Eleison Comments

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.

* In ANY CURRENCY small credit- or debit-card contributions from anywhere in the world can easily reach us via PayPal. (Go towww.paypal.com/sendmoney and send the contribution to buildingfund@stmarcelinitiative.​com).

* Contributions in POUNDS STERLING by banker’s draft or check should be made out and sent to the St Marcel Initiative, P.O. Box 423, Deal CT 14 4BF, England.

* Banker’s drafts or checks in US DOLLARS should likewise be made out to St Marcel Initiative and sent to 9051 Watson Rd., Suite 279, Crestwood, MO 63126, USA (the US contributions will soon be tax-deductible).

* In EUROS, checks made out to “Institut Culturel St Benoît” should be posted to ICSB, BP 60232, F78002 Versailles Cedex, France. Euros can also be sent by wire transfer from inside France to RIB – [write to letters@eleisoncomments.com for the number]; from outside France to the International Bank Account Number IBAN – [write to letters@eleisoncomments.com for the number].

* For other bank wire transfers, please write to us for details at buildingfund@dinoscopus.org, or, in the USA, use the convenient “e-check/bank wire” form at www.stmarcelinitiative.com.

Falling SSPX

Falling SSPX on October 26, 2013

For the glory of God and for the salvation of souls it is essential to diagnose why in today’s circumstances an end is now threatening the 40 glorious years of the defence of the Faith by the Society of St Pius X. An article and a letter recently written may help in this respect: an article analyzing the Society’s fall, and a letter with a note of hope as to how it may rise again.

The article appeared in French on the Internet (see “Un Évêque se lève”). After reading a book on utopianism in modern education which compares it to the same unrealistic dreaming in modern politics, the article’s author found that the same pattern in six stages could be applied to the SSPX. Firstly, the pattern: 1 A refusal of human nature as a given to be worked with, and not against. 2 A dream of fabricating the child/man completely anew. 3 The exclusion of natural structures of family/society. 4 The total re-fashioning of the child to generate a perfect new society. 5 The disastrous results, despite all the initial good intentions – 6 Ignorant and perverse children, and a society apostatising and making war on God.

Secondly, the application to the SSPX: 1 Refusal of the reality of the unprecedented crisis in the Church. 2 Dream of fabricating a reconciliation between the Conciliar Church and Tradition. 3 Exclusion of natural interaction between leaders and led. 4 Total re-fashioning of Catholic authority to impose the dream. 5 Disastrous resulting Stalinization of the SSPX, despite all pious intentions – in education, politics or the SSPX, when the dreamer confronts unyielding reality, he is liable to use all the force he has at his disposal to crush the reality – his dream is so much more lovely. 6 Loss of fighting spirit, liable to lead to entire loss of Faith.

The letter, reaching me by e-mail, follows the same general line of analysis, but adds a note of hope. Pope Francis and Bishop Fellay being who they are (both utopians, one might add), the letter-writer thinks that a Rome-SSPX agreement is bound to come, and resistance to it will be crushed. If the SSPX thus falls, he thinks it will have been by its under-estimating of the laity and by its under-employing of them to help establish in society the Social Reign of Christ the King. The SSPX need only pick up again with the laity to work for that Reign, and – here is the hopeful note – it will rally and strengthen all kinds of Catholics who have kept the Faith despite all they have suffered in recent years,coming from the Novus Ordo, from Ecclesia Dei, from Fransiscans of the Immaculate, or wherever. Thus, concludes the letter-writer, “the SSPX by the action of those remaining faithful to it will not sink into chaos, quite the opposite.”

For myself, while I agree that clericalism (undervaluing the laity) has been one aspect of the problem of the SSPX, I do not think that it has been the root of the problem. I think that the root has rather been today’s universal turning to man instead of God (cf. Jer. XVII, 5,7), a falling away by no means confined to the SSPX, with the consequent loss of objective truth and falsehood, objective right and wrong. However, I do agree with the letter-writer’s vision of a new alliance being forged at some time in the future, of true Catholics from all corners of the Newchurch and the Church, to carry forward the Catholic Faith (cf.Mt.XIX, 30). May the SSPX shake off its present problems to play a leading part, or, better, a humble part, in that alliance.

Kyrie eleison.

Francis Godless

Francis Godless on October 19, 2013

Catholics who retain any real sense of their faith are being scandalized by the words and deeds of the man presently seated on the Chair of Peter. One almost wonders if he was put there to destroy what remains of the Catholic Church. Like a true child of Vatican II, he is turning away from God towards man. Here for example are the first nine of eleven key quotes extracted (not by me) from an interview given by Francis on September 24 to the atheist editor of an Italian newspaper.

Quotes 2 to 5 concern the Church (I summarize): 2 The Church administration must be more horizontal, less vertical. 3 The Roman Curia is too self-serving. It must go out to the people. 4 The Pope must no longer be a king surrounded by flattering courtiers. 5 Too many priests are self-serving, and obstacles to Christianity. Now quotes like these will obviously please a modern democratic public that has never liked being told by the official Church what to do, but are these quotes fair or just towards the countless Popes, Curias, Administrations and Priests that went before Francis for 1900 years to maintain the structure of the Church for the salvation of souls? Will Francis on the contrary leave any structure still standing, any souls saved, behind him?

Quotes 1 and 6 concern the world: 1 On my watch the Church will stay out of politics. To leave democratic men to throw themselves into Hell? 6 The world’s two worst problems today are the unemployment of the young and the loneliness of the old. Now these are two real human problems of today, but why? Is it not because churchmen like Francis leave, precisely, politics to the politicians, putting money in front of young people? And because churchmen like him refuse to enforce those Church laws which, by holding the family together, help it to look after old people?

Quotes 7 to 9 concern religion: 9 Jesus gave us only one way of salvation, love of one another. But love of neighbour without love of God coming first turns into hatred of neighbour, for example Communism. 7a Converting people makes no sense. It makes the greatest of sense, if, as is the case, nobody can get to Heaven without believing in God and in his Divine Son, Jesus Christ! 7b We must all mix together and move one another to the Good. But we must all move one another towards God. What else is the Good? If Francis will not mention God, who will believe in God?

Quote 8 is the gravest of all: 8a “I believe in God, not in a Catholic God, there is no Catholic God.” This is gravely misleading. True, God is the God of all men, but he instituted for all men one religion, and one religion only, and that is the Catholic religion. Thus the God of Catholicism is the one and only true God. 8b “Jesus is his incarnation, my teacher and my pastor, but God the Father, Abba, is the light and the Creator.” Also gravely misleading. Does not that “but” suggest that Jesus is not the Creator? Does Francis believe that Jesus is anything more than just a man? 8c “Everyone has his own idea of good and evil and must choose to follow the good and fight evil as he conceives them.” This is not misleading at all. This is the denial of all objective morality, the denial of all principles of Catholic morality. This is an invitation to all men to do as they like. Coming from the man who is to all appearances the Catholic Pope, it is sheer insanity.

Pope Francis may plead that he is trying to get through to modern man, but to get through to him without God is just like jumping into a dangerous river to help a drowning man without a rope tied to the bank. One will only drown with him. Your Holiness, you are not helping but drowning!

Kyrie eleison.

N.B. Error in the American address last week – not 6051 Watson Street, but 9051. Apologies.

Happy Anniversary

Happy Anniversary on October 12, 2013

I have good news for all Catholics who understood what Archbishop Lefebvre was about. An eight-bedroom house is being bought in south-east England to serve as a base of operations for anybody wishing to continue his work outside of the present SSPX. For a whole year since my “exclusion” from the SSPX I have lain low, at least physically speaking, to watch and wait to see how things would develop within the SSPX, but they are not getting any better, alas.

And so just as the Archbishop can only have wished that Conciliar Rome would come back to its Catholic senses so that there would be no further need for his Society to maintain Tradition, so too one might now wish that the present SSPX leaders would come back to the Archbishop’s way of thinking about Conciliar Rome, so that resistance to their virtual conciliarism would be unnecessary. But wishes do not make reality go away, and that reality is that just as Conciliar Rome is obdurate in its apostasy, so too the SSPX leaders have not stopped promoting their own authority to do what they like with the Archbishop’s legacy – authority over truth. That is why some bricks and mortar have become a necessity for the on-going service of the true Church.

The house is being bought in England because England is the only country that I cannot be thrown out of as a foreigner. It is in south-east England with a relatively gentle climate for England, in a town not too far by fast train from London, and of easy access by Eurostar from Paris and Brussels. It is a picturesque town, and should be an agreeable place for priests to visit, to wind down, to talk (in all discretion), and to wind up again for today’s difficult apostolate. But it will cost more or less £400,000 to buy, and it will cost rather more to run than my present frugal way of life, for which I have not been in need and have hardly appealed. Let people who are themselves in need not think of contributing (see II Cor.VIII, 12–13), but let investors with fragile investments think of transferring funds to their completely secure bank accounts in Heaven before the stock markets collapse and before today’s paper monies are inflated out of all recognition. I must find within two months or so a tenth of the sum, and the rest soon afterwards.

* In ANY CURRENCY small credit- or debit-card contributions from anywhere in the world can easily reach us via PayPal. (Go to www.paypal.com/sendmoney and send the contribution to buildingfund@stmarcelinitiative.​com)
* Contributions in POUNDS STERLING by banker’s draft or check should be made out and sent to the St Marcel Initiative, P.O. Box 423, Deal CT 14 4BF, England.
* Banker’s drafts or checks in US DOLLARS should likewise be made out to St Marcel Initiative and sent to 6051 Watson Rd., Suite 279, Crestwood, MO 63126, USA (the US contributions will soon be tax-deductible).
* In EUROS, checks made out to “Institut Culturel St Benoît” should be posted to ICSB, BP 60232, F78002 Versailles Cedex, France. Euros can also be sent by wire transfer from inside France to RIB – [write to letters@eleisoncomments.com for the number]; from outside France to the International Bank Account Number IBAN – [write to letters@eleisoncomments.com for the number]. For other bank wire transfers, please write to us for details at letters@eleisoncomments.com, or, in the USA, use the convenient “e-check/bank wire” form at www.stmarcelinitiative.com.

Any contribution please mark “Building Fund.” Thank you in advance for all and any help.

Kyrie eleison.

Fatal Moment

Fatal Moment on October 5, 2013

Most readers of these “Comments” have probably understood by now the grave problem that is paralysing the defence of the Faith by the Society of St Pius X, and they might rather read of other things. But such is the mess created in millions of people’s minds by the global falling away from the Faith that I think one can hardly analyse too much today the nature of the Faith, the need of the Faith and how it gets undermined. Let me then, without wishing to harp on the SSPX’s recent misfortunes or misdemeanours, borrow one more example from its history of last year.

The Society’s General Chapter of July, 2012, was hailed immediately afterwards by many of its participants as a triumph of Society unity over the distress and tensions of the several previous months. Since that time however, a more sober view of the Chapter has taken over from the euphoria, and a number of those who took part in it see it rather as having been a disaster for the Society. One of the participants, or capitulants as they are called, has described the fatal moment when the Society’s leading 39 priests (myself excluded) put their own Society and Superiors in front of the doctrine of the Faith, just as the mass of Catholic bishops had done at Vatican II.

The Chapter’s deliberations proper opened with a serious doctrinal attack by the Rector of the SSPX seminary in Écône on the mid-April Doctrinal Declaration by which the SSPX had officially been ready to compromise with the neo-modernists in Rome on the Council, on the New Mass, on the New Code of Canon Law and on Pope Benedict’s “hermeneutic of continuity.” The attack was expressed in moderate and respectful terms, but it was most grave in substance. It meant in effect that whoever had drafted the Declaration, or encouraged its being submitted to Rome, was incompetent in Catholic doctrine. If they were consciously incompetent, they were traitors to the Faith. If unconsciously, they were unfit to be at the head of a Catholic Congregation founded to defend the Faith. So a hush fell upon the Chapter as capitulants began to realize how grave was the implicit accusation against their Superiors.

But then the Rector of the Society’s seminary in Argentina broke the hush by saying that the Chapter could not possibly administer a slap to its Superior General by requiring of him to retract his Declaration. That retraction, he said, would be implicit in the Chapter’s final Declaration. Then some other capitulant raised a different point, and the Chapter slid on to other business. However, the doctrinal problem of the treacherous mid-April Declaration was properly resolved neither by the Chapter’s final Declaration or six Conditions for a future agreement with Rome, nor by any clear subsequent retraction on the part of the Superior General himself, on the contrary. And the Society continues to be led in practice in accordance with the same policy of being gentle with the enemies of the Faith in Rome, who tear to pieces the Faith and with it the Church.

How could the capitulants not see that “respect for Superiors” was being put in front of the Faith? How could they not insist that the doctrinal problem, by far the most important problem in front of the whole Chapter, should be made clear, until all of them could fully grasp what action needed to be taken immediately, and not cleverly postponed until the end of the Chapter? The answer must be that collectively they were, like the bishops of Vatican II, children of the modern world for whom the doctrine of the Faith is not a vital necessity, but just something one learns in the seminary to become a priest, and then honours, but more or less disregards. Readers, read!

Kyrie eleison.

Fatima Secret

Fatima Secret on September 28, 2013

Yet another reconstruction has come to light of the third part of the Secret of Fatima, revealed by the Mother of God to Sister Lucy in July, 1917. The Blessed Virgin wished it to be made public in 1960 at the latest, but the perfidious churchmen controlling Rome pretended that she had merely allowed it to be published from 1960 onwards, and it has been locked away ever since. From hints of its contents revealed by the few churchmen that have been able to read it, several attempts have been made to reconstruct it. This latest attempt has much in its favour. Here is its story.

Cardinal Ottaviani (1890–1979) was a high churchman under Popes Pius XII, John XXIII and Paul VI, main protector of the Faith from 1959 to 1968. Given to read the Secret, but bound by secrecy, he found a way to reveal it without revealing it. Adding material to make the original Secret two to three times as long, he allowed the elongated version to be published, notably in a German magazine called Neues Europa. But the Vatican authorities could easily dismiss it as a fake, as it is now regarded, because the original Secret was known to be only 25 hand-written lines.

However, the Cardinal had a friend, Don Luigi Villa (1918–2012), a valiant priest and defender of the true Church, especially against Freemasonry. At some point the Cardinal revealed to Fr. Villa exactly which parts of the longer version came from the original Secret, and Don Villa in turn told the same to his faithful lay collaborator, Dr. Franco Adessa, who has just put the same information into Chiesa Viva, an Italian periodical. Here then would be the original “Third Secret”:—

“A great chastisement will come down on the whole of mankind neither today, nor tomorrow, but in the second half of the 20th century. Nowhere in the world is there order, and Satan rules in the highest places, determining the course of events. He will even manage to work his way up to the top of the Church. For the Church too will come the time of its greatest trials. Cardinals will oppose cardinals, bishops will oppose bishops. Satan will march in their midst, and in Rome there will be changes. What is rotten will fall, what falls will not get up again. The Church will be darkened and the world overwhelmed in terror. A great war will be let loose in the second half of the 20th century. Fire and smoke will fall from Heaven, the oceans’ waters will be turned into steam, the foam of the sea will rise up, overwhelming and flooding everything. Millions and millions of men will die from one hour to the next, while those who survive will envy the dead. Death will be everywhere because of the errors committed by the madmen and henchmen of Satan, who then and only then will reign over the world. Finally while those who survive these events are still alive, they will proclaim once more God and the glory of God, and they will serve him as men used to do when the world had not yet become so perverse.”

Fr Nicholas Gruner, an expert on Fatima, thinks that this version of the Secret may be incomplete, lacking mention of the Apocalypse and of recommended action. One may also object that the second half of the 20th century has come and gone with no World War. But have not madmen been stirring up war in the Middle East, continuously, from well before 2000 down to today? And it is worthy of note that every phrase in this version of the Secret does occur in the Neues Europaversion (accessible on the Internet), amidst material drawn or imitated from other pious sources.

In any case, may God truly have mercy upon us all, and let us pray the Rosary without ceasing.

Kyrie eleison.