Eleison Comments

“Conciliar Church”?

“Conciliar Church”? on June 7, 2014

The expression “Conciliar church” obviously expresses a reality, something real, namely the mass of people and institutions professing themselves to be Catholic but in fact sliding into the practice of the new humanist religion of the Second Vatican Council. “Sliding,” because Conciliarism, or neo-modernism, is precisely designed to enable Catholics to maintain the appearances of the Faith while they empty out the substance. Catholics in the concrete can make this process as fast or as slow as they wish, they need not even take it all the way to its conclusion, but Conciliarism in the abstract is utterly opposed to Catholicism and, taken to its conclusion, it destroys both Faith and Church, as it was meant to do.

The process is not difficult to observe or to understand, but liberals at the head of the Society of St Pius X, seeking reconciliation with the Conciliarists in Rome, have done their best to confuse the question of the Conciliar church and the Catholic Church. For instance the Catholic Church is visible, they will say, and the Conciliar church is the visible church, so the Conciliar church is the Catholic Church, an argument dismissed years ago by Archbishop Lefebvre as “childish” (many churches are visible that are not Catholic). Equally childish is the argument that there is only one Church, so the Conciliar church and the Catholic Church must be one and the same (there are thousands of false churches).

The truth is not too complicated. The Catholic Church is a living organism, both divine and human, like its Founder, Jesus Christ. As divine, as being his Immaculate Bride, it cannot be corrupt or corrupted, but as being made up of sinful human beings, it can partially rot just like any other living organism. So one useful way to understand how the Conciliar church relates to the Catholic Church is to think of a rotten apple.

On the one hand the rot belongs to the apple. All rot was once apple. The rot is a corruption of the apple, a parasite on the apple, it could not exist without the apple and it remains firmly attached to the apple unless and until the rotten part falls off. Likewise Conciliarism belongs to the Catholic Church insofar as everything Conciliar was once Catholic, it is a corruption of the Catholic Church, a parasite on the Catholic Church, it could not exist without the Catholic Church, and it remains firmly attached to some part of the Catholic Church unless and until it destroys that part, as it was designed to do.

On the other hand the rot does not belong to the apple. No apple was ever meant to go rotten. All rot is a transformation of some apple, a corruption and parasite of apple, transforming it for the worse, resulting in something quite different from apple, something which nobody in his right mind would dream of eating or of saying that it was no different from apple. Likewise Conciliarism does not belong to the Catholic Church, it is a corruption of something Catholic and is a parasite on whatever is Catholic. It transforms (a human part of) the Catholic Church for the worse, resulting in something essentially non-Catholic which no Catholic in his right mind would call Catholic or want to associate with, on pain of losing his faith.

In brief, Conciliarism is rot, and the “Conciliar church” is the one divine-human Church being rotted in one or other of its human aspects. Of course the Catholic Church will last to the end of the world (Mt. XXVIII, 20), while the “Conciliar church” is merely one in a long line of parasite churches down the ages, living on what they rot and rotting what they live on. A plague on all liberals, confused and confusing!

Kyrie eleison.

Church Infallibility – V

Church Infallibility – V on May 31, 2014

Liberalism is war on God, and it is the dissolution of truth. Within today’s Church crippled by liberalism, sedevacantism is an understandable reaction, but it still credits authority with too much power over truth. The modern world has lost natural truth, let alone supernatural truth, and here is the heart of the problem.

For our purposes we might divide all papal teaching into three parts. Firstly, if the Pope teaches as Pope, on Faith or morals, definitively and so as to bind all Catholics, then we have his Extraordinary Magisterium (EM for short), necessarily infallible. Secondly, if he does not engage all four conditions but teaches in line with what the Church has always and everywhere taught and imposed on Catholics to believe, then he is partaking in what is called the Church’s “Ordinary Universal Magisterium” (OUM for short), also infallible. Thirdly we have the rest of his teaching, which, if it is out of line with Tradition, is not only fallible but also false.

By now it should be clear that the EM is to the OUM as snow-cap is to mountain. The snow-cap does not make the summit of the mountain, it merely makes it more visible. EM is to OUM as servant to master. It exists to serve the OUM by making clear once and for all what does or does not belong to the OUM. But what makes the rest of the mountain visible, so to speak, is its being traceable back to Our Lord and his Apostles, in other words, Tradition. That is why every EM definition is at pains to show that what is being defined was always previously part of Tradition. It was mountain before it was covered in snow.

By now it should also be clear that Tradition tells the Popes what to teach, and not the other way round. This is the basis on which Archbishop Lefebvre founded the Traditional movement, yet it is this same basis which, with all due respect, liberals and sedevacantists fail to grasp. Just see in the Gospel of St John how often Our Lord himself, as man, declares that what he is teaching comes not from himself but from his Father, for instance: “My doctrine is not mine but his that sent me” (VII, 16), or, “I have not spoken from out of myself; but the Father who sent me, he gave me commandment, what I should say, and what I should speak” (XII, 49). Of course nobody on earth is more authorized than the Pope to tell Church and world what is in Tradition, but he cannot tell Church or world that there is in Tradition what is not in it. What is in it is objective, now 2,000 years old, it is above the Pope and it sets limits to what a Pope can teach , just as the Father’s commandment set limits to what Christ as man would teach.

Then how can liberals and sedevacantists alike claim, in effect, that the Pope is infallible even outside of both EM and OUM? Because both overrate authority in relation to truth, and so they see Church authority no longer as the servant but as the master of truth. And why is that? Because they are both children of the modern world where Protestantism defied the Truth and liberalism ever since the French Revolution has been dissolving objective truth. And if there is no longer any objective truth, then of course authority can say whatever it can get away with, which is what we observe all around us, and there is nothing left to stop a Paul VI or a Bishop Fellay from becoming more and more arbitrary and tyrannical in the process.

Mother of God, obtain for me to love, discern and defend that Truth and order coming from the Father, both supernatural and natural, to which your own Son was as man subject, “unto death, even to the death of the Cross.”

Kyrie eleison.

Benedict’s Thinking – IV

Benedict’s Thinking – IV on May 24, 2014

To Cardinal Newman is attributed a wise comment on the 1870 definition of the Pope’s infallibility: “It left him as it found him.” Indeed that definition will have changed nothing in the Pope’s power to teach infallibly, because it belongs to the unchanging nature of God’s true Church that God will protect it from error, at least when its supreme teaching authority is engaged. All such engagement is now called the Church’s “Extraordinary Magisterium,” but only the name can have been new in 1870, just like the name of the “Ordinary Universal Magisterium.” If Vatican I declared the latter also to be infallible, it must also have been so from the beginning of the Church. To discern the realities behind the two names, let us go back to that beginning.

By the time Our Lord ascended to Heaven, he had with his divine infallibility entrusted to his Apostles a body of doctrine which they were to hand down intact to his Church to the end of the world (Mt. XXVIII, 19–20), doctrine which all souls were to believe on pain of damnation (Mk. XVI, 15–16). This Deposit of the Faith, or public Revelation, God was bound to make recognisable and accessible to souls of good will, because obviously the true God could never condemn eternally a soul for refusing to believe in an untruth. By the death of the last Apostle this Deposit was not only infallible but also complete.

Then from the Apostles onwards would God protect all churchmen from ever teaching error? By no means. Our Lord warned us to beware of “false prophets” (Mt. VII, 15), and St Paul likewise warned against “ravening wolves” (Acts, XX, 29–30). But how could God permit such a danger to his sheep from erring pastors? Because he wants for his Heaven neither robot pastors nor robot sheep, but pastors and sheep that will both have used the mind and free-will he gave them to teach or follow the Truth. And if a mass of pastors betray, he can always raise a St Athanasius or an Archbishop Lefebvre, for instance, to ensure that his infallible Truth remains always accessible to souls.

Nevertheless that Deposit will be unceasingly exposed to ravening wolves, adding error to it or subtracting truth from it. So how will God still protect it? By guaranteeing that whenever a Pope engages all four conditions of his full teaching authority to define what does and does not belong to it, he will be divinely protected from error – what we call today the “Extraordinary Magisterium.” (Note how this Extraordinary Magisterium presupposes the infallible Ordinary Magisterium, and can add to it no truth or infallibility, but only a greater certainty for us human beings.) But if the Pope engages any less than all four conditions, then his teaching will be infallible if it corresponds to the Deposit handed down from Our Lord – today called the “Universal Ordinary Magisterium,” but fallible if it is not within that Deposit handed down, or Tradition. Outside of Tradition, his teaching may be true or false.

Thus there is no vicious circle (see EC 357 of last week) because Our Lord authorised Tradition and Tradition authorises the Magisterium. Indeed it is the function of the Pope to declare with authority what belongs to Tradition, and he will be divinely protected from error if he engages his full authority to do so, but he can make declarations outside of Tradition, in which case he will have no such protection. Now the novelties of Vatican II such as religious liberty and ecumenism are way outside of Church Tradition. So they come under neither the Pope’s Ordinary nor his Extraordinary Magisterium, and all the nonsense of all the Conciliar Popes does not oblige any Catholic to become either a liberal or a sedevacantist.

Kyrie eleison.

Church’s Infallibility – III

Church’s Infallibility – III on May 17, 2014

The crazy words and deeds of Pope Francis are presently driving many believing Catholics towards sedevacantism, which is dangerous. The belief that the Conciliar Popes have not been and are not Popes may begin as an opinion, but all too often one observes that the opinion turns into a dogma and then into a mental steel trap. I think the minds of many sedevacantists shut down because the unprecedented crisis of Vatican II has caused their Catholic minds and hearts an agony which found in sedevacantism a simple solution, and they have no wish to re-open the agony by re-opening the question. So they positively crusade for others to share their simple solution, and in so doing many of them – not all – end up displaying an arrogance and a bitterness which are no signs or fruits of a true Catholic.

Now these “Comments” have abstained from proclaiming with certainty that the Conciliar Popes have been true Popes, but at the same time they have argued that the usual sedevacantist arguments are neither conclusive nor binding upon Catholics, as some sedevacantists would have us believe. Let us return to one of their most important arguments, which is from Papal infallibility: Popes are infallible. But liberals are fallible, and Conciliar Popes are liberal. Therefore they are not Popes.

To this one may object that a Pope is certainly infallible only when he engages the four conditions of the Church’s Extraordinary Magisterium by teaching 1 as Pope, 2 on Faith or morals, 3 definitively, 4 so as to bind all Catholics. Whereupon sedevacantists and liberals alike reply that it is Church teaching that the Ordinary Universal Magisterium is also infallible, so – and here is the weak point in their argument – whenever the Pope teaches solemnly even outside of his Extraordinary Magisterium, he must also be infallible. Now their liberal Conciliar teaching is solemn. Therefore we must become either liberals or sedevacantists, depending of course on who is wielding the same argument.

But the hallmark of teaching which belongs to the Church’s Ordinary Universal Magisterium is not the solemnity with which the Pope teaches outside of the Extraordinary Magisterium, but whether what he is teaching corresponds, or not, to what Our Lord, his Apostles and virtually all their successors, the bishops of the Universal Church, have taught in all times and in all places, in other words whether it corresponds to Tradition. Now Conciliar teaching (e.g. religious liberty and ecumenism) is in rupture with Tradition. Therefore Catholics today are not in fact bound to become liberals or sedevacantists.

However, both liberals and sedevacantists cling to their misunderstanding of Papal infallibility for reasons that are not without interest, but that is another story. In any case they do not give up easily, so they come back with another objection which deserves to be answered. Both of them will say that to argue that Tradition is the hallmark of the Ordinary Magisterium is to set up a vicious circle. For if the Church’s teaching authority, or Magisterium, exists to tell what is Church doctrine, as it does, then how can the Traditional doctrine at the same time tell what is the Magisterium? Either the teacher authorises what is taught, or what is taught authorises the teacher, but they cannot both at the same time authorise each other. So to argue that Tradition which is taught authorises the Ordinary Magisterium which is teaching, is wrong, and so the Pope is infallible not only in his Extraordinary teaching, and so we must become either liberals or sedevacantists, they conclude.

Why there is no vicious circle must wait until next week. It is as interesting as why both sedevacantists and liberals fall into the same error on infallibility.

Kyrie eleison.

New Ordinations – I

New Ordinations – I on May 10, 2014

Should priests ordained with the new rite of Ordination of 1972 be conditionally re-ordained with the old and certainly valid rite of Ordination? Catholic doctrine on the validity of sacraments is clear, but the sacramental rites of the Newchurch seem to have been designed to lead gradually to invalidity (see EC 121 of Oct 31, 2009). The « gradually » is the problem. How far along was that gradual process in any given case? Perhaps God alone knows for sure. But let us begin with the clear doctrine.

One can say a Catholic sacrament involves five elements: Minister, Intention, Matter and Form are essential for validity, the Rite surrounding the Form can be important for validity by its sudden or gradual bearing on the Minister’s Intention. For priestly Orders, the Minister has to be a validly consecrated bishop; the Intention is his sacramental (not moral) intention, in ordaining, to do what the Church does; theMatter is his laying of both hands on the head of the man to be ordained (women cannot be validly ordained to the priesthood of Christ); the Form is the crucial formula or series of words in the rite which express the conferring of the priesthood; the Rite is all the other words surrounding that Form, and prescribed in the ceremonial rite of Ordination.

In a new rite Ordination, if both hands are laid on the head, the Matter is no problem. The new Form in Latin is, if anything, stronger for validity than the old Form in Latin (by the « et » instead of an « ut »), but vernacular translations need to be checked to make sure that they clearly express the grace of the priesthood to be conferred. Most of them surely do. Where real problems of validity arise is with the Minister and the Intention, because of the gradual erosion of Catholic Intention by the uncatholic new Rites.

For, as to the Intention, any bishop today ordaining a priest surely intends to do what today’s Church does, well and good, but what is that in his mind? What is a priest in the Newchurch? Is not yesteryear’s renewer of the Sacrifice of Calvary by the Real Presence being slowly but steadily replaced by today’s co-ordinator of eucharistic picnics? How far along is this process in any given diocese of the world? Did this or that bishop have in mind a sacrificer or a picnicker as being what the Church does? The ordaining bishop’s outward behaviour will indicate his Intention, but God alone may know for sure. Certainly many new Rites of Mass incline towards the picnicker, and the new Rite of Ordination surrounding the Form can only help by its severely diminished catholic content to undermine gradually the sacramental Intention of an ordaining bishop.

And as to the Minister, if the ordaining bishop was himself consecrated bishop with the new rite of consecration, let us assume that the ambiguity of the new Form of consecration is lifted by the words immediately following, nevertheless doubts like those above as to the Intention of the bishop consecrating must arise: did he consider, and therefore have as his Intention, that today’s Church consecrates makers of the Sacrifice, or of picnics? Such questions can often lack clear answers.

In brief, were I Pope, I think I might require that all priests or bishops ordained or consecrated with the « renewed » rites should be conditionally re-ordained or re-consecrated, not because I would believe that none of them were true priests or bishops, on the contrary, but because when it comes to the sacraments all serious doubts must be removed, and that would be the simplest way of removing all possible doubts. Newchurch rot of the sacraments could not be left hanging around.

Kyrie eleison.

Farewell, SSPX

Farewell, SSPX on May 3, 2014

Bad news from France: the 40-year fight for the Faith by the Society of St Pius X against the modernists in Rome is virtually over. Oh, the Society’s priories, schools, seminaries and associated convents and monasteries will continue to function, to provide for at least a while valid sacraments and decent doctrine, maintaining all the appearances of Tradition, but the essential fight for the complete Faith will be censored, or self-censored, out of existence. It looks like being only a limited number of priests more that will have the understanding of Archbishop Lefebvre’s work and the necessary courage to break ranks and take to the hills.

The news is that the modernists in Rome are offering to the Society a « recognition by tolerance » without the need for any formal agreement or signed document such as raised within the SSPX so much opposition to a deal with Rome in the spring and early summer of 2012. Here is the essence of how the Society’s Second Assistant, Fr. Alain Nély, expressed it, with enthusiasm, to two members of religious Orders three months ago: « The solution for the SSPX will be its unilateral recognition by Rome . . .we will not be asked to sign anything . . .to see how things evolve . . .we shall see. »

To prevent such a revelation from spreading, the Society’s Superior General wrote to the two religious concerned that they had misunderstood Fr. Nély’s remarks because there was no kind of « agreement » in view. Of course not. Therein lies the cunning of the proposed « recognition » without signature. It will allow numbers of SSPX priests to pretend that nothing will have changed so that they can continue their ministry just as before. Thus, as reported, Bishop Fellay himself recently told SSPX seminarians in Zaitzkofen: « There is no question of signing any agreement, etc., etc.» However, ten minutes later, « But if Rome proposes a recognition of tolerance for us, that’s a different matter, that would be very good. »

And so there is every likelihood, sooner rather than later, that a large number of SSPX priests will docilely follow their official leaders into the embrace of the loving modernists in Rome, an embrace that will become over time as tight as necessary to stifle any remaining effort to fight against that deadly modernism which is killing off the official Church and putting millions of souls on the path to Hell. In retrospect one may guess that Bishop Fellay has worked skilfully with the Romans towards this embrace for at least the last 15 years. Bishop de Galarreta has seen what is at stake, but has thrown in his lot with Bishop Fellay. Bishop Tissier also sees clearly the deadly threat to the Archbishop’s work, but he does not see the need to follow the Archbishop’s example of putting the Faith before all normal rules of obedience and unity.

And so, dear friends, if we wish to keep the fullness of the Faith and help others to do so, we must at least internally take to the hills. Have no fear. Keep a cool head. There is no need to lose heart, or despair. God does not change, and the fight for his cause becomes more glorious than ever. Priests, keep watch, and above all do not deceive yourselves that nothing in the Society is changing. It has already essentially changed. Lay-folk, keep watch also, and pray, and God will give you the leaders and priests of your prayers. In God we trust, and in his Blessed Mother.

Kyrie eleison.