Eleison Comments

Many readers of these “Comments” presently find they are treating too often of sedevacantism, or of the position that the See of Rome is vacant, i.e. no Pope since Vatican II has been a real Pope. Now if a Catholic needs to hold that opinion in order not to lose his Catholic faith, let him hold it, because his faith is paramount (Heb. XI, 6). But the opinion in itself is dangerous precisely because it can be the beginning of a slide towards losing the faith, and that is why these “Comments” are so insistent on discouraging sedevacantism. From an opinion it becomes all too easily a dogma, then the super-dogma and the measure of whether one is Catholic or not, from where it can slide into complete disbelief in the structural Church and into “home-aloning,” even to loss of one’s Catholic faith. Consider what Archbishop Lefebvre said (slightly adapted, and with emphasis added) in late 1979 in a conference to Écône seminarians:—

“We must be prudent. It is obvious that if Pope Paul VI was not Pope, then the Cardinals he appointed are not Cardinals, so they cannot have elected John-Paul I, and they cannot have validly elected John-Paul II, that much is clear. I don’t think one can say such things. I think these are exaggerations, arguing in a manner too absolute and too rapid. I think the reality is more complex.

“I think that those who argue like this are in a certain way forgetting moral theology and ethics. They are being too speculative. Moral theology and ethics teach us to reason and to judge of people and their acts according to a whole context of circumstances which we must take into account: “Who, what, where, by what means, why, how, when” – all seven circumstances must be examined if we are to judge of the morality of an act. So we cannot remain in the pure stratosphere, one might say, in the realm of pure dogmatic theology, by pronouncing, for instance, that such an act is heretical, therefore whoever did it is a heretic. But was this person aware of what he was doing, did he do it truly by himself, was he not deceived or forced into doing it?

“I think that here is how to solve the grave problems posed by John XXIII, Paul VI and John-Paul I. The latter is quoted in the newspapers as having said that he had thought at first that the Council’s new definition of religious liberty was unacceptable because the Church taught the opposite, but on further study of the Council document and all its contents he had realized that the Church was mistaken beforehand. Now I have no idea what were John-Paul I’s exact words, but to say that the Church could be mistaken on such a matter as religious liberty just boggles the mind! However, I put it down to liberal minds. Liberalism is like that. Liberalism both makes a statement and then contradicts it, and if one shows that what it said is not true, then it comes up with another ambiguous formula with a double meaning. The liberal mind is continually floating around, with expressions that are not clear, with things that can be taken two ways . . . . How many things there are like that in the Council, expressions equivocal and unclear, altogether typical of minds adrift, liberal minds . . . . As I see it, I think that the fact that the Pope is a liberal is enough to explain the situation in which we find ourselves.”

Bravo, your Excellency! Is not the Archbishop saying here exactly what these “Comments” have so often been saying? And the reason why these “Comments” have been saying it so often is because they see here the key to avoiding liberalism without having to resort to sedevacantism.

Kyrie eleison.

Readers of these “Comments,” “Conciliar Popes I” and “II” of six and four weeks ago respectively, may well have carried away the impression that the “Comments” hold that Pope Francis “may be inculpable for his ignorance of his blasphemies and heresies,” as one reader put it. That is a mistaken impression. While today’s universal liberalism may excuse “partly” and “relatively” the Conciliar Popes’ destruction of the Catholic Church, it certainly does not excuse it completely. Their culpability, at least partial, is common sense, and proof of it is not difficult to follow.

The Catholic Church belongs to God. He founded it and he designed it to function with human beings as his instruments. These human officials of his Church he will never allow completely to destroy it, but nor will he take away their free-will, with the result that each of them can greatly merit or demerit by the way in which he uses or abuses his office. However, upon that use or abuse depends the salvation of many other souls besides his own. How then can one imagine God not offering to these officials all the grace they need to fulfil their official duties for the good of souls? If then the Conciliar Popes, Cardinals and Bishops are all truly appointed Church officials, as they appear to be and as few deny who are not sedevacantists, then they are receiving from God grace sufficient to run the Church well. If then, broadly speaking, they are running it into the ground, they must be refusing graces of state, graces of their office. And if they are refusing the grace of God in the fulfilment of their duty, they cannot be wholly blameless. They may not be to blame for the mushy world around them, but God’s grace would ultimately lead their minds out of the mush, if they wanted. They do not want, because then they would have to confront that mushy world.

Let us imagine a concrete example which must have happened in real life in the 1970’s many times. A little old grandmother manages to approach the Holy Father. In a flood of tears she explains that her grandson was a good boy when he entered the (Conciliar) seminary, but there he lost not only his vocation but also his faith and even his virtue. If, as is most likely, the Conciliar Pope relies on officials around him to brush her off, he is not innocent, because little old grandmothers can be unmistakably genuine. But these Popes prefer their Conciliar dream, in harmony with the world.

And here is a real example from Brazil, probably in the 1980’s. John-Paul II was holding a meeting of diocesan bishops to discuss the apostolate in their dioceses. At a given moment a young bishop stood up to say that the flock in his diocese was being ravaged by ecumenism’s promoting the invasion of Protestant sects from the USA, a familiar disaster for many years now throughout Latin America. The Pope listened to the bishop’s testimony, but within a short time he was back to promoting exactly that ecumenism which the bishop had just denounced. When confronted with the Catholic reality, the Pope preferred his Conciliar dream. How could he be completely innocent?

It would follow that these Popes are neither wholly innocent nor wholly guilty of the Church’s present devastation. How much are they the one, how much the other? God alone knows. But if a good Pope was appointed, and protected by God, to sift the Church officials, clean out the bad ones and promote the good ones, he would appoint a tribunal or inquisition – yes, inquisition – to force each official to choose openly between Truth or mush. Would it be an easy task? No, because mush-merchants have no difficulty in pretending that they love truth, and they can easily believe themselves that they deal only in truth. They can fit their minds to anything, and to the opposite of anything. Then what can be done? A Chastisement, to clean out the Augean stables.

Kyrie eleison.

In the latest issue of the Society of St Pius X’s internal publication (mainly for Society priests), “Cor Unum,” the Superior General publishes arguments to defend and justify his relentless pursuit of the SSPX’s incorporation into the mainstream Church. He argues that the Society is right to be talking to today’s Roman officials. He presents basically two arguments. These need to be examined if they are not to continue creating confusion.

The first of the two arguments runs as follows: The Catholic Church, as the Immaculate Bride of Christ, is much more than just its corrupt officials, because it is a whole of which these officials are merely a part. But the Catholic Society of St Pius X must remain in contact with the Catholic Church. Therefore it must maintain contact, and continue to negotiate, with the corrupt officials.

The argument is easy to refute, as soon as one brings into view the Faith. Indeed Catholics must draw from the Immaculate Bride of Christ whatever they need to get to Heaven, but it is never from the corruption of the corrupt Church officials that they will be able to draw their spiritual life. And if these officials are so corrupt in the Faith that contact with them positively endangers that faith of Catholics which is the very basis of Catholics’ spiritual life, then Catholics must positively avoid such officials. Now the neo-modernism of today’s Roman officials is highly corrupt and corrupting, all the more objectively dangerous for its being more or less, on their part, subjectively innocent. Therefore Catholics wishing to keep the faith must stay well away from these Romans. “Cor Unum” argues as though neo-modernists present no danger to the Faith!

Archbishop Lefebvre drew the correct conclusion. When in the spring of 1988 he did everything he could have done (even, one may say, more than he should have done) to get the Roman officials to do their duty to look after Catholic Tradition, and even after over 10 years of the Archbishop’s efforts, they still refused, showing that, far from wanting to look after Tradition, they merely wanted to absorb it into their Newchurch, then the Archbishop concluded thay they were so corrupt in the Faith that he would have nothing more to do with them until they professed once more the Faith of the great anti-liberal papal documents, such as the Syllabus, Pascendi, and Quas Primas.

For indeed the Faith does not exist for the appointed Church officials, but they exist for the Faith. So if their fruits demonstrate beyond any doubt that they are destroying the Faith, then, to defend the Faith, not only should the Society not be talking to the Conciliar officials, it should, while observing all charity and respect, be fleeing them like the plague, for fear of itself being infected by their dangerously infectious Conciliar errors, unless and until, exactly as Archbishop Lefebvre said, they show that they are quitting their Conciliarism and coming back to true Catholic doctrine.

The second argument is that Rome’s granting of bishops to visit the Society’s seminaries (including Écône) is proof of Rome’s “benevolence” towards the Society, because Rome is “at a loss how to deal with the Society.” And once more a swallow here and there is taken to be signifying the summer of Rome’s conversion. The naivete is breathtaking. Rome knows exactly how to deal with the Society: send Conciliar bishops into Society seminaries to show its future priests how nice the Conciliar churchmen are. Then eventually the Society will just flow into the Newchurch.

The SSPX has no business to be asking for anything whatsoever from these Roman officials, appointees perhaps, apostates certainly. And if it gives them to think that, objectively and collectively, they are anything other than apostates, it will be “like to them, a liar” (cf. Jn. VIII, 55).

Kyrie eleison.

When on June 13, 1929, Our Lady of Fatima appeared to Sister Lucy at Tuy in Spain to ask for the Consecration of Russia to her Immaculate Heart, it made perfect sense, because ever since the Russian Revolution broke out in October, 1917, Russia had been persecuting the Church and acting as the main instrument of Communism to spread its deadly errors throughout the world. However, Russia is now playing such a different part on the stage of world affairs that a number of Catholics are wondering if that Consecration is still needed. Has it not been overtaken by events?

True, with the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989 the Russian people began to repudiate the godless Communism under which they had suffered so much for 70 years, and since then they have not ceased to evolve towards God instead of away from him. Leading this evolution has been Russia’a Prime Minister or President since 1999, Vladimir Putin (born in1952), who by his personal example and public leadership has done all he could to promote the real revival of the Christian Orthodox religion within Russia. Some observers still doubt that Putin is genuine, but the fruits are there: thousands of churches and cathedrals rebuilt all over Russia and morality defended, while outside of Russia Putin has more than once delayed the outbreak of World War III by outwitting the delinquent Western politicians, puppets of the godless New World Order and pushing for its triumph.

Then can one say that Russia today no longer needs to be converted? No, because Orthodox Christianity is not yet Catholicism, and because Communism has reportedly left its mark on the morals of the Russian people, for instance in the still widespread practice of abortion. But what one can surely say is that by the present religious revival, witnessed for many a year now by Western visitors to Russia, Our Lady is preparing for the full conversion of Russia, and while that full conversion may no longer be needed to put an end to Russian Communism, in the 21^st century it may be even more needed to overcome world Globalism. Let us speculate on how that might happen.

To break out of the aggressive encirclement of Russia by military bases of a nameless western power which has let itself be instrumentalised by the evil Masters of Globalism, Russia, the apparent but not the real aggressor (the two are not always the same), invades and conquers Europe thoroughly corrupted by atheistic materialism. Under the pressure of war and occupation, the Pope at last performs the Consecration of Russia, as requested by Our Lady at Fatima, and the miraculous full conversion begins to take place, but not to the putrid religion of Conciliar Rome, rather to a brand-new (and brand-old) Catholicism (Mt.XIII, 52), in which all the Truth of Eternal Rome and of the once faithful West is revitalised by the religious freshness of the post-Communist Russians drawing on everything truest and best in their own Eastern traditions.

Wishful thinking? The details here stitched together from prophecies, and even the grand lines of the speculation can be wrong, but in any case some such miracle will be wrought by Our Lady to cleanse the East of its errors and the West of its corruption, so that the Church can again breathe with both lungs, and so that there can come about that “period of peace for the world” which she promised at Fatima. In any case believers will be crying out with St Paul, “O the depth of the riches of the wisdom and of the knowledge of God! How incomprehensible are his judgments, and how unsearchable his ways!” (Rom. XI, 33). If we are among the survivors, we shall be marvelling at the works of God and of his Blessed Mother.

Kyrie eleison.

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.