Eleison Comments

Free-will Valued

Free-will Valued on August 11, 2012

Concerning the drama of souls falling into Hell (and many choose to do so – Mt.VII, 13; XXII, 14), a reader raises a classic problem which can be framed briefly as follows. Either God wants souls to be damned, or he doesn’t. If he does want it, he is cruel. If he does not want it, yet it still happens, then he is not omnipotent. Then is he cruel, or is he not omnipotent? Which?

Let us establish immediately that God sends no soul to Hell. Every one of the many souls damned sent itself to Hell by the series of choices that it made freely during its time on earth. God gave to it life, time and free-will, and also any number of natural helps and supernatural graces to persuade it to choose to go to Heaven, but if it refused, then God let it have what it wanted, namely an eternity without him. And that loss of God, for a soul made by God only to possess God, is by far its cruellest suffering in Hell. Thus God wished that the soul might choose Heaven (“He will have all men to be saved” – I Tim. II, 4), but he wanted to allow the evil of its choosing Hell in order to bring out of that evil a greater good.

Notice the use made here of the two English words, “wish” and “want.” To “want” something is more full-blooded than merely to “wish” it. Thus a family father may well not wish his son to suffer harsh experience in life, but in view of all the circumstances he can want to let him suffer because he knows that that is the only way his son will learn. Similarly in the parable of the Prodigal Son, the father did not wish to let his younger son leave home and squander his heritage, but he wanted to let him do so because that is what the father in fact did, and good did come of it – the return home of the son, now repentant, a sadder but wiser young man.

In the same way God wishes on the one hand all souls to be saved, because that is what he created them for, and that is why he died for all of them on the Cross, where one large part of his suffering lay precisely in his knowing how many souls would not choose to profit by their Redemption to be saved. Such a God can in no way be considered or called cruel! On the other hand God does not want all souls to be saved unless they also want it, because if he did, they would all be saved, because he is all-powerful, or omnipotent. But, given all the circumstances, that would mean in effect overriding the free choice of those who, left to themselves, would choose not to be saved, and that would mean trampling on their free-will. Now just see how passionately men themselves value their free-will, when you see how they dislike being given orders or like being independent. They know that their free-will is the proof that they are not just animals or robots. So God too prefers his Heaven to be populated with men and not just with animals or robots, and that is why he does not want all men to be saved unless they also want it.

Yet God does not want souls to be damned, because that again would be cruelty on his part. He only wants to allow them to be damned, in view of the circumstances that souls will thus have the eternity of their own choice, and he will have a Heaven of human beings and not just animals or robots.

Thus his wish to save all souls means that he is by no means cruel, while the damnation of many souls proves on his part not a lack of omnipotence, but a choice to value his creatures’ free-will, and the infinite delight that he takes in rewarding with Heaven souls that have chosen to love him on earth.

Mother of God, now and in the hour of my death, help me to love your Son and to choose Heaven!

Kyrie eleison.

A Chapter

A Chapter on August 4, 2012

As many of you know, a certain bishop was excluded from the General Chapter, or meeting of heads of the Society of St Pius X, held last month in Écône, Switzerland. To confirm the exclusion, use was apparently made of the adaptation by “Eleison Comments” (#257, June 16) of St Paul’s seemingly murderous wish that the corruptors of the Catholic Faith be “cut off” (Galatians V, 12). Actually Ambrose, Jerome, Augustine and Chrysostom all think that the wish, in context (Gal.V, 1–12), is aimed at the Judaisers’ manhood rather than at their very lives, and Chrysostom thinks it is a jest.

However, when I heard what serious use was being made of the jest at the Chapter, I must admit that I had a naughty vision: I imagined my noble colleagues in SSPX headquarters looking out of the windows at night to see if there might not be a lanky episcopal Englishman, heavily disguised as Jack the Ripper, prowling around in the bushes with a long carving-knife gleaming in the moonlight, seeking someone to carve to pieces. Dear colleagues, sleep easy – I have no murderous ambitions. Honestly!

But the Chapter was serious business. What did it produce? Above all, a Declaration, made public a few days later, and six conditions for any future Rome-SSPX agreement, leaked on the Internet soon after that (given how many souls are presently entrusting their faith and their salvation to the guidance of the SSPX, I find such a leak not unreasonable). Now all honour to the good men at the Chapter who by all accounts did their best to limit the damage, but if the Declaration and conditions give us the present mind of the Society’s leaders as a whole, then there has to be cause for concern.

As for the Declaration of 2012, it is enough to compare it for a few moments with Archbishop Lefebvre’s Declaration of 1974, to wonder what has happened to his Society. Whereas the Archbishop explicitly and repeatedly denounces the reformation wrought by Vatican II (“born of Liberalism and Modernism, poisoned through and through, deriving from heresy and ending in heresy”), in words that brought down upon him the wrath of the Conciliar Popes, on the contrary the Declaration of 2012 refers only once to the Council with its “novelties” merely “stained with errors,” in terms that one can easily imagine Benedict XVI underwriting from beginning to end. Does the SSPX now think that the Conciliar Popes represent no serious problem?

As for the six conditions for any future Rome-SSPX agreement, they deserve a detailed examination, but suffice it to say here and now that the demand made by the SSPX’s 2006 General Chapter for a doctrinal agreement prior to any practical agreement seems to have gone completely by the board. Is it now the mind of the SSPX that the doctrine of the Romans to whom they would submit is no longer so important? Or is the SSPX itself succumbing to the charms of Liberalism?

For a contrarian point of view, may I venture to recommend a collection of “Sermons and Doctrinal Conferences” of His Excellency Jack the Ripper from between 1994 and 2009, now available on seven CD’s from http://​truerestorationpress.​com/​node/​52, with special incentives to purchase expiring at the end of this month? Not every word in these 30 hours of recordings may be golden, some words are no doubt too temperamental, but at least the effort is made to disembowel the enemies and not the friends of our Catholic Faith.

Kyrie eleison.

Conciliar Infection

Conciliar Infection on July 28, 2012

May Catholics who wish to keep the Faith attend a Tridentine Mass celebrated by a priest who is part of the Conciliar Church, for instance by his belonging to the Institute of Christ the King or to the Fraternity of St Peter? The answer has to be that, as a rule, a Catholic may not attend such a Mass, even if it is a Tridentine Mass, and even if it is worthily celebrated. What can be the justification for such a seemingly strict rule?

The basic reason is that the Catholic Faith is more important than the Mass. For if through no fault of my own even for a long time I cannot attend Mass but I keep the Faith, then I can still save my soul, whereas if I lose the Faith but for whatever reason go on attending Mass, I cannot save my soul (“Without faith it is impossible to please God” – Heb. XI, 6). Thus I attend Mass in order to live my Faith, and, belief going with worship, I attend the true Mass in order to keep the true Faith. I do not keep the Faith in order to attend Mass.

It follows that if the celebration of a Tridentine Mass is surrounded by circumstances that threaten to undermine my faith, then depending on the gravity of the threat, I may not attend such a Mass. That is why Masses celebrated by schismatic Orthodox priests may be valid, but the Church in her right mind used to forbid Catholics to attend on pain of grave sin, because, belief and worship going together, the non-Catholic worship threatened the Catholics’ faith. Now Orthodoxy has in the course of centuries caused huge harm to the Catholic Church, but can anything compare with the devastation wrought upon that Church within mere tens of years by Conciliarism? If then Catholics were forbidden to attend Mass in Orthodox circumstances, would not the same Church in her right mind forbid to attend a Tridentine Mass celebrated in Conciliar circumstances?

Then what is meant by Conciliar circumstances? The answer must be, any circumstances which, over a shorter or longer period of time, are going to make me think that the Second Vatican Council was not an utter disaster for the Church. Such a circumstance might be a charming and believing priest who has no problem with celebrating either the new or the old Mass, and who preaches and acts as though the Council presents no serious problem. Conciliarism is so dangerous because it can so be made to seem Catholic that I can lose the Faith without – or almost without – realizing it.

Of course common sense will take into account a variety of special circumstances. For instance a good priest trapped for now within the Conciliar church may need encouragement to start on his way out of it by my attending his first celebrations of the true Mass. But the general rule must remain that I can have nothing to do with even the true Mass being celebrated in a Conciliar context. For confirmation, notice how Rome began by allowing the Institute of the Good Shepherd to celebrate exclusively the true Mass, because Rome knew that once the Institute had swallowed the official hook, eventually Rome could be sure of pulling the Institute into their Conciliar net. Sure enough. It took only five years.

That is the danger of any practical agreement without a doctrinal agreement between Rome and the Society of St Pius X. So long as Rome believes in its Conciliar doctrine, it is bound to use any such agreement to pull the SSPX in the direction of the Council, and the context of every SSPX Mass would become Conciliar, if not rapidly, at least in the long run. Forewarned is forearmed.

Kyrie eleison.

Resistance Undermined

Resistance Undermined on July 21, 2012

The good news from the General Chapter of the Society of St Pius X which closed on Saturday is that the SSPX, led to the brink of suicide, has been given a reprieve by the Chapter. However, if the following words, spoken in an interview broadcast worldwide, are any indication of the mind of the leaders still in place for another six years, prayers must still go up for the reprieve to last. Here are the words (which may or may not still be accessible on the Internet – see Catholic News Service):—

“Many people have an understanding of the Council(Vatican II) which is a wrong understanding, and now we have people in Rome who say it. We may say, in the Discussions(between Rome and the Society of St Pius X, from 2009 to 2011), I think, we see that many things which we(in the SSPX) would have condemned as coming from the Council are in fact not from the Council, but from the common understanding of it.”

To comment, we must go back to Vatican II. Containing both truth and error, its 16 documents are profoundly ambiguous and contradictory. Following Archbishop Lefebvre, the SSPX has never said that the documents contain no truth, but it has always accused them of containing serious errors, for instance the doctrine that the State has no right to repress non-Catholic religions. Conciliar Rome has always defended the documents, for instance by referring to the opposite truths contained in them, such as that every man must in matters religious find out and profess the truth. But the truths have never been the problem. The problem is the error and the contradiction. For instance, if a mass of individuals, such as the State, may be neutral in religion, why should the single individual not be? The contradiction opens the door wide to the liberation of man from God – liberalism.

The Doctrinal Discussions of 2009 to 2011 were set up to examine the doctrinal clash between the Romans’ Conciliar subjectivism and the SSPX’s Catholic objectivism. They showed, of course, that the clash is profound and irreconcilable, not between Conciliar truth and Catholic truth, but between Conciliar error and Catholic truth, in effect between the religion of man and the religion of God.

Now comes the speaker to state that the “people in Rome” are right, and that “we” are wrong, i.e. the SSPX, because “many things” the SSPX has constantly condemned as coming from the Council come only from a “common understanding” of the Council. In other words, the Archbishop and his Society were wrong from the beginning to accuse the Council, and accordingly to resist Conciliar Rome. It follows that the episcopal consecrations of 1988 must have been an unnecessary decision, because Conciliar bishops could have been trusted to look after Catholic Tradition. Yet the Archbishop called those consecrations “Operation Survival,” and he called trusting Conciliar Rome “Operation Suicide.”

Today the speaker – consistently with his words quoted above – is certainly favouring a Rome-SSPX agreement. Moreover he is quoted as suggesting in Austria two months ago that this agreement would entrust Conciliar Rome with choosing the SSPX’s future bishops. Then unless Rome has stopped being Conciliar since the Archbishop’s day, and all the evidence cries out against such an illusion, the Archbishop would have said that the speaker was promoting “Operation Suicide” of the SSPX – unless the speaker has since disowned these words.

Kyrie eleison.

Benedict’s Ecumenism – VI

Benedict’s Ecumenism – VI on July 14, 2012

It was promised that in the last of this series of “Eleison Comments” articles inspired by Dr Wolfgang Schüler’s book on “Benedict XVI and the Church’s View of Itself” its main lesson would be applied to the present situation of the Society of St Pius X. The application has already been suggested: if one can only be Catholic by belonging to the living organism of the Catholic Church, then one will become Conciliar by belonging to the organism of the Conciliar Church.

Benedict XVI holds that Catholic pieces cut off from the Catholic Church still belong to the Church of Christ. Dr Schüler, following Our Lord (Jn. XV, 1–7), argues on the contrary that the Church being a living organism, then branches cut off it wither and die, because it is the plant that gives them its life. It follows that if the SSPX is grafted onto the Conciliar plant which is wholly diseased with the Vatican II religion of man, then the Conciliar plant will transmit its disease to the SSPX. Here are three quotes of Archbishop which express this reality:—

In 1984, well before the Episcopal consecrations of 1988, he condemned in advance the illusion that the SSPX, by “getting back inside the Church would be able to fight, to do this, to do that.” He replied, “That is absolutely untrue. You don’t get back inside a structure, putting yourself beneath its superiors, and expect that once inside you are going to turn everything upside down. The reality is that they have everything they need to strangle us. They have all the authority.”

In 1988, just before the consecrations, he said, “Rome wants everything to go Vatican II, while they leave us a little bit of Tradition. ( . . .) They are not changing their position. We cannot put ourselves in the hands of those people. We would be fooling ourselves. We do not mean to let ourselves be eaten up. ( . . .) Little by little Tradition would be compromised.”

In 1989, soon after the consecrations, he answered the objection that the SSPX would have done more good for the Church by staying inside than by getting itself put outside. He replied,”What Church are we talking about? If you mean the Conciliar Church, then we who have struggled against the Council for 40 years because we want the Catholic Church, we would have to re-enter this Conciliar Church in order, supposedly, to make it Catholic. That is a complete illusion. It is not the subjects that make the superiors, it is the superiors that make the subjects. Amidst the whole Roman Curia, amidst all the world’s bishops who are progressives, I would have been completely swamped. I would have been able to do nothing.”

In conclusion, if by any practical agreement or canonical regularization the SSPX were to put itself under the Conciliar authorities of the Church that are still firmly attached to the ideas of Vatican II, as the Doctrinal Discussions of 2009–2011 amply proved, then its defence of the true Faith would be “strangled, eaten up, swamped.” Grafted into the living Conciliar whole, it could not help receiving from it the diseased Conciliar life. God forbid!

Kyrie eleison.

Vatican II-B

Vatican II-B on July 7, 2012

The parallels between Vatican II and the recent happenings within the Society of St Pius X are so striking that these happenings could be called Vatican IIB. It stands to reason. Exactly the same seduction and pressure of the modern world that made the mainstream churchmen collapse in the 1960’s have swayed a number of SSPX members in the 2000’s, bringing the SSPX to near collapse. I recently imagined I heard a mother telling her child a bed-time story:—

“Once upon a time there was a flourishing Catholic Church, but it was surrounded by a naughty modern world. So the Church condemned the modern principles on which that world was based. But that world did not like being condemned, so it did all it could to infiltrate the Church and stop its condemnations. However, events like two dreadful World Wars were proving the Church to be right, and so souls were joining the Church in large numbers because it was providing true solutions to the world’s problems.

“But then disaster struck! Just when so many souls were surrendering to the sweet yoke of Christ, the leading churchmen decided that the modern world was right after all, and so at a great four-year meeting in Rome they changed the Church’s principles to fit the modern world. They made friends with all the Church’s former enemies, and were very cruel towards the Church’s true friends that wanted nothing to do with the modernization. These true friends were only a small minority of Catholics, because over several centuries Catholics had come to put so much trust in their leaders that even when these were betraying the Church, still the Catholics put their trust in them. However God in his mercy at last gave his true friends a leader of their own, a truly Catholic Archbishop, and then they began to rally, and a truly Catholic movement of resistance began to flourish.

“However, the movement was surrounded by the naughty Newchurch whose Newchurchmen did not like being condemned as modernists by the movement. So they did all in their power to shut it down. But events such as the emptying out and shutting down of one Newchurch institution after another were proving the movement to be right, and so more and more Catholic souls were making their way towards the movement because of its true solutions to the problems otherwise insoluble, both of the modern world and of the Newchurch which had gone over to that world.

“But then disaster struck! Just when the movement was gaining more and more souls from the collapsing Newchurch, the leaders of the movement began to say that the ills of the modern world can be exaggerated, so the four-year meeting was not so bad after all. These leaders then began to make friends with the Newchurchmen, and they showed great harshness towards any members of the movement who might insist on condemning the Newchurch and its false principles. Worse, these leaders were not without followers inside the movement, because Catholics are so used to thinking they are disloyal if they do not trust their leaders.”

“Ooh, Mummy, did the story end happily ever after?”

“Darling, I can’t tell you. It’s not yet over. Now go to sleep.”

Kyrie eleison.