Eleison Comments

Transatlantic Resistance

Transatlantic Resistance on December 7, 2013

From a late autumn journey I made through centres of Catholic Resistance in Canada, the United States and Mexico, it seems as though the Resistance may be weak in numbers but it is strong in the Faith, which means that it certainly has a future. Once more the story of a faithful remnant is being repeated. With God it is quality and not quantity that counts.

Québec, once the most Catholic province of Canada, was devastated by Vatican II, but after the Council the Society of St Pius X built up important Traditional centres in Montreal and in Lévis, near the city of Québec. In Lévis now the Traditionalists are being divided, as souls strong in the Faith pick up on the Society’s dangerous change of course towards the Newchurch. The split amongst Traditionalists is a great shame, but the Faith must come first, as souls can see that are being given the grace to join the Resistance. It has the future that the Newchurch has not.

A major interest for the future of the Resistance in the USA is Fr Joseph Pfeiffer’s seminary initiative in Kentucky, which had six seminarians when I passed through in early November. I admire the fact that Fr Pfeiffer is envisaging a different kind of priestly formation for today’s insane circumstances. Since internment camps have been prepared all over the USA for any “rebels” who will seriously oppose the New World Order, it makes sense to me to be thinking of making future priests learn by heart a catechism and a Bible history, as written for children! For have the Society’s classical seminaries produced many priests strong enough in the Faith to see the need for Resistance? As after Vatican II, how many “good” priests are just following along.

In Texas I addressed a meeting of right-wing patriots who have for many years rallied around the Spotlightnewspaper, now the American Free Press, to defend their country from anti-patriots. By no means all of them are Catholics, but they do grasp that there is a serious problem in their nation’s politics. In any case they listened attentively to the argument that politics are merely a spill-over from religion, or from its lack, and that the only solution is a return to Catholicism.

In northern Mexico a former SSPX priest from Chile, Fr René Trincado, is building up thriving Resistance chapels which I visited in Chihuahua and Saltillo, and it looks as though another major Resistance centre will soon emerge in Guadalajara, a major city which was at the centre of the famous Catholic uprising of the Cristeros in the 1920’s. In fact the Resistance is an unorganised and spontaneous uprising of Traditional Catholics all over the world. Their sense of the Faith is reacting instinctively to the change of direction towards the mainstream Church being imposed from the top of the Society. Unity in a return to that Newchurch is unity in suicide of the Faith.

My last stop was Mexico City, scene of Hernan Cortes’ famous military conquest of Mexico in 1521 Even more deserving of fame is Our Lady’s miraculous spiritual conquest of the land by her apparitions in Guadalupe ten years later, creating a brand-new Catholic country. To this day her shrine attracts millions of pilgrims, and it is the same instinct of the Faith that is enabling another former SSPX priest, Fr Hugo Ruiz, to begin building up what will surely become an important Resistance centre in his nation’s capital city.

In brief, the world may be plunging into chaos and the mainstream SSPX may be giving up on the effort to resist that plunge, but a remnant of souls are realizing what is happening, and they are taking action to preserve the Faith. It may have to go into hiding, but it will not die.

Kyrie eleison.

Father Rioult – I

Father Rioult – I on November 30, 2013

Why was there not an uprising amongst priests of the Society of St Pius X when their leaders’ loss of grip on Catholic doctrine and subsequent betrayal of Archbishop Lefebvre’s work became absolutely clear from March of last year onwards? Fr. Olivier Rioult, trail-blazer of the “Resistance” in France, gave several good reasons last month in an interview accessible in French on pelagiusasturiensis.wordpress.com. The following summary is freely adapted from the original text:—

Basically, original sin: Once the original fight for Tradition in the 1970’s and ‘80’s had succeeded in guaranteeing the survival of the essentials of the Faith, Traditionalists sat back on their laurels to enjoy their cosy enclaves, and they settled into a comfortable routine which they are now reluctant to lose. They have lost the spirit of fighting for the Faith.

Secondly, that particular form of original sin which is liberalism: Over the last ten years Society leaders have given the lead in weakening the fight against liberalism, error and immodesty. But to cease swimming against the current is to drift backwards, and a number of SSPX priests – by no means all – have grown weaker in their convictions and their preaching.

Thirdly, activism: some colleagues can also let themselves be run off their feet by their priestly tasks, leaving themselves no time or inclination to read or study. Turning into mere administrators and communicators, they weaken their convictions and preaching.

Fourthly, Bishop Fellay’s trickery: for years his double-talk deceived everybody except a small minority of clear-sighted souls who could absolutely not get a hearing. Only last year did his mask come off with the March “Cor Unum” and with his reply of April 14 to the three bishops. The great majority of Traditionalists he had put to sleep (as he is now doing again).

Fifthly, fear of the unknown: when the whole world around you is going mad, and you find an enclave of sanity, and then that enclave also begins to go mad, it requires unusual strength of character to face up to the reality and not prefer some illusion or other, and of illusions there are plenty! Thus many priests realize that they are living through a drama calling for some crucifying decisions, but they lack the necessary fortitude to launch into the unknown.

And last but not least, bad leaders: of course there have always been liberals within the SSPX as within the mainstream Church, but for as long as the leaders hold firm, these can be held in check. However, when in the mainstream Church John XXIII and Paul VI favoured their liberalism, the result was a tidal wave , and now that SSPX leaders have turned liberal, liberalism is sweeping through the Society as it would never have done under good leaders, true leaders.

These reasons given by Fr Rioult are all true, but none of them are stronger than that Faith which is “our victory over the world” (I Jn.V, 4). Indeed one might say that all the reasons come down to the lack of a strong enough Faith on the part of the priests, because they are living in a world in which the grip on Truth of every soul alive has been loosened, and if Truth is not true, how can Faith be true?

Then what is the simplest way to strengthen one’s grip on Truth, as we absolutely need to do in today’s crazy circumstances? In my opinion:—

“Watch and pray, watch and pray,

Fifteen Mysteries every day.”

Kyrie eleison.

Faith First

Faith First on November 23, 2013

The great lesson taught by Archbishop Lefebvre (1905–1991) to Catholics who had ears to hear was that the Faith is higher than obedience. The sad lesson we have learned since is that obedience keeps on being rated higher than the Faith. These “Comments,” driven continually by today’s confusion in Church, world and Society of St Pius X to get back to basics, have often attempted to explain why the Faith must come first.

Take for instance the arguments of an honourable SSPX priest who recently sent me an e-mail, accusing me of wrongly assessing the present state of the SSPX. My resistance to the – as I call it – Newsociety is, he says, 1) too personally motivated, 2) forgetting the good of the Church, 3) inconsistent with positions I have taken before, 4) lacking Catholic realism, 5) against Church indefectibility, 6) for each man being his own Pope, 7) for a modernist vision of the Church, 8) Protestant, 9) against union with Rome, and finally 10) pushing souls away from the Church.

Now, I am no Archbishop Lefebvre, and I do not pretend to be, but does my colleague realize that all of these arguments (except the third) he could have applied thirty years ago to the Archbishop’s resistance to the official Church authorities in Rome? Yet the Archbishop’s resistance was 1) motivated only by the urgent need to defend the Faith, 2) for the good of the Universal Church, 4) in a completely realistic way (as the Catholic fruits of his Society proved), 5) not disproving but proving, by his very resistance, the Church’s indefectibility, 6) for the Church of all time being the measure of the Popes, 7) against all craziness of neo-modernism, 8) against modernism’s renewal of Protestantism, 9) for union with the Catholic Rome of all time, and finally 10) helping many truly Catholic souls to keep the Faith instead of losing it.

And what justified the Archbishop’s resistance back then? What proved then that he was not, despite the appearances, a rebel like Luther, but truly Catholic, and a great servant of the Church? His doctrine, his doctrine, his doctrine! Whereas Luther denied a mass of Catholic teachings, the Archbishop affirmed every one of them. It was in the name of the doctrine of the Faith that the Archbishop took his stand against the Conciliar Popes and Church authorities who were radically undermining that doctrine by renewing and adopting the dreadful errors of modernism.

So what justifies now a certain resistance to the leadership of the SSPX? How can those who resist claim to be the truest servants of the SSPX? Doctrine, doctrine, doctrine! The mid-April Declaration of 2012 was proof of an appalling doctrinal deficiency at the top of the SSPX, and while the Declaration was withdrawn, its contents have not been retracted but even defended, as being for instance “too subtle”! Nor have the official SSPX documents of July 14, 2012 or June 27, 2013 properly undone the damage. The proof is that the governing policy of SSPX HQ has not changed. Dear colleague, your own Society was founded on putting Faith before apparent obedience, and now you want to defend that Society by putting apparent obedience to the Society before the Faith? Study the documents, and watch the actions!

Kyrie eleison.P.S. Meanwhile does anybody have a complete set of Spanish or French translations of this “Commentary” from when they began to appear, in the early EC 100’s? Please let us know.

Tomorrow’s Leaders

Tomorrow’s Leaders on November 16, 2013

There are two good reasons why not even very pious Catholics should scorn economic questions. Individually, to run their own household they need common sense in this domain, now heavily discounted. And socially, they need some grasp of what is going on in the society around them, because that truth is heavily distorted by the conscious or unconscious agents of the anti-Christian New World Order (NWO), which aims to make all souls finish in Hell.

More than once readers here have had recommended to them the common sense and truthfulness of an American commentator, Dr Paul Craig Roberts. He has recently written an article arguing that the real crisis in the USA government is not its shutdown, being then much talked about, but its constant underlying inability to balance its budget, because of too little income and too much expenditure. The too little income he attributes not to the expense of Social Security, which pays its way, but to decades of out-shoring America’s manufacturing to foreign lands with cheap labour, which has so impoverished American consumers that tax revenues have severely dropped. Too much expenditure he attributes to the draining cost of one foreign war after another. So he diagnoses that for the American government to solve its real crisis, the jobs must be brought home and the foreign wars stopped. But “powerful organized interests oppose any such measures, and so Congress will do neither.”

In fact Dr Roberts adds that in his opinion the American economy cannot be salvaged in its present form because unwise use of technology is exhausting the environment. Moreover economists being “incapable of original thought” and “elected representatives being dependent on the private interests that finance their election campaigns,” then “at this time collapse seems the most likely forecast.” And there will only come something more intelligent from the ruins, he says, if there will be leaders to show the way.

The Doctor paints a dark picture, but its common sense and truth must be heeded. The common sense is that a major budget problem must be solved by a major increase in revenue or by a major cut in costs, or both. It cannot be solved by going into ever more colossal debt. One truth he mentions is the foolishness of economists without common sense, for example their pretence that manufacturing jobs, being outmoded, might just as well be out-sourced. Another truth is the power of the “organized interests” that push for foreign wars, and of the “private interests” that control the supposedly democratic elections.

But what motive can these interests have for wishing to drive the United States economy into collapse? Agents of the NWO are working hard to break down the United Sates and all Western nations with any national identity or pride, so that they will let themselves be the more easily absorbed into the NWO. Economists will be made dumb in the Schools of Economics, and elected representatives will be handsomely paid to enmesh their countries in debt, because Scripture says that the debtor makes himself servant, or slave, of the creditor. Thus the problem of Western governments is being made deliberately so insoluble that the temptation to distract the enslaved peoples with World War III will eventually become irresistible. Was it not resisted only just in the recent push for the attack on Syria? Catholics, you are going to have to be tomorrow those leaders that Dr Roberts hopes for today. Only you have the complete picture. Study and pray.

Kyrie eleison.

Fatima Contested

Fatima Contested on November 9, 2013

At the outset of the 20 th century surely God gave to the modern world two great lights: for theory, through Pius X, the Encyclical Pascendi in 1907, to denounce the key error of subjectivism; for practice, through his Mother, the apparitions of Fatima in 1917, to provide a remedy for the monstrous plague of Communism. But the Devil deflects attention from Pascendi, and raises a series of objections to discredit Fatima. Here are a few of the main objections:—

* How can we take seriously Cardinal Ottaviani’s version of the third part of the Fatima Secret when supposedly Our Lady says there that a third World war will start in the latter part of the 20 th century? The year 2000 has come and gone, and there has been no third World War. There is an interesting parallel here between the second and third parts of the Secret of Fatima. In the second part Our Lady said that a worse war than WW I would start under the reign of the next Pope, which was Pius XI. Yet Pius XI died in the spring of 1939 and WW II was only declared in the autumn when Pius XII was Pope. Did Our Lady get her calendar wrong? No, she was simply going by the reality instead of by the appearances. In reality WW II started in 1938 when Stalin was deciding to make a pact with Hitler so as to liberate Hitler to make war on his western front. See in the May, 2000, Rector’s Letter (on eleisonkommentar.blogspot,com) the whole fascinating story of this real start to WW II. Now whether or not the Ottaviani version is or is not the true “Third Secret,” may the reality not be that WW III began in the Middle East before the year 2000, for instance with the first invasion of Iraq in 1991? Things are not always how they appear.

* In WW II we saw horrific bombings of Dresden, Tokyo, Nagasaki. What will be new here? Total WW II deaths are reckoned usually at some 66 million, in the tens of millions. If one reads rightly several warnings of Our Lady, and not only in Fatima, casualties from WW III and the Chastisement will be reckoned in the thousands of millions. Of the order of 100 times worse.

* But what material Chastisement could be worse than the spiritual chastisement of our own days? True, next after the Fall of Adam and Eve, Vatican II was the worst disaster in all the history of mankind. Yet the mass of men see it as a great liberation. “Sticks and stones will break my bones, but words will never hurt me,” is the old saying. Spiritual punishments are in themselves much greater, but it takes material things for us men to understand (cf. Mt. IX, 6, and Jn. XX, 27).

* Our Lady of Fatima promised a period of peace if the Pope performed a certain consecration. Popes since then have performed several such consecrations, but we have had no peace. True, there have been several consecrations inspired no doubt by Our Lady of Fatima, but never yet exactly as she required: by the Pope, of Russia, to her Immaculate Heart, in union with all the bishops of the world. One or other of these four conditions has always been lacking.

* Our Lady of Fatima told us of “nations being annihilated” and of “a period of peace.” We saw nations annihilated in WW II, and a period of peace in the 1950’s. Her prophecies have happened. What nations have remained annihilated since WW II, and just how much peace was there in the Cold War of the 1950’s? Our Lady of Fatima spoke of far greater events than have yet happened.

Sacred Heart of Jesus, have mercy upon us. Immaculate Heart of Mary, intercede for us.

Kyrie eleison.

Please Help

Please Help on November 2, 2013

Regularly over the last 20 years I have said that the Society of St Pius X could fail. Colleagues never liked me saying it, and contrary to what some people think, I did not enjoy saying it either, but here we are. Here for instance is a quotation sent to me recently by a reader, taken from an ordinations sermon I gave in 1984, and which of course I had completely forgotten:—

“At the beginning of the Church Militant Jesus Christ led his followers through the catacombs and persecution out into the open, and at the end of the Church Militant He may well lead them from the tent in the open field through persecution back to the catacombs. If it comes to that, and if we make it to the catacombs, for many of us it will certainly not have been without the Society but back in the catacombs we may have to do without the Society ( . . .). Dear seminarians! Regularly I tell them ( . . .) that the whole world is against them; that the whole world is going to hell in a hand-basket; that the Society of St. Pius X could easily perish; that the future is dark and where there is no gloom it is full of doom. Do you know, I do believe that if any of my dire forebodings actually came true, seminarians would be pleasantly surprised!” And what do I think I see now in the “Resistance”? The painful but steady emergence of the joyful remnant of Catholics from the remnant of Traditionalists who in their time emerged from the ruins of Vatican II. Nothing yet persuades me of the need for a structure or a seminary to replace those of the SSPX, but these are early days in the history of the Resistance. What I do think is needed is a base of Resistance operations in England, not far from the Continent nor from London airports, bricks and mortar to lend some solidity to the Resistance, and to provide, for instance, a refuge where priests can recuperate for at least a few days, under no kind of pressure, from the real hardships of today’s apostolate.”

The house has been chosen, it does exist, we have agreed to buy, and donations are coming in, but we do now need both £40,000 by the end of November and another £360,000 by mid-December. I do not like making promises, but with the help of God I have no intention of abandoning the defence of the Faith, whatever form that defence may take over the next several years. Please help, and in today’s shadow of tomorrow’s collapse of currencies, do think of making a heavenly investment guaranteed by the whole host of Heaven. Bless you for any and all donations. I attach again details of means of payment.

Kyrie eleison.

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