Eleison Comments

Canonisations Unreal

Canonisations Unreal on April 5, 2014

The “canonisation”of two Conciliar Popes, John XXIII and John-Paul II, is scheduled for the last Sunday of this month, and many believing Catholics are scared stiff. They know that the Conciliar Popes have been (objective) destroyers of the Church. They know that the Church holds canonisations to be infallible. Are they going to be forced to believe that John XXIII and John-Paul II are Saints? It boggles the mind. But it need not do so.

In August of last year these “Comments” stated the fact that Newchurch “canonisations” are such a different reality from pre-Conciliar canonisations that no Catholic need believe that the post-conciliar canonisations are infallible. I was not wrong, but while I stated the fact that this is so, I did not give the reason why, which is a superior way of knowing something. On the contrary in a retreat conference, perhaps of 1989, Archbishop Lefebvre gave the deep-down reason why. This reason – modernist mind-rot – is crucial to understand correctly the whole Conciliar Revolution.

The Archbishop said that like a mass of modern men, the Conciliar Popes do not believe in any truth being stable. For instance John-Paul II’s formation was based on truth evolving, moving with the times, progressing with the advance of science, etc. Truth never being fixed is the reason why in 1988 John-Paul II condemned the SSPX’s Episcopal Consecrations, because they sprang from a fixed and not living or moving idea of Catholic Tradition. For indeed Catholics hold, for example, every word in the Credo to be unchangeable, because the words have been hammered out over the ages to express as perfectly as possible the unchanging truths of the Faith, and these words have been infallibly defined by the Church’s Popes and Councils.

True canonisations are another example: (1) the Pope pronounces as Pope, (2) such and such a person to be a model of faith and morals, (3) once and for all (nobody used to get uncanonised), (4) for all the Church to accept as such a model. As such, canonisations used to fulfil the four conditions of infallible Church teaching, and they were held to be infallible. But this Catholic idea of an unchangeable truth is inconceivable for fluid modern minds like those of the Conciliar Popes. For them, truth is life, a life developing, evolving, growing towards perfection. How then can a Conciliar Pope perform, let alone impose, an infallible canonisation?

The Archbishop imagines how a Conciliar Pope might react to the idea of his having done any such thing: “Oh no! If ever in the future it turns out that the person I canonised did not have all the qualities required, well, some successor of mine may well declare that I made a declaration on that person’s virtue but not a once and for all definition of their sanctity.” Meanwhile the “canonising” Pope’s “declaration” has made the President of the local Republic and the local Christians happy, and he has given them all an excuse to have a party to celebrate.

If one thinks about it, this explanation of the Archbishop applies to the Newchurch across the board. What we have in Vatican II is the demanding beauty of God’s unchangeable Truth, which leads to Heaven, being replaced by the undemanding ugliness of man’s fluid fantasy, which may lead to Hell but enables man, as he thinks, to take the place of God. The key step in this process is the unhooking of the mind from reality. When the process is applied today to the Church as modernism, the results are so totally unlike what went before that the new realities absolutely call for new names: Newchurch, Newcanonisations, Newsaints, etc. After all, are not the Conciliarists proud of making everything new?

Kyrie eleison.

Substitute Religion

Substitute Religion on March 29, 2014

Two months ago a self-declared atheist celebrated in France his 85th birthday, to whom all theists of the true religion owe a serious debt of thanks, because in today’s world of lies Professor Robert Faurisson has been a powerful defender of truth. I for one might wish that many more believers in the true God would have his intelligence and honesty in discerning the truth, and his courage to tell it.

For instance, whether or not it is a historical fact that there were six million victims of gassing in gas chambers of the Third Reich, Prof. Faurisson insists on treating it as a historical question to be settled by the facts and scientific evidence, and not by emotion and legislation – what could be more reasonable? And yet on this particular question a mass of our contemporaries will not listen to reason. Are their minds still functioning? Our warm gratitude goes to the Professor for bringing an excellent and scholarly mind to bear on a historical question as a question of history and not of something else.

Something else? Again, whether or not the Six Million are a historical reality, it is the Professor who states that they have in any case acquired the status of a secular religion. Does it take a supposedly irreligious man to discern what serves as the main religion of our times? I might wish a few more Catholics would have the gumption to see and say what is today’s main rival to their true religion. Here is a very brief overview of an article written on the subject in 2008 by Professor Faurisson:—

The Six Million constitute a lay religion with its own dogma, commandments, decrees, prophets, high priests and Saints: St Anne (Frank), St Simon (Wiesenthal), St Elie (Wiesel). It has its holy places, its rituals and its pilgrimages. It has its temples and its relics (bars of soap, piles of shoes, etc.), its martyrs, heroes, miracles and miraculous survivors (millions of them), its golden legend and its righteous people. Auschwitz is its Golgotha, Hitler is its Satan. It dictates its law to the nations. Its heart beats in Jerusalem, at the Yad Veshem monument.

It is a new religion that has enjoyed a meteoric growth since World War II. It has conquered the West and is setting out to conquer the world. Whereas the progress of scientific thinking in our consumer society has weakened the grip of all the classic religions by making people more and more sceptical as to the truth of religion’s stories and the promises religion holds out, the new religion prospers to the point that anybody caught denying its basic dogma is branded as a “Revisionist,” is cast out of the community, and is treated like only heretics used to be treated. It is in effect a religion, and it is today a major instrument, and, one might say, the popular religion of the godless New World Order.

The Professor argues that this success can be attributed to its resorting to the consumer society’s own techniques of advertising and selling. Here I think he does lack the religious perspective. Surely the apostasy of the once Christian nations is the main explanation. Christ is God. When God is pushed out, he leaves behind him a huge void which must be filled by something. The promoters of the new religion have by their history a matchless instinct for the fabrication of substitute religions. But be that as it may, I would invite believers to pray for the unbelieving Professor so that he may collect the divine reward which, humanly seen, he deserves for the heroic services which he has rendered to the truth.

Kyrie eleison.

Ark’s Reality

Ark’s Reality on March 22, 2014

` If anybody doubts that a worldwide chastisement is possible, such as Our Lady of Akita warned us of, let them remember it happened once 5,000 years ago, so it can happen again. And if they doubt that the worldwide Flood of Noah’s time actually happened, let them watch on YouTube the fascinating 53-minute film entitled “L’Arche de Noé et le Déluge: Preuves Historiques et Scientifiques.” Alas. in English YouTube seems to have no equivalent film on Noah’s Ark, but rather a good deal of disinformation. God’s enemies work hard to keep away from us such a sensational proof of the truth of the Bible as is the real existence of the Ark of Noah.

It nestles some 4,600 meters high up in a canyon on the snowline of Mount Ararat on the Turko-Armenian border. It is difficult of access because for most of the year it is covered in ice, and from above avalanches threaten at all times of year, while below there is danger from robbers and local civil wars. But after referring to the identical account of the Flood in multiple ancient languages, always with the same name of Noah, the French film continues with a long list of known visitors to the Ark down the ages, 34 of whose descriptions of what they saw are remarkably similar, according to the film.

The list begins with a Chaldean priest about half a millennium before Christ. It includes a Christian bishop in 360 AD and the famous Italian explorer, Marco Polo, in 1269. In 1840 a huge earthquake carved the canyon out of the side of the mountain where the Ark now rests and broke it into two pieces, now 30 yards apart. In the 19th and 20th centuries there followed numerous visitors to the Ark, and during and after World War II several American pilots flying over the mountain clearly recognized a huge man-made boat, dark in colour, shaped like a barge. They had no doubt they were seeing Noah’s Ark. Finally in our own time, in 2007, a team of Turkish explorers penetrated inside the Ark and took film footage which can also be found on YouTube, independently of the French film.

The film concludes with fascinating speculation of modern scientists and geologists on the mass of water which Scripture says drowned the highest (then) mountains to a depth of 7 meters (Gen. VII, 20). Especially worthy of note in Scripture is how it says that the water not only rained from on high but also burst up from below (Gen. VII, 11: VIII, 2). A persuasive explanation is offered on the film by an American engineer, Dr Walter Brown, who posits that before the Flood there were huge subterranean caverns of water, interconnected, some 800 meters deep, fiercely compressed beneath the earth’s surface crust of rock, 10 miles thick. It was enough for a split in that crust to run around the earth in two hours, and a mass of that water would explode upwards from below, changing the face of the earth, and explaining many features, Dr Brown argues, of the earth’s geology as we know it today. Altogether fascinating.

But how many people today want to know that God exists, that sin matters, and that the wrecking of environments is one way in which sin is punished? The film says that in the late 19th century, despite the number of visitors to the Ark, people were more interested in Evolution getting rid of God than in the Ark clearly pointing to him. True, God promised Noah that he would never again punish by a flood of water (Gen. IX, 15), but that does not exclude a worldwide rain of fire. Our Lady of Akita spoke in 1973 of the latter hanging over our heads. Certainly sin is today careering out of control, worldwide.

Kyrie eleison.

Resistance Policy – I

Resistance Policy – I on March 15, 2014

In today’s disastrous state of Church and world there are, amongst others, two central principles in play, the one permanent and primary, the other temporary and secondary, but both are central. Their interplay should be decisive to guide our actions.

The permanent principle is that “Without faith it is impossible to please God” (Heb. XI, 6). This is because all men come from God endowed with a free-will which they are meant so to use as to be able to go to God when they die, and enjoy the beatific vision of God for eternity. These obligatory terms of our earthly existence constitute an extremely generous offer on God’s part, given how relatively little is required on our part (Is. LXIV, 4), but the very least that we can do, a bare beginning, is to recognize his existence. Given the goodness of his Creation all around us, it is “inexcusable” not to recognize it (Rom. I, 20), and therefore without the most elementary faith in him it is impossible to please him.

The temporary principle is that the Shepherd is struck and the sheep are scattered (Zach.XIII, 7), text quoted by Our Lord in the Garden of Gethsemane (Mt. XXVI, 31). After 4,000 years of man’s repeated decadence, God took a human nature to found a Church to enable men to save their souls for the last 2,000 years of men’s existence on this earth. For the first thousand of those years the decadence was seriously interrupted, but after a few more centuries it picked up again to the point that with Vatican II the very leaders of God’s own Church, the Popes on whom it was designed to depend, became seriously infected by the decadence. Thereupon it became much more difficult for men to see how God meant them to save their souls.

Therefore on the one hand, objectively speaking, the permanent truths of salvation have not been changed one little bit by the fall of the Conciliar Popes, and these truths must be maintained if any souls at all are still to be saved. It was Archbishop Lefebvre’s glory to uphold those truths against the fallen churchmen and world, while it is his successors’ disgrace to be compromising them for the sake of rejoining those churchmen and their world.

On the other hand, subjectively speaking, that disgrace is mitigated by the temporary eclipse of those great truths, due to the fall of the Popes. It is not easy even for bishops to see straight when the Bishop of Rome is seeing crooked. It follows that those who by the grace of God – and by nothing else – see straight, must have a 360-degree compassion for souls caught in a confusion not entirely their own fault. Therefore, it seems to me, if James is convinced that to save his soul he must stay in the Newchurch, I need not hammer him to get out of it. If Clare is persuaded that there is no grave problem within the Society of St Pius X, I need not ram down her throat why there is. And if John can see no way to keep the Faith without believing that the See of Rome is vacant, I need urge upon him no more than that that belief is not obligatory.

Yet in all this scattering of the sheep, somebody must maintain and make available to them the objective Truth if the poor stones are not to have to do it (Lk. XIX, 40), because upon at least the seeking of that Truth depends the saving of our souls. However, let Catholics seek it with all due regard for the blindness of their fellow-sheep, for at least as long as the Shepherd remains struck.

Kyrie eleison.

Fiftiesism Observed

Fiftiesism Observed on March 8, 2014

If there is, at least up till now, relatively little reaction from within the Society of St Pius X to its complete change of direction under Bishop Fellay, that is because of the desire to return to the Catholicism of the 1950’s. So observes a Catholic attending Mass at an SSPX Chapel in the English-speaking world. She wrote to me recently:—

“Why is there no “Resistance” in our part of the world? I think I’ve figured it out. You’ve mentioned many times that most of the original leaders of the Society of St Pius X never really understood Archbishop Lefebvre. Locally, I think that that applies to many of our original chapel founders here, who are the ones clinging to the Society and to its present leaders. How come? Why don’t they take action, when what they fought so long and hard for is threatened with destruction from within?

“On Sunday, an elderly lady summed it up for me. As she and her husband see it, they strove valiantly through the 1970s into the early 80s, and the fruit of their labours is the chapel itself. The Mass with all the outward trappings, the property, the buildings, the pews, the statues, the vestments – this is what is threatened by the mere existence of the Resistance! They fought all those years to restore for themselves the Catholicism of their youth. For them, it’s NOT a question of doctrine at all. The woman is member of a Third Order, yet she believes doctrinal matters are for priests and bishops, not laity. For example, to study Papal encyclicals is meddling in affairs that God assigned to the hierarchy.

“I asked if they see a need to understand their Faith, if individual souls do not answer to God for knowing their Faith? Their response was sincere, I believe, but to me it was astonishing. They said, ‘No! The responsibility of the Catholic is to obey his superiors.’ And if the superiors are in error? ‘Obey anyway! To do otherwise is rebellion.’ It is for a Catholic ‘a sign of rebellion’ to even question his superiors ‘in matters that do not concern him,’ i.e. doctrine. If the superior is wrong, God will judge him – ‘You will never go wrong obeying the priest.’ So there you have it. The Resistants are rebels, disobedient, disrespectful. How dare they question the superior? How dare they presume to study doctrine, to ask questions of their superiors about it? The Resistants are evil, not because they are doctrinally wrong, but because their words and actions threaten the Catholicism of the 1950’s.

“But blind obedience is ridiculous! What are we lambs to do when the Shepherd is struck and the sheep are scattered? Pretend all is well. and let ourselves be devoured by wolves in the name of obedience? What can one say to such people? They are wilfully ignorant in the belief that wilful ignorance is a virtue! Where does such a mindset come from? What error crept into the Church to make Catholics switch off their minds? All I can say is that if the SSPX is left with flocks of lobotomised sheep, it will be easy for Rome to wipe out the last fortress of Tradition! The SSPX chapels need only to be handed over to the jurisdiction of the local bishop by formal agreement, or by de facto cooperation with Novus Ordo priests, which we have seen locally.”

Notice her evocation of the possibility of Rome absorbing the SSPX no longer by any clear-cut agreement, but by a gradual merger. It is a real danger. I wonder if that is not what SSPX HQ is being advised to do by its “new friends” in Rome.

Kyrie eleison.

Truth First

Truth First on March 1, 2014

There must be many objections to the argument of recent issues of these “Comments” that, divine truth being prior to human teachers, then the fallibility of Popes need not concern us all that much because the true Faith is behind, beyond and above them. But here is a classic objection: the Truth in itself may be above them, but to us human beings it only comes through them – “faith is by hearing” (Rom.X, 17). Thus Our Lord entrusted to Peter (i.e. the Popes) the task of confirming his brethren in the faith (Lk.XXII, 31–32). So to us Catholics the teachers are prior to the Truth which we cannot receive without them. Moreover the Holy Ghost guides them (Jn.XVI, 13), so how can I possibly tell if or when he is not doing so?

Also in Scripture lies the answer. St. Paul writes to a flock which he has instructed in the Faith: “Though we, or an angel from heaven, preach a gospel to you besides that which we have preached to you, let him be anathema.” And the point is so important that St Paul immediately repeats it: “As we said before, so now I say again: If anyone preach to you a gospel, besides that which you have received, let him be anathema” (Gal.I, 8–9)

But, a Galatian might have objected, why should we believe your gospel on your first visit to Galatia and not an eventually different one on your second? St. Paul immediately gives a first reason: “ The gospel which was preached by me is not according to man. For neither did I receive it of man, nor did I learn it, but by the revelation of Jesus Christ” (Gal.I, 11–12). And St Paul confirms this by narrating how little contact he had with those who might have taught him, the other Apostles, before he began preaching (I, 15–19), a fact obviously verifiable by them, and he swears to the Galatians that he is not lying (I, 20). A second reason he gives a little later, which is the miracles and experience of the Holy Spirit (III, 2–5) that the Galatians themselves had witnessed as the direct result of the preaching of Paul’s first visit.

Thus Paul proves that God both taught him, and confirmed for the Galatians, the gospel of that first visit, and the contradiction between it and any different gospel the Galatians would be not only able but also obliged to discern for themselves, if they wished to save their souls. And no matter if (I,8) the preacher of the different gospel were an angel or Paul himself – or a Pope! – the Galatians would still have the absolute duty to stay with Paul’s first gospel. The truth that had been set before them (III,1) the Galatians had recognized and accepted it (III, 3), just as one recognizes that 2 and 2 are 4, so it would have priority over any teacher eventually contradicting it, whatever authority to teach he might appear to have (I,9).

Thus Archbishop Lefebvre used to say that for the 19 centuries between St Paul and Vatican II the Church had preached exactly the same gospel, coming from God and ever and again confirmed by him. That gospel is, as revealed by God, Revelation; as handed down by churchmen, Tradition; as taught with authority by the Church, its Ordinary and Extraordinary Magisterium. Between that gospel and Vatican II the contradiction is obvious, so we must accept and believe Tradition, if we wish to save our souls, whatever the apparent authorities of the Church may say to the contrary. So help us God. How then can the Archbishop’s own Society of St Pius X be officially seeking reconciliation with the authorities of Vatican II?

Kyrie eleison.