy and the avenger.

C YET WE HAVE BEEN FAITHFUL.

17 All this has come upon us, though we have not forgotten thee, or been false to thy (Mosaic) covenant. 18 Our heart has not turned back, nor have our steps departed from thy way, 19 that thou shouldst have broken us in the place of jackals, and covered us with deep darkness. 20 If we had forgotten the name of our God, or spread forth our hands to a strange god, 21 would not God discover this? For he knows the secrets of the heart.

D O GOD, COME TO OUR HELP!

22 Nay, for thy sake we are slain all the day long, and accounted as sheep for the slaughter. 23 Rouse thyself! Why sleepest thou, O Lord? Awake! Do not cast us off for ever! 24 Why dost thou hide thy face? Why dost thou forget our affliction and oppression? 25 For our soul is bowed down to the dust; our body cleaves to the ground. 26 Rise up, come to our help! Deliver us for the sake of thy steadfast love! (end of Psalm 43)

In other words, there was a time when God raised up his Catholic Church to great heights. But today it is making itself the laughing-stock of the world, to the point that one can almost be ashamed to be a Catholic. However, there are still faithful Catholics. O God, come to their help, O God, come to our help!

Kyrie eleison.

Distinctions Necessary

Distinctions Necessary on December 13, 2014

The principle that cancer of the liver will kill me without my necessarily having lung cancer (cf. the EC of Nov. 29) is annoying, because it means that I may need to distinguish instead of indulging myself in blanket condemnations, but distinctions are common sense and correspond to reality. So in today’s universal confusion, to stay in touch with reality there are times when I need to recognize that a mixture of good and bad will be bad as a whole, but that does not mean that its good parts, as parts, are bad, any more than that the goodness of the good parts means that the whole is good.

Take for instance the Novus Ordo Mass. The new Rite as a whole so diminishes the expression of essential Catholic truths (the Real Presence, the Sacrifice, the sacrificing priesthood, etc.) that it is as a whole so bad that no priest should use it, nor Catholic attend it. But that does not mean that that part of the Mass which is the sacramental Form of Consecration of the bread and wine is bad or invalid. “This is my Body” is certainly valid, “This is the chalice of my Blood” is most likely to be valid, and it is certainly not invalidated by the new rite as a whole being so uncatholic. Therefore if I say that the new Mass must always be avoided, I am telling the truth, but if I say it is always invalid, I am not telling the truth and sooner or later I will pay the penalty for exaggerating.

Similarly with the new Rite of priestly Ordination. The new Rite as a whole has severely diminished the expression of essential truths of the Catholic priesthood, especially that it is a sacrificing priesthood, but that part of the new Rite which is the sacramental Form is, at any rate in the new Latin version, if anything stronger (by the “et” instead of “ut”) than the old Latin version. Therefore assuming that the ordaining bishop is a true bishop and had the true sacramental Intention, it is simply not true to say that no priest ordained in the new Rite can be a true priest. And if one says it, sooner or later one will pay some penalty for departing from the truth.

Now from the de-catholicisation of these two new Rites as wholes, while one may not argue that their sacramental Forms are invalid, one may well argue that in the end they will undermine and invalidate the priest’s or bishop’s sacramental Intention, but that is a different argument, no longer in black and white but, alas, in grey. For indeed the argument is that the steady use of de-catholicised Rites will slowly so alter the priest’s or bishop’s concept of what the Church does with those Rites that in the end he will no longer have the Catholic Intention to do what the Church does, Intention necessary for validity of the sacrament. In other words, white will only gradually turn through grey to black. But who, other than Almighty God, can know for certain when the grey turns into black? Once more, I must take care if I want to discern and know the truth.

This playing between white and black, this ambiguity, is what is properly diabolical in the Conciliar reform of the sacramental Rites. If I wish to tell the truth, I will not yet say that they have destroyed the Catholic sacraments, but they are certainly undermining them, and so if I wish to keep the Catholic Faith, I will certainly as a whole avoid them.

Kyrie eleison.

Resistance Advice

Resistance Advice on December 6, 2014

A precious exchange of e-mails came recently over my desk which I am sure many souls in their difficult circumstances of today will appreciate. The problem comes from a typical 21 st century city-dweller who has the Faith but feels abandoned. The solution presented here is based on a prophecy of Our Lady from the 17 th century! Firstly, the problem:—

“I am a female nurse from Germany, 48 years old. 12 years ago I entered a Convent and loved it, trying to deepen my relationship with God, but after 10 years I had to leave because of the modernism. I could not take my final vows because the Community was far from the Truth. I thought that leaving would please my heavenly Father and make me a kind of heroine in his eyes, but now I am very sad, and feel abandoned by God, not at all like a heroine.

“Two years ago I did get a job back in the hospital where I worked before entering the Convent, but here I am back in the world where the people around me are ignorant or modern, where nobody has any faith, and if they do, they don’t know why. I am too old to be able to find a job close to the sacraments. Shift work stops me from getting to Mass every Sunday. The nearest Traditional Mass is an hour’s drive away. So here I am, sitting in the dark, with little access to the sacraments. The situation in Church and world is so confused that I just do not know what to do. Where is there a way out of the darkness? Where do I go to figure out what I am supposed to do with my life? “

And now in answer to the problem, advice which any number of us in the quote-unquote Resistance, seeking to withstand the worldwide apostasy, can take to heart:—

“Dear friend, in Ecuador in 1634 Our Lady gave to a holy nun almost direct guidance for us in these unholy times which we are blessed to live in (even though they may not feel like a blessing). She promised that there would always be, despite the worldwide apostasy, souls that would remain faithful and would preserve the treasure of the Faith and virtues. But they would suffer a cruel, unspeakable and prolonged martyrdom. She said, ‘ In order to free men from bondage to the heresies all around, the souls chosen by my Most Holy Son to effect the restoration will need great strength of will, constancy, valour and confidence in God. To test this faith and confidence of the just, there will be occasions where all will seem to be lost. Just then will be the happy beginning of the restoration.’

“There is an excellent summary of this message of Our Lady on the Internet at: OUR LADY OF GOOD SUCCESS: prophetic revelations made to Venerable Mother Mariana de Jesus Torres.

“Many of us find ourselves in similar circumstances to yours. We are deprived of the help and strength which comes from living in a community surrounded by our fellow Catholics with a rule and Superior to guide us. While I am not a religious, it is still a tremendous suffering for me to be deprived of Sacraments, priests and fellow Catholics, and to find myself having to work in the very world which my heart, mind and soul reject. But this is the suffering God is permitting for many of us and the very suffering we must embrace, being in union with His will for each of us, uniting our sufferings to those which our beloved Saviour suffered and offered for us. By so doing we are drawn to Him like His little ones. He has not forgotten you. On the contrary, by all you endure, you give to His Sacred Heart and the Immaculate Heart of Mary much needed consolation and may perhaps be obtaining graces for those who have lost the Faith.”

Kyrie eleison.

Living Popes

Living Popes on November 29, 2014

On January 29, 1949, Pope Pius XII made the following remarks about the importance of the Pope: If ever one day – speaking purely hypothetically – material Rome were to collapse; if ever this Vatican basilica, symbol of the one and only victorious Catholic Church, were to bury beneath its ruins the historic treasures and sacred tombs which it encloses, even then the Church would be in no way demolished or split. Christ’s promise to Peter would still hold true, the Papacy would last for ever, like the Church, one and indestructible, being founded on the Pope then living .”

Since these words are classic Church doctrine (only the underlining has been added), resting as they do on Our Lord’s own words (Mt. XVI, 16–18), then it is small wonder if, ever since 1962 when the living Popes became Conciliar, millions upon millions of Catholics have been driven to becoming likewise Conciliar and liberal. The only way out of the problem that sedevacantists can see is to deny that the Conciliar Popes have been Popes at all, which can seem to be common sense, but to most Catholics it seems even more to be common sense that the Church designed by God to rest upon the living Pope cannot have existed for the last half century (1962–2014) without one.

It is easy to see how the decline of Christian civilisation since the height of the Middle Ages has led to the present corruption of the living Popes. It is easy to see how God can have permitted this appalling corruption to punish that appalling decline. What is less easy to see is how the Church can still live when the living Popes on whom it is founded are convinced that liberalism, war on God, is Catholic. In Our Lord’s own words, A good tree cannot bring forth evil fruit and an evil tree cannot bring forth good fruit (Mt. VII, 18).

But a tree half good, half bad, can produce fruits half good, half bad. Now taken as a whole, a mixture of good and bad is bad, but that does not mean that taken part by part, the mixture’s good parts are as bad as its bad parts. Cancer in the liver will kill me, but that does not mean that I have cancer in the lungs. Now no living churchman, any more than any man alive, is entirely good or entirely bad. We are all a fluctuating mixture until the day we die. So can there ever have been a living Pope whose fruits were entirely evil? The answer can only be, no. In which case the Catholic Church can have half-lived for the last 50 years on the half-good fruits of the Conciliar Popes, with a half-life permitted by God to purify his Church, but which he would never permit to go so far as to kill his Church.

Thus for example Paul VI wept for the lack of vocations. Benedict XVI hankered after Tradition. Even Pope Francis surely means to bring men to God when he drags God down to men. So, Conciliar Popes are dreadfully mistaken in their ideas, fatally ambiguous in the Faith where they need to be absolutely unambiguous. The Church has been and is dying beneath them, but whatever parts in them have still been good have enabled the Church to continue, and they have been needed as living heads to continue the body of the living Church, as Pius XII said. Then let us not fear that they will be allowed to kill off the Church, but let us for our part fight their liberalism tooth and nail and pray for their return to Catholic sanity, because we do need them for the life of our Church.

Kyrie eleison.

Fortieth Anniversary

Fortieth Anniversary on November 22, 2014

Yesterday was the 40 th anniversary of Archbishop Lefebvre’s historic Declaration on November 21, 1974, of the reasons for which he and the priests and laity following him were taking their stand against the total change of the Catholic Church and religion being wrought in the wake of the Second Vatican Council. The Declaration is a fresh today as it was on the day when it was written, because the true Catholic religion of God is unchangingly true, while the Conciliar religion of man is resolutely false and it is occupying Rome more than ever.

The Declaration consists of ten brief paragraphs, little more than 50 lines in all: 1/ We cleave to Catholic Rome, eternal Rome. 2/ We refuse Conciliar Rome, neo-Protestant and neo-modernist. 3/ The Conciliar reform is destroying the Catholic Church and diminishing our Catholic Faith, 4/ as not even an angel from Heaven has the right to do (Galatians I, 8). 5/ We choose Tradition, we refuse innovations. 6/ Everything in the Church is being renewed in a way opposite to age-old Catholic doctrine. 7/ The Conciliar reform, coming from heresy and resulting in heresy, is unacceptable to Catholics, so 8/ we shall continue to form Traditional priests. 9/ And we shall cleave to the Catholic teaching and practice of all time, 10/ being convinced that by so doing we will remain truly faithful Catholics.

Notice firstly the clear and sharp distinction (1 and 2) between Catholic Rome and Conciliar Rome. Now it is true to say that Conciliar Rome is occupying the structures of Catholic Rome, but to say that the Conciliar Church is therefore none other than the Catholic Church is as foolish as to say that a cuckoo is a nightingale because it occupies a nightingale’s nest. (And to say that the Archbishop wrote of Conciliar and Catholic “Rome” and not of the Conciliar and Catholic “Church” is to quibble with words.)

But how does the Archbishop distinguish between Conciliar cuckoo and Catholic nightingale? By doctrine! Conciliarism is neo- Protestant and neo- modernist (2). Our faith is being diminished (3), in opposition to Catholic doctrine (6). Conciliarism is heresy (7). We cleave to Catholic teaching (9). And the brief summary above does not give all of the Archbishop’s references to doctrine. Catholic doctrine was the Northern star of his mind and action. It is because modern man wants freedom for his mind and action that he in effect wants his mind to be reduced to mush, whereupon doctrine has no more than a merely decorous function. It has no more bite upon man’s action, except the one disastrous doctrine that doctrine is unimportant. And that disastrous doctrine has a total bite. Here is why the Archbishop is being reduced within the Society of St Pius X, which he founded, to little more than a decorous mascot.

One is impelled to ask, what is it going to take to restore the bite of doctrine, the sense of reality and the love of truth in Society, Church and world? Surely suffering, no less. Solzhenitsyn made a remark to the effect that it will take the crowbar of events to smash open the concrete casing which modern man has built around his sinful way of life. Truly, Lord have mercy.

Kyrie eleison.