Eleison Comments

Pathological Condition

Pathological Condition on August 17, 2013

The great Queen of Spain, Isabella the Catholic, is reported once to have commissioned a painting that would show a priest at the altar, a woman giving birth and a criminal being hanged. In other words, let everyone do what they are meant to do, and not something else. But these “Comments” suggested last week that today people are not being what they are: teachers often no longer teach, doctors often no longer heal, policemen often no longer protect, and – worst of all, I could have added – priests are often no longer men of God. A modern word used by an Italian friend to describe this maladjustment to reality, widespread today, is “pathological.”

Now “pathological” is a word belonging to that jargon of psychiatrists which is well named as “psychobabble,” because it dresses up in brand-new words, each of many syllables, what are merely good old miseries of fallen human nature. Now psychiatrists, themselves godless, cannot solve problems of godlessness, but at least they are trying, so to speak. So the novelty of psychobabble serves at least to suggest that the miseries being piled up in human beings today by the past centuries piling up the apostasy, do have something unprecedented about them. My friend writes:—

“Pathology may mean an occasional or congenital ailment, by extension an abnormal or distorted way of being, which, whether innate or acquired, has become part of an individual’s constitution. The same concept can be applied by extension to a group of individuals or a society. In this way one may speak of the pathological, i.e. sick, abnormal, condition of the modern world. As such, whether the condition is acquired or inborn, it is not seen for what it is by the person or persons concerned, nay, since they see it as normal they use it as a shield, and even boast about it. Abnormality becoming normal, and vice versa, is the drama of the modern world and modern man.”

Then we should find the priest neglecting the altar, women not giving birth and criminals not being hanged. But that is exactly the world around us – the psychobabble fits! So here is what the same friend has to say about how Catholics must react to this pathological condition of the modern world:

“Catholics must understand that we are living in an unprecedented situation in which all sense of objective reality is steadily being lost. This means for the Church that points of reference still valid 50 years ago no longer apply. Different solutions are called for which not only take into account the possibility of ever increasing disorder, but also remain elastic enough to adapt to a continually worsening situation. If then doctrine is primary and decisive, Catholics and future priests must be taught doctrinally how unique these end-times are. The Gospels tell us of their coming in the future, but they are with us here now, and they are liable to get only worse, until such time as God says enough is enough.”

In brief, centuries of increasing apostasy have piled up in the human race a refusal of reality which can be called “pathological,” and which is causing unheard of levels of distress in people, distress unalleviated by an equally unprecedented level of material prosperity. The Catholic Church fought this apostasy, but when at Vatican II it gave up the fight, the pathological fantasy took over the world, and it lurched towards the Antichrist. Archbishop Lefebvre created a fortress of sanity inside the crumbling Church, but now the same pathology is well on its way to taking over his Society.

Teachers, teach! Doctors, heal! Women, give birth! Priests, study everything that Archbishop Lefebvre said and did. And Queen Isabella, please pray for us.

Kyrie eleison.

Real Canonisations?

Real Canonisations? on August 10, 2013

“What do you think of Pope Francis’ intention to “canonise” John-Paul II and John XXIII next spring? Is it not a way of “canonising” Vatican II? And does that not raise the question of authority, given that all the manuals of theology prior to Vatican II teach that the Pope is infallible when he pronounces a canonisation?” Such was the serious question (slightly modified) put to me recently by a journalist of Rivarol. I answered along these lines:—

The determination shown by the heads of the Conciliar Church to canonise the Conciliar Popes demonstrates the firm will of the enemies (at least objective) of God to be done with the Catholic religion and to replace it with the new religion of the New World Order. Thus to a Newchurch correspond Newsaints to be fabricated by a process of canonisation which has been dismantled and “made new.” As is always the case with modernism, the words remain the same but the content of the words is quite different. Therefore Catholics who have the true Faith need not worry one little bit whether these Newcanonisations are infallible or not. They are proceeding from the Newchurch, which is a dummy of the Catholic Church.

But then what is this dummy? That is a delicate question, because one easily gets accused of being a “sedevacantist,” which is a word that nowadays frightens Traditionalists almost as much as the word “anti-semitic.” But what we need is to concentrate on reality by “judging just judgment and not according to the appearance,” as Our Lord says (Jn. VII, 24). We must not let ourselves be misled by appearances, by emotions or by words. Today for instance, are not schools becoming centres of unlearning instead of learning, hospitals places of killing instead of healing, police instruments of oppression instead of protection, and so on?

Thus by what Sister Lucy called a process of “diabolical disorientation,” the churchmen have become agents of lying instead of the Truth. They have allowed their minds and hearts to be taken over by the ideas and ideals of the Revolution, that radical and universal uprising of modern man against his God and Creator. Yet these objective traitors (they can still mean in their hearts to be serving God – Jn. XVI, 2) are still churchmen in the sense that nobody else than they is “sitting on the chair of Moses,” in Our Lord’s words (Mt.XXIII, 2). The Pope is sitting there.

In other words the dummy Church in question is the Church occupied not by men who are not churchmen, but by churchmen whose hearts and heads are occupied by more or less of a new religion which is absolutely not Catholic. But notice the “more or less.” Just as rot does not take over an apple all at once, so the dummy church, or the Newchurch, may be in the process of eclipsing the Catholic Church, but within it are still some bishops, many priests and a host of layfolk who can have kept the Catholic Faith up till now. They are on a slippery slope, highly dangerous for their faith, but one cannot say that they are outside of the true Church. God knows.

So when it comes to the authorities of the Newchurch, I would treat their authority as one does that of a family father who has gone temporarily mad. One pays no more attention to his madness than to be watching out for the moment when it comes to an end, but in the meantime one does not cease loving him or even respecting the authority intrinsic to his fatherhood. So help me God.

Kyrie eleison.

Continuing Damage – II

Continuing Damage – II on August 3, 2013

Besides arguing that the Doctrinal Declaration of mid-April last year was refused by Rome and so is of no further interest, people claiming that there has been no significant change in the Society of St Pius X also resort to the three bishops’ recent Declaration of June 27, which was obviously designed to reassure people that the SSPX lifeboat is undamaged and still perfectly seaworthy. However, souls wishing not to drown need to take a closer look.

It is the 11th paragraph which has become notorious. In brief, the bishops here state that they intend in the future to follow Providence, whether Rome soon returns to Tradition, or it recognizes explicitly the right and duty of the SSPX to oppose in public the Conciliar errors. Now this “whether” clause is out of the question because nothing short of a divine intervention is going to make the enemies of God, firmly established within the Vatican, let go of their Council. We come to the “or” clause. What can the bishops have meant by Rome “explicitly recognizing” the “right and duty” of the SSPX to oppose the Council?

The obvious meaning is that Rome would grant to the SSPX some official status within the mainstream Church, or some form of canonical regularisation. Some such recognition is obviously what the SSPX leaders have been striving for ever since they adopted the ideas of the Parisian think-tank, GREC, well over ten years ago. But when those leaders in April of last year largely accepted Rome’s terms for such a recognition, they created such a storm of protest within the SSPX that they were forced to pretend that they no longer want any such recognition based on the mid-April terms. Then what can the “or” clause of June 27 mean?

Within a few days the French District Superior put to them exactly that question. He was told that the “or” clause does not necessarily entail any official recognition, but merely the eventuality of a weak but Catholic Pope being on the one hand Catholic enough to recognize the SSPX’s “right and duty,” etc., but on the other hand too weak and isolated within Rome to be able to impose on the Romans any official recognition, etc. And the District Superior at least appeared to be content with this answer when he immediately transmitted it to the priests of his District.

Well, knock me over with a feather! Firstly, who, just reading the text of June 27, could ever have guessed that this was what the bishops had in mind? And secondly, what in the text of June 27 excludes a range of other possibilities that the bishops would accept in the name of “following Providence”? Given that on June 17, 2012, Bishop Fellay wrote to Benedict XVI that he would continue to do all he could to pursue a reconciliation between Rome and the SSPX, what in the text of June 27 excludes the cunning Romans eventually making to the bishops such an offer of reconciliation that – always in the name of “Providence” – they could not refuse?

Good luck to anyone who accepts the interpretation of the “or” clause given to the French District Superior. However, there are many of us who will remain unconvinced that the leadership of the SSPX has given up on its mad dream of reconciling irreconcilables. Until clear proof to the contrary, we will assume that those leaders remain, however unwittingly, intent upon turning the SSPX lifeboat into a deathboat. And when everyone drowns, they will make it all the ocean’s fault!

Kyrie eleison.

Continuing Damage – I

Continuing Damage – I on July 27, 2013

When people wish to defend the very bad Doctrinal Declaration (DD) officially submitted by the Society of St Pius X to the Roman authorities in mid-April of last year as the basis for a practical agreement between Rome and the SSPX, they will often argue that since Rome refused the DD, the DD is of no further interest and may be forgotten. But in this month’s issue of the “Recusant,” newly arisen magazine of the Resistance in England, there appears a contrary argument which deserves careful attention. Here it is, either quoted directly from the original, or summarized:—

“The DD, as both its name and its contents make clear, is a statement saying that a number of doctrinal positions on questions of the greatest importance in the present crisis in the Church are acceptable to the SSPX. The problem is that several of the positions expressed in the DD are not acceptable.” For instance the SSPX’s General Chapter of last July was told by a leading theologian of the SSPX that “This Declaration is ( . . .) profoundly ambiguous and sins by omission against the duty to denounce clearly the principal errors which are still raging within the Church and are destroying the faith of Catholics. As it stands, this Declaration gives the impression that we would accept the ‘hermeneutic of continuity’.” “The harm done by the DD is therefore that of a doctrinally dubious public statement. Nor has it, as such, been “withdrawn” or “renounced.” In fact Bishop Fellay consistently refuses to admit that there is anything doctrinally dubious about his Declaration. At the very most he admits to having tried to be “too subtle,” but he does not admit that such subtlety is highly objectionable in matters pertaining to the defence of the Faith. Bishop Fellay complains that the whole problem is that he “has not been properly understood” even by theologically very skilled members of the SSPX. He allows, among others, Fr Themann in the USA to defend the Declaration in public conferences that have been recorded and are being distributed among the faithful.”

It is true that matters might have been worse if Rome had accepted the DD, but that does not lessen the standing damage wrought by the DD’s manifestation of what is doctrinally acceptable to the SSPX. For if Bishop Fellay says that he “withdraws” and “renounces” the DD, he certainly seems to mean no more than that it was inopportune at that moment, as being liable to cause division in the SSPX. “He has never as much as suggested that the DD is doctrinally dubious and unacceptable. And that is where the real issue has been all along, and that is the issue that is far from being solved: the Superior General seems to refuse to make any unambiguous profession of the SSPX’s position.”

In conclusion, the scandal caused by the DD has still not been repaired “Trying to downplay the seriousness of the matter for the purpose of maintaining or regaining peace and quiet among the faithful risks encouraging the mentality that doctrine does not matter all that much, as long as things run smoothly and we can keep the true Mass, etc.” Such downplaying will only make the scandal worse (End of the article in the “Recusant”).

This article states very moderately the problem of the DD not being publicly recanted or retracted by Bishop Fellay. But how can any Catholic Congregation keep and serve the Truth when it is led by a Superior who so obstinately plays at ducks and drakes with the Truth? If the SSPX is a lifeboat, either it gets rid of this deluded Captain who constantly seeks to drill holes in the floor of the lifeboat, or the SSPX turns into a deathboat. May God in his mercy open the SSPX’s eyes.

Kyrie eleison.

Long-Range Forecast

Long-Range Forecast on July 20, 2013

Nearly 20 years ago, a certain bishop of the Society of St Pius X showed that it was possible to foresee the betrayal of Archbishop Lefebvre’s SSPX which nearly happened in 2009 and 2012, and which still risks happening. Disturbed by the self-admiration and lack of seriousness which he had observed at the SSPX’s recent elective General Chapter, here is a summary (with a few direct quotes) of what he said in the Society’s house in Le Brémien, France, on 17 July, 1994 (See on the Internet: Un évêque s’est levé le Brémien, and you should find the original text in French).

It would be nice to be able to say that in the SSPX we are opening houses everywhere, we are building, we are entering new countries, we have vocations, that everybody is nice and sweet and young and enthusiastic, that we have four bishops, and so on. “But why should the SSPX have any special protection against the forces unleashed today which have swept away thousands of excellent bishops and priests in the mainstream Church? ( . . .) What are the Society’s qualities, what are its guarantees?” Youth, oh yes, youth is nice, good-looking, physically strong, but what about age, experience and the wisdom of years? How can youth be expected to be wise?

In the 1950s and 1960s the Church appeared to be in good health, heroically resisting the onset of the post-war world. In England and the USA, there were huge numbers of conversions each year, so that the world could seem to be on the point of converting to the Catholic faith. But what happened? Exactly the opposite. With Vatican II, the truth stopped fighting and the Catholic Church surrendered to the modern world.

So let me give you a parallel scenario for the Society. In the 1990s this lovely little Society with all its marvelous little priests is heroically resisting the failings and betrayals of the official Church. There are conversions, and people are realizing that the new Church is false and non-functional, but just when the official Church seems to be on the point of surrendering, what might we see? I do not say we shall see it, but what might we see? The Society surrendering and going over to the official Church. If the Universal Church could collapse, why not all the more a tiny Society?

And here is another consideration. Before Vatican II every Catholic Order and Society had above it the Congregations of the Roman Curia so that “if something went wrong in a Society, not excluding a failure on the part of its leaders, something always humanly possible, then one could always appeal to Rome and Rome could intervene. In olden days it would generally intervene for the best, whereas today it generally intervenes for the worst, so now “it is better not to be under Rome, but watch out, there is a price to be paid, namely that there is nobody above us, and so our General Council, our little Superior-General, are the ceiling! Danger!” The Society is thrown back on its own resources. Now Archbishop Lefebvre was 65 years old when he founded the Society. But how many old men with long experience does the Society have in 1994?

In brief why should the Society be spared the problems of the Universal Church? I do not want the Society to break up, and please God, I shall do nothing to help it do so, but I can only say I would not be surprised if it did break up. God may preserve it, but He may also allow it to go the way of all flesh, to make us realize how little we are capable of by ourselves. We need wisdom, and special help from God.

Kyrie eleison.

Resistance Advances

Resistance Advances on July 13, 2013

The Silver Jubilee celebration in the USA of the 1988 episcopal consecrations was a great success. A dozen priests with one bishop celebrated two pontifical Masses on June 29 and 30 in the rectory garden of Father Ronald Ringrose in Vienna, Virginia, with some 250 to 300 faithful attending each Mass. Liturgically the ceremonies may have left somewhat to be desired, because no parish has the resources of a fully operational seminary. However, much more important, the mood of the people was tranquil, with no bitterness or anger in sight, only a clear understanding that something has gone seriously wrong with the Society of St Pius X, and that to keep the Faith they must do something about it. Many had come long distances to attend, even from abroad.

On the day before, Father Ringrose hosted a day-long meeting inside his rectory for the dozen priests coming from Brazil, Canada, Colombia, England, France, Mexico and the United States. No extra organization was formed, nor was any further administrative mechanism put in place, but another Declaration was arrived at, concluding with a long quotation from Archbishop Lefebvre about the rebuilding of Christendom from ground level upwards. The mood of the priests was like that of the people, tranquil and resolute, with a unity of purpose in the simple determination to rescue what they can of what the Society leadership is now betraying.

Betraying? But did not on June 27 the three other SSPX bishops, Tissier, Fellay and de Galarreta, also issue a Declaration which seemed in large part to revert to what the SSPX has always stood for? Be careful. As the Latins said, “the poison is in the tail.” The 11th of the 12 paragraphs states that the three bishops mean to follow Providence “either when Rome returns to Tradition . . .or when she explicitly acknowledges our right to profess integrally the faith and to reject the errors which oppose it.”

Now Father Ringrose has been for the SSPX in the USA a comrade in arms for some 30 years, but he is no longer keeping it company on its new and suicidal path. Here is what he wrote in his parish bulletin about the frame of mind expressed in this 11th paragraph:

“So even if Rome remains modernist, take us in anyway. We will be satisfied to be just another of the Conciliar pantheon, along with the heretics, ecumaniacs, pantheists, or whatever else is there. The Declaration sounds as if there has been a shift back to what the SSPX always stood for, but the door to a deal (between the SSPX and Rome) remains open. Nothing has really changed. It just sounds different. The contents of the can remain the same. The label on the outside just looks a little more like Archbishop Lefebvre.”

And the people seem to be voting with their feet. Reportedly there were only 200 to 300 people attending the Society’s own small-scale Silver Jubilee celebration in Ecône, and reportedly nigh on half the chairs were empty at Ecône’s annual priestly ordinations. It certainly seems as though the betrayal is making the Society steadily weaker while, as priests and faithful wake up to what is going on, the Resistance is going to grow stronger and stronger.

Kyrie eleison.