Archbishop Marcel Lefebvre

Now Where?

Now Where? on April 2, 2011

If, as seems to be the case, the doctrinal discussions over the last year and a half between Rome and the SSPX have persuaded neither Rome to convert nor the SSPX to betray, then the question arises, where do we go from here? Surely the crisis of Vatican II proved if anything the need for Catholics to do some thinking for themselves on such a question, and not just follow their leaders blindly – are not millions of Catholics still being softly led into apostasy? That is why to the bishops of the SSPX a fighting Gaul puts a threefold question, surely serious enough to deserve an answer (his questions are abbreviated and adapted):—

In your opinion, does the recent announcement of Assisi III, solemn commemoration of John-Paul II’s ecumenical encounter of various religions held in Assisi 25 years ago, add anything new to what we already know of the ecumenical course being followed by Benedict XVI? Answer: It is one more proof that the Church leadership in Rome is intent upon persevering along the disastrous path of giving official Catholic approval to all sorts of false religions. “I do not think we can say,” Archbishop Lefebvre once said, “that Rome has not lost the Faith.”

In your opinion, does this announcement prove or disprove the opportuneness of doctrinal discussions being undertaken between the SSPX and Rome? Answer: It surely proves the opportuneness of their coming to an end. While they were going on, they did have collateral advantages, well enumerated by Bishop de Galarreta (see EC 156, July 10, 2010). However, their mere taking place at all also had the disadvantage of creating in souls either false hopes or true fears of a pseudo-reconciliation between doctrinal positions which are, in reality, absolutely irreconcilable. The announcement of Assisi III has helped to put an end to such hopes and fears, at least for the moment – but dreamers cling to their dreams!

Just as Assisi I was a major incentive for Archbishop Lefebvre to consecrate four bishops in 1988, should the announcement of Assisi III be encouraging the SSPX to consecrate more bishops? Answer: The SSPX’s Superior General answered this question two months ago in the USA. He said that if the circumstances of 1988 which drove the Archbishop to consecrate were repeated, then there would be more bishops. The question then becomes: are the circumstances of Assisi III repeating those of Assisi I? One can only reply, opinions vary. Many serious Catholics think the circumstances have grown much worse, but that is not necessarily the opinion of Bishop Fellay, who as Superior General is responsible for such a major decision for the SSPX.

Then back to our original question: where now for the SSPX? The answer is clear. It must continue along the path set for it by its Founder, namely firm resistance to the (at least objective) apostates in Rome, making known as widely as possible the Archbishop’s diagnosis of the otherwise insoluble problems of Church and world. His solution is simply to maintain Catholic life in accordance with the pre-Conciliar Catholic doctrine and morals of all time, for the greater glory of God and for the salvation of as many souls as possible.

Kyrie eleison.

Cassocks Weighed

Cassocks Weighed on March 12, 2011

To affirm, as did last week’s “Eleison Comments” (190, March 5), that whoever possesses the fullness of Catholic Truth is in the driving-seat of the Catholic Church, may seem a statement at best risky, at worst untrue. After all, 1/ who is in the driving-seat of the Church if not the drivers – the Church authorities – put there by Our Lord? 2/ Since when did Our Lord design his Church to be led by any claimant to the Truth? 3/ Is not the direction of the Church being entrusted to any claimant of Truth a recipe for chaos in the Church?

The best answer is in Scripture. When St Paul preached the true Gospel of Jesus Christ to the peoples of Galatia (think of today’s Turkey), they accepted the Gospel with rejoicing and great fruit (Gal. II, 14–15; III, 5). But soon after he left them to preach elsewhere, enemies of God came amongst them to preach salvation not by faith in Jesus Christ but by the works of the Old Law, notably circumcision (V, 2, 11). By falling for this perversion of the true Gospel (I, 6; III,1), the Galatians provoked from St Paul the glorious Epistle to the Galatians.Here are some key verses from Chapter I:—

“(verse 6) I wonder that you are so soon removed from him that called you into the grace of Christ, unto another gospel. (v.7) Which is not another, only there are some that trouble you, and would pervert the Gospel of Christ. (v.8) But though we, or an angel from Heaven, preach a gospel to you besides that which we have preached to you, let him be anathema. (v.9) 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.” (“Anathema” means, utterly condemned and excommunicated.)

Now it is obvious that any angel appearing to the Galatians would appear with all the authority of a true messenger from Heaven. And if St. Paul himself were to return amongst them, he would appear with all the authority of his prior evangelizing amongst them as Doctor of the Gentiles. In either case the appearances of authority could hardly be stronger. Yet St. Paul says, and repeats, that the Galatians would have to put, as one might say, content before cassock, so that if he were ever to change the content of his preaching, they were not to believe a word of it, whatever the colour of his cassock upon his return!

In answer therefore to the three objections laid out at the start, let us say: 1/ Our Lord puts, ultimately, Truth-tellers and not cassocks in the driving-seat of the Church. 2/ These drivers will be Truth-tellers and not just Truth-claimants. Claims do not make the Truth, but Truth makes its telling (this is what few modern people can grasp). 3/ The Truth being one, then all Truth-tellers will be united in the Truth, and the only chaos will come from souls that reject or pervert that Truth.

The greatness of Archbishop Lefebvre lay in his discerning that Vatican II was sliding into “another” gospel than that of Jesus Christ or St. Paul, a gospel of justification by the works of modern man, and that even white cassocks were not to be followed if they preached it. Is today’s white cassock any different?

Kyrie eleison.

Remarkable Film

Remarkable Film on February 12, 2011

It is easy to see how the recently released French film, “Of Gods and Men,” gained top prize at the prestigious Cannes Film Festival in France last year. It recreates real events of 1996, the last months in the life of a Cistercian monastery in post-colonial Algeria, where the eight monks were finally taken out and killed by unknown assassins. The film is beautifully directed, acted and photographed. Of particular interest to Catholics familiar with Tradition will be the film’s religion and – from a religious point of view – the politics.

Perhaps most remarkable of all is the film’s true sense of religion, given that it is the Conciliar religion being portrayed. Doctrinally, there are for instance ecumenical moments of excessive respect for the Koran. Liturgically, the words and music chanted in the simple but noble monastery church are of modern man, subjective and sentimental. Yet the scenes regularly showing the monks at prayer are so genuinely religious as to be altogether surprising in our secular age. This, one says to oneself, is what monasteries are about!

What can one say? As for the film’s directing and acting, just as modern Britons can still most convincingly represent the Victorian age because the British Empire is close enough in their history to be still in their bloodstream, so the French actors of this film must make marvellous monks on screen because Catholic monasticism has been such an important part of their heritage. But above all, as Our Lord says (Mt.XV,18,19), it is what is in the heart of a man that matters. Much the best of all is heartful Tradition, but this film is there to remind us Traditionalists that heartful Conciliarism may yet please God better than Tradition losing heart.

The politics portrayed in the film are of particular interest in view of the current Islamic uprising in various Arab countries. The monks in the film, as no doubt happened in real life, are caught politically between the Devil and the deep blue sea. On the one side their non-Islamic lives are obviously threatened by the Islamic rebels killing anybody in the way of a political take-over of Algeria for Islam. On the other side the post-colonial Algerian government is highly suspicious of the monks aiding and abetting the rebels by, for instance, practising on their wounded the Church’s corporal works of mercy, and it invites the monks to leave the country. To this day some people think that they were executed by the Algerian government. God knows.

What can one say? Certainly heartfelt Catholicism is far superior to heartfelt Islam, which is an anti-Christian, simplistic and brutal sect. But if the heart is drained out of Catholicism, as it was by Vatican II, so that in real life, anywhere in the world, Catholic monks and priests are liable to be giving not only medical but also moral support to anti-Catholic revolutionaries – in fact, as Archbishop Lefebvre used to say, modernist priests make the most terrible of revolutionaries! – can one be surprised if any established government objects to Conciliar priests’ undermining of law and order? Islam is only rising because the true Catholic Church is still falling.

How much depends upon the few souls holding to Catholic Tradition!

Kyrie eleison.

Assisi-Ism – No!

Assisi-Ism – No! on January 8, 2011

Some people are still afraid that Archbishop Lefebvre’s Society of St Pius X is on the way to a bad agreement with Benedict XVI’s Rome, but by the Pope’s Assisi-ism amongst other things, one might say that Benedict XVI himself is doing his best to prevent any such occurrence.

Six days ago he argued in theory that the world’s “great religions” can constitute “an important factor of the peace and unity of mankind.” Five days ago he announced in practice that in October of this year he will go “as a pilgrim” to Assisi to commemorate the 25th anniversary of the Prayer Meeting of World Religions held there by Pope John-Paul II in 1986. But the theory of all “great world religions” contributing to world peace was absolutely rejected by Archbishop Lefebvre, and the practice of the 1986 Prayer Meeting in Assisi he condemned as a flagrant violation of the First Commandment, which, coming from the Vicar of Christ, constituted a scandal unheard of in all the history of the Church. Only the fear of too much repetition being counter-productive might have stopped him from castigating this latest piece of Assisi-ism.

However, the Archbishop did recognize that all too few Catholics then grasped the enormity of the scandal. This is because the whole modern world marginalizes God, brackets out the divinity of Our Lord Jesus Christ, makes religion a matter of free choice and turns Catholic Tradition into a mere question of sensibility or feeling. Infecting even the Popes, this way of thinking has become so normal all around us that every one of us is threatened. Let us get back to basics:—

All being requires a First Cause. That Cause, to be the First, must be Being Itself, which must be all-perfect being, because any second god, to differ from the First, would have to have some perfection lacking to the First. So the true God can only be one. This one true God took human nature once, and only once, in the divine Person of Our Lord Jesus Christ, who proved his divinity by a quantity and quality of miracles that have accompanied no other man ever, but have accompanied his Church ever since: the Roman Catholic Church. Membership of that Church is by faith and is open to all men. If they believe, that is the indispensable start of their eternal salvation. If they refuse to believe, they are on their way to eternal damnation (Mk. XVI, 16).

Therefore if by their past and future Assisi events, Popes John-Paul II and Benedict XVI have encouraged souls to think that Catholicism is not the one and only way to a happy eternity, but merely one amongst many other promoters (even if it is the best) of mankind’s “peace and unity” in this life, it follows that both Popes have facilitated the dreadful damnation of countless souls in the next life. Rather than have any part in such a betrayal, Archbishop Lefebvre preferred to be scorned, rejected, despised, marginalized, silenced, “excommunicated,” you name it.

There is a price to be paid for holding to the Truth. How many Catholics are ready to pay it?

Kyrie eleison.

Fortieth Anniversary

Fortieth Anniversary on November 6, 2010

Last Monday was a moment to be immensely thankful, and somewhat wary. It was the 40th anniversary of the founding of the Society of St. Pius X, when, on behalf of the Universal Church, Bishop Charriere of Geneva, Lausanne and Fribourg gave his official approval to the Society’s Statutes, submitted to him some months beforehand by Archbishop Lefebvre.

To anybody striving to keep and to live by the Catholic Faith amidst today’s soft global apostasy, the occasion for thankfulness is clear. Ever since Vatican II, the official Church has been in a state of collapse which is still going on, because the leading churchmen are clinging to the novelties of that Council by which man is to be put in the place of God. So the Catholic people are still being misled, and the pyramidal structure of God’s Church is crumbling from top to bottom.

Therefore for a devout but pyramidally-minded churchman to see the need for a minor counter-pyramid to be constructed within the falling ruins of the major pyramid was a first miracle. For him to succeed in erecting that minor pyramid beneath the papal weight of the collapsing major pyramid was a second miracle. And for the Archbishop’s successors to have upheld the minor pyramid for nearly 20 years since his death, is a third miracle. Now the SSPX has no monopoly on the defence of the Faith – God forbid! – but it has for many years up to today been the backbone of that defence. We owe boundless thanks to God for his goodness to every one of us that understands what a gift the SSPX has been.

But we must also be wary. Father Barrielle (1897–1983) was the Spiritual Director at the SSPX’s first seminary at Econe in Switzerland from its early days, and I can remember how often he quoted words of his beloved master, Father Vallet (1883 -1947), great preacher of the Spiritual Exercises of St Ignatius, and moulder of them in that five-day form so profitable to followers of the SSPX all over the world – through their transmission to SSPX seminarians by Fr. Barrielle. Fr. Vallet studied the Exercises and their history deeply, and one thing he observed was that if any Congregation was founded to preach the Exercises and did so successfully, then within a certain space of time the Devil would succeed in diverting, distracting or destroying that Congregation. What space of time, according to Fr. Vallet, as quoted by Fr. Barrielle? “Forty years”!

Now preaching the Exercises is not the SSPX’s only apostolate, so it may hope to be spared that concentrated attention of the Devil? On the contrary! If that minor pyramid is still the backbone of the defence of the Faith amidst the ruins of the Church crumbling all around, it can only be the object of his super-concentrated attention! Let all of us beware, and – because of that pyramidal structure of the Church – let us especially include in our gentle prayers the leaders of the SSPX.

Kyrie eleison.

Delay Condemning?

Delay Condemning? on October 30, 2010

Following on several recent numbers of “Eleison Comments” emphasizing the importance of doctrine (EC 162, 165–167, 169), a reader asks if it would not nevertheless be wiser to delay the condemnation of Vatican II, on the grounds that neither the Church officials in Rome nor Catholics at large are ready to accept that the Council is doctrinally as bad as the Society of St Pius X, following Archbishop Lefebvre, says that it is. Actually, it is far worse.

The doctrinal problem with the documents of Vatican II is not, mainly, that they are openly and clearly heretical. In fact their “letter,” as opposed to their “spirit,” can seem Catholic, to the point that Archbishop Lefebvre, who took direct part in all four Sessions of the Council, signed off on all but the two last and worst of those documents, “Gaudium et Spes” and “Dignitatis Humanae.” However, that “letter” is subtly contaminated with the “spirit” of the brand-new man-centered religion towards which the Council Fathers were inclining, and which has been corrupting the Church ever since. If the Archbishop could vote again today on the 16 documents, one wonders if with the wisdom of hindsight he would vote for a single one of them.

So the documents are ambiguous, outwardly interpretable as being Catholic for the most part, but inwardly poisoned with modernism, that most pernicious of all Church heresies, said St Pius X in “Pascendi.” So when for instance “conservative” Catholics, out of “loyalty” to the Church, defend the documents, what exactly are they conserving? The poison, and its ability to go on corrupting the Catholic Faith of millions of souls, thereby setting them on the path to eternal damnation. It all reminds me of one Allied convoy crossing the Atlantic with vital supplies for the Allies in World War II. An enemy submarine succeeded in surfacing in the very middle of the defensive perimeter of ships, so that it was free to torpedo them one after another, because the Allied destroyers were chasing around and around the perimeter outside to hunt down the submarine, never imagining it could be in their midst! The Devil is in the midst of the Vatican II documents and he is torpedoing the eternal salvation of millions of souls, because he is so well disguised in those documents.

Now imagine a sailor with sharp eyes on board one of the merchant-ships in the convoy who has noticed the little tell-tale wake of the submarine’s snorkel. He yells, “The submarine is inside!,” but nobody takes him seriously. Is he to wait and keep quiet, or is he to scream “Blue Murder!,” and go on screaming, until at last the captain is brought to see the deadly danger?

The SSPX must scream about Vatican II, and go on screaming, and without ceasing, because millions of souls are in deadly and unceasing danger. To grasp that danger, admittedly difficult to grasp in theory, read, or get translated into your own language, Fr. Alvaro Calderon’s profound book on the Vatican II documents, “Prometeo: la Religion del Hombre.”

Kyrie eleison.