authority

Madiran; the Bishops

Madiran; the Bishops on October 31, 2020

It will be recalled that in the Prologue of his book The Heresy of the 20th century Jean Madiran placed the blame for that heresy fairly and squarely on the Catholic bishops who led up to and followed straight after the Second Vatican Council (1962–1965), notably on the bishops of France whom he best knew. Chapter I of his book showed, following St. Pius X’s great Encyclical Pascendi of 1907, how these bishops’ minds were rendered unfit for reality, let alone for Catholic doctrine, by the subjectivism of Kant’s philosophy, now reigning supreme in the philosophy departments of virtually all “universities.” In Chapter II Madiran tackles the French bishops themselves, in six loosely connected sections.

Firstly, he says that to follow these bishops we would have to throw away a veritable treasure trove of Catholic treasures, such as St. Pius X, Gregorian Chant, Thomism, Canon Law, Our Lady, patriotism, our Greco-Latin heritage, Marian piety and last but not least, the devotion of little old women praying. For our part, he says, we refuse to scorn any of these familiar features of the Catholic family. Behind all of them is the love of Christ, while behind all the talk of “recycling,” “renovations” and “renewal” is hate. And behind all achievements of “Western civilisation” is Christ, neither India nor Africa nor China.

Secondly, to all the world the Newchurch has proclaimed its apostasy: the Newbishops’ policy is no longer to convert anyone. Yet the basics of life and death remain exactly the same. Let the Church teach us how to live and die. We are all too full of the world. Let priests teach us how to get to Heaven!

Thirdly, these bishops say that “the change of civilisation” calls for “a more evangelical concept of salvation,” by which they mean not just “a new form of words,” which is what they say they mean, but a new content of the words, meaning a new religion. Your Excellences, our answer is “NO!” Moreover, as a baptised Catholic I am entitled to demand of you the true Faith, because your “new form of words” in pursuit of a new “concept of salvation” is bound to be heretical, not just clumsy, but a new religion, contradicting the true Faith.

Fourthly, up until 1966 these bishops had not yet defected from the Catholic Faith, but now they are claiming that theirs is at last the authentic Christianity, when in fact their “post-Conciliar mentality” is breaking with the true Faith. The truth is that we are in the middle of a war between two different religions. And actively or passively, all the bishops are supporting the new religion. Some Catholic bishop must speak up, because souls are perishing! Msgr. Lefebvre, are you listening?

We need no bishops to tell us to be modern. We are all too modern. But modern technology and modern philosophy are not the business of Catholic bishops! We know the moderns, and we scorn them. You do not know them and you love them. Marx, Nietzsche, Freud are mere fantasy-merchants. Wake up!

Fifthly, the Newchurch is now ruining all apprenticeship, teaching and education. By wanting to give to the youngsters only what is modern, which they already have, you give them nothing, while making them think they know everything. Thus abandoned, they will become tomorrow’s barbarians, so that you are betraying not only the Faith but all civilisation. Come back to Tradition! God, give us some true bishops!

Sixthly, the bishops’ authority is based only on truth, legitimacy and law. If these bishops were right, the Church of Tradition would no longer exist. But the Truth is primarily their business, so that they have no authority to change the Faith, and if they do so, they have no authority to be obeyed, nor will we leave them in peace. We expect from them the certainty, purity and sanctity of the unchanging Catholic Faith.

(In Section 4 above, Archbishop Lefebvre is not mentioned by name, but he was in Madiran’s mind. Two years later the Archbishop founded the Society of St Pius X, and the rest is history.)

Kyrie eleison.

Vocations Still?

Vocations Still? on October 10, 2020

Can there still be vocations of younger or older souls to the service of God in a seminary, convent, friary or monastery, amidst the distress of the Catholic Church today? The answer can only be in the positive because the fact is that God is still calling souls to His service, and “A fact is stronger than the Lord Mayor.” On the other hand Superiors of seminaries or religious houses need to take into consideration two circumstances special to the situation of the Church today which should render them more careful than ever in accepting vocations beneath their roof. These are firstly the ever increasing immaturity of souls growing up in the modern world, and secondly, the ever growing unreliability of Church leaders.

To begin with, let us remind ourselves that the Catholic Church comes directly from Jesus Christ who will preserve it until the end of the world (Mt. XXVIII, 20), and into eternity. He has with the Father and the Holy Ghost all the power needed, and much more, to provide it with all means necessary for its survival. Now those means necessarily include a priesthood, bishops and priests and in some sort of hierarchy, to ensure those sacraments which are essential to the life of supernatural grace of the Church’s members. Therefore until world’s end Our Lord will always be giving enough vocations to men to guarantee that the Church has the men it needs as ministers. As for the women into whose nature it is built by God to be the “helpers” or “helpmates” of man (Gen.II, 18), they are not to be priests nor as necessary to the Church as priests, but by the gifts which God gives to them and not to men, they can render to the Church such precious services that it one cannot imagine the Church being without feminine vocations. For instance, where would the Church’s apostolate be without the prayers of Sisters, grandmothers, etc.?

However God is God, and His ways are inscrutable by men. See the end of Romans XI, and all of the Book of Job, Chapters XXXVII to XLI. He reaches far beyond our human minds, and in the fallibility of the last six Popes inclusive, He is already reaching well beyond what many Catholic minds can bear. They need to read Job. Nor is the Almighty finished yet by any means. Our Lady has told us that fire will fall from the sky, eliminating a large part of mankind, and if sins do not slow down there will be no more forgiveness for them, a prediction easier to understand ever since the Covid scam recently made so many of the very churchmen shut down their confessionals. Let us pray and work for Our Lord to send workers into His vineyard, but let us not try to tell Him how many He needs. Only He knows that.

Meanwhile we human beings must confess that, as said above, we throw at least two serious obstacles in the way of His calling souls to serve Him. Firstly, the immaturity of souls leading a modern life. If there is one thing that makes a boy or girl grow up so as to become capable of enduring the discipline of religious life or the hardships of married life, it is suffering, but is not the illusion everywhere today that suffering can be blamed on somebody else, may be avoided, and need not be endured? Nor are the characters of children formed when parents less and less know how to bring them up. Nor are they given much responsibility to bear, which could also mature them. City and suburban life hardly favour vocations.

But secondly the disorder in the Church also discourages vocations. For as long as the Church was, despite all human failings, a doctrinal and structural rock of ages, I could as a young person entrust my life to it and be sure that several layers of Superiors above me would function on a basis of objective truth and justice overall. But ever since Vatican II changed Church doctrine and the basis on which it operates, how can I still be sure of an objective and stable framework within which to lead the rest of my life? One great lesson of this Church crisis is that the Catholic Church can no more do without the Pope than a puppet can do without its puppeteer – it becomes a jumbled heap of strings and bits of coloured wood.

Of course God can and will supply for the good of His Church, but we can hardly expect vocations to come forward tomorrow just like they did the day before yesterday.

Kyrie eleison.

Drexel’s Crisis

Drexel’s Crisis on July 25, 2020

In the 1970’s when Our Lord (as one may believe) gave to the Austrian priest and Professor Fr. Albert Drexel the Messages contained in the booklet Faith is Greater than Obedience, Catholic Tradition was still deeply discredited because of Vatican II. Catholics simply could not believe that they had been so betrayed by their own priests. Only many years later would Tradition begin to regain the primacy due to it in the Church of Our Lord. As first of a brief series of these “Comments” drawn from the Messages, here are a few to show how relevant they were, and are, to the unprecedented, ongoing drama of the Church.

September 4, 1970.

The number of the faithful shall become small, but their fearless profession of the faith shall shine like a light in the world, and will be blessed by the power and the grace of the Holy Trinity. The Eucharistic sacrifice shall be celebrated in private homes, in places where the temple of God has been desecrated.

November 6, 1970.

Among the rebels, one can find more and more of the consecrated servants of the Church. These are the ones who make themselves guilty of the sin of Judas, who gave Me with his kiss not love, but the greatest pain. And because of the shepherds (bishops) who were appointed to their office and who became weak, the truly faithful have to supplement with their prayers, their struggles, and s ufferings what these priests have neglected and missed. Therefore, I look with great compassion upon the praying people and the victim souls. Their suffering is great in their heart, but magnificent and beautiful shall be the love that is awaiting them at the threshold of eternity.

June 4, 1971.

Numerous people shall turn away from My one and true Church, because they have lost faith in the triune God, and have been misled and blinded by wicked priests and teachers. These proud and disloyal ones speak about a religion without the supernatural, without mystery and prayer. They speak only about man and no longer about God! They turn charity upside down and give primacy to love of neighbor, but forget, lose, and deny love toward God with outrageous presumption. They are trying to found a Newchurch, in which the world and man mean everything – and God and Heaven nothing.

July 7, 1972.

Should those who are faithful and loyal in grace be sad about this? It is true that I Myself wept over Jerusalem, because its inhabitants rejected My grace. Yet it is My will and that of the Father, that the children of the faith should be joyous, like Saint Francis, who praised Heaven with his canticle of the sun, or happy like the young Saint Therese, who, filled with love of Me, happily and smilingly walked through the garden of creation.

May 4, 1973.

Numerous people of the Church, whose names are registered in parish registers, have lost the sense of what is Holy and who are the Saints. Priests consecrated to the service of the altar and to souls turn instead to the world and forget and despise the commandments of God, and pay homage to a dangerous spirit of the world. More and more people fall under the attraction of a moral corruption, that Saint John names the ‘Harlot of Babylon’ in the Apocalypse. What My visible successor in Rome said about the disintegration and dissolution of faith in the Church is his grievance and his accusation.

December 7, 1973.

The prayer of the faithful shall triumph over the talks and gatherings of those who are cold in faith. Yet, those faithful to God are still suffering, but they should know and consider that the sacrifices of their suffering are bringing down blessings upon the Church. Those who suffer this way shall share eternal glorification with Me, and the love of My Heart.

Kyrie eleison.

Restoring Authority

Restoring Authority on April 20, 2019

Whereas the post-Christian pagan Jean-Jacques Rousseau (1712–1778) claimed that man is by nature an anti-social animal so that human society is essentially artificial, the pre-Christian pagan Aristotle (384–322), a much wiser man, knew that society is natural because man is by nature a social animal – watch how he gathers with his fellow-men from dawn to dusk in all kinds of human societies, especially the human family. But every man has free-will, so that all those kinds of societies must have somebody in authority to co-ordinate those free-wills which by themselves are liable to fly apart. Hence every society needs authority, as natural and as needed by man as is society. See how the Roman centurion recognises Our Lord as a man in authority from his own exercise of authority in the Roman army (Mt. VIII, 8–9).

But authority being as natural to men as is their social nature, and their social nature coming from God, then all authority amongst men must come ultimately from God (cf. Eph. III, 15), which is why in our own sunset of the world where almost all mankind is turning its back on God, men are also revolting against any kind of authority, and all kinds of authority are becoming more and more fragile. For instance is it not more and more common today for wives to be declaring independence from their husbands and for children to be running their parents? That is not natural in any true sense of the word, but it is today more and more common, because revolt against authority is in the bloodstream of all of us. Then how can it be restored? We have a classic example from the book of Numbers (Ch.16) in the Old Testament.

Moses and his brother Aaron were the political and religious leaders respectively of the Israelite people to bring them out of Egypt into the Promised Land. They had both been appointed by God, as the people well knew, but the Israelites were a proud and hard-necked people, and the moment came in the desert when Core, a first cousin of Aaron and jealous of his privileges, stirred up another 250 Levites and two leading Rubenites, Dathan and Abiron, to revolt, and the people rose up in a tumult behind them against the authority of Moses and Aaron. These two immediately appealed to the Lord, who told them to assemble the people on the next day in front of the Tabernacle. Then Moses told the people to get away from the tents of Dathan and Abiron standing there with all their extended families, whereupon the earth opened up and swallowed down the revolutionaries straight into Hell. Fire from God then devoured Core and his 250 Levites demanding privileges and prestige given by God only to the family of Aaron.

By this means God Himself demonstrated to whom He had given authority over the Israelites. Authority was so important for the Israelites in the desert because despite the miraculous crossing of the Red Sea (Exodus XIV), they were still hankering for the onions of Egypt, and Dathan was complaining of the hardships of the desert (Numb. XVI, 13–14). Yet Moses was no tyrant, but the gentlest of men (Numb. XII, 3), and Aaron had done the people no harm (Numb. XVI, 11). However, had God not resorted to an extreme punishment of the rebels, one may wonder if Moses and Aaron would have been able to lead the Israelites into the Promised Land. Would anything less have restored their authority? As it was, it is easy to imagine that after the double miraculous fire no Israelite was in a hurry to disobey Moses or Aaron!

In 2019 rampant materialism all over the world is making ever fewer human beings even believe in God, let alone take Him seriously. Science and technology seem to guarantee the good life for us all, so who still needs God? And without Him, all basis of authority is gone, and authority in every form of human society is melting into thin air, but especially in the Catholic Church. Moreover Neo-modernism holds its victims in such a grip that they are virtually inconvertible, being persuaded that they are still Catholic. How can the Church survive? If Catholic authority is to be restored before world’s end, will not another miraculous and deadly fire from Heaven be necessary, as with Dathan, Core and Abiron? God is not mocked (Gal. VI, 7).

Kyrie eleison.

Priceless Femininity – I

Priceless Femininity – I on October 6, 2018

It is where the soldiers of a besieging army are pouring over the walls that the defenders need to fight. It is where the salvation of souls is being most hindered that servants of God must most fight. That is why these “Comments” and the “Rector’s Letters” that went before them come back often to the unwomaning of women and to the unmanning of men. God’s complementary design of man and woman, going back to Adam and Eve, is basic to human nature and life. And when that design is torn up by man and supposedly thrown away by the foul manipulations of “gender” and so on, how can the supernatural grace of God come in to land within human natures so radically fouled up? And without grace, where do they finish?

In theory, Catholic womenfolk should not have too great difficulty in understanding and accepting how God designed them. In practice, the pro-feminist propaganda is so relentless in today’s abject education and vile media that even Catholic women’s natural instincts and God-given sense of their true role in life are often overwhelmed by the thrust of pride towards seeming power. Here are some rough but wise words on woman, from Irene Claremont de Castillejo, Knowing Woman: Feminine Psychology:—

“Any girl who grows to womanhood without knowing that love is her supreme value has been spiritually raped. Feminine spirituality expresses an attitude of spiritual waiting, and tending, and readiness for the meeting with its opposite which is a prerequisite for woman’s inner wholeness. Without this she becomes a prey to the masculine within herself, a raging spirit of intellectual or physical activity to which no man can be related, and to which she can in no way relate herself. She is a woman possessed.”

And then from Henry Makow, Ph.D., Western Women Have Lost Their Power to Love (revised):—

“Western women have been tricked into pursuing power instead of love. Paradoxically, they have never been so powerless. They want to be loved but no longer have love to offer in exchange. In the movie War Games from 1983, the hero, Matthew Broderick, is a computer whiz-kid who accidentally starts a nuclear countdown and races to avert catastrophe. His girlfriend, played by Ally Sheedy, is seen in a complementary role, basically helping, encouraging and admiring him. He is the leader. But her presence informs, validates and heightens everything he does. It’s as though his actions are dedicated to her. This is the way heterosexuality works. Woman empowers man by entrusting her power to her husband. This is how woman loves, i.e. by ‘trusting,’ enlisting as First Mate to his Captain. If this movie were remade today, she would be Captain, he would be emasculated, and they would break up.

“From Chaucer to Freud, men have asked, ‘What do women want?’ It’s really quite simple. They want to be loved. Specifically, they want the passionate lifelong love of a husband. But what makes a man love a woman in this way? Her sacrifice. By throwing her lot in with his, by accepting his leadership, and by serving him and their children. In other words, lasting love is earned by deeds. It is not based on sex appeal (which wanes) or witty comebacks. It is built on bonds of GRATITUDE.

“By teaching women to be self-seeking instead of self-sacrificing, Feminism has deprived them of their stock-in-trade, love. All they have left to give is the act of marriage without marriage. Because they won’t surrender to a loving husband, they’re reduced to giving themselves to strangers.” (End of Makow quote.)

“But, Your Excellency, where are the Captains? Where are the potential loving husbands who will lead? The men today are wash-outs, not excluding the Traditional Catholics!” Girls, just like you have been de-feminised without your realising it, so they have been emasculated, by today’s whole wretched culture. You must pray, because God can easily find you a young man. Pray to St Anne, as above, but first of all, promise her that if she finds you a man, you are ready and willing to submit to him. That way she will be rather more inclined to search for you. Then twist her arm. Heaven does not mind that – Lk XVIII, 2–8.

Kyrie eleison.

Fourth Bishop

Fourth Bishop on March 11, 2017

Ever since the summer of 2012 when the Society of St Pius X decided officially to change course and abandon the doctrine-first stand taken 40 years previously by Archbishop Lefebvre, it has been interesting to watch Providence in action to ensure the Church’s defence. One might have expected a widespread uprising in defence of God’s Truth. Resistance from inside the Society? Existent, but at least up till now, largely silent. And from outside? Existent, but only a scattering of layfolk and a handful of priests, riven by divisions for lack of a recognised authority. Catholics need authority. And that need is so great that even while Truth is draining out of the man-centred Newchurch and the Rome-centred Newsociety, still souls cling to each because of the remains of Papal authority in the former, and of Catholic authority bequeathed to the latter by the Archbishop.

But Truth remains the purpose of Authority and Authority is not the purpose of Truth. Given fallen human nature, Authority is the indispensable defender and guarantee of Truth, but it comes after Truth and not before. Take for example one of Our Lord’s last instructions to Peter before He will leave Peter behind to govern the Church (Lk.XXII, 31–32): “Simon, Simon, behold Satan hath desired to have you (plural), that he may sift you as wheat. But I have prayed for thee (singular) that thy faith fail not (Truth); and thou, being once converted (Truth), confirm thy brethren (Authority).” And when on Palm Sunday a few days beforehand the Pharisees had attempted to rebuke Our Lord for the joyful noise being made by His disciples, so necessary is the adoration of God in Truth that Our Lord replied (Lk.XIX, 40): “I say to you that if these shall hold their peace, the stones will cry out.”

In today’s Newchurch, Authority is mixing Conciliar error with Catholic Truth in the engine of the Church, which is like mixing water with gasoline (petrol) in the engine of a motor car – the car is crippled, the Church is crippled. And whereas Archbishop Lefebvre defied that crippling, not least of all but rather above all, by his consecrating of four bishops to maintain a Catholic authority that would protect God’s Truth, his successors at the head of what was once his Society are doing their utmost to submit his protection of Truth to the crippled and crippling Authority of Rome! If these successors seriously think that once they are “inside the official Church” they will be in a position to convert the neo-modernists, they are excessively naive. Already they are holding their fire on Vatican II. Just when do they imagine they will be able to open fire again?

In these quite exceptional circumstances, there must be disciples of Our Lord who tell the Truth – so as to spare the stones the effort! These disciples may not be united as they would be beneath true Authority (always allowing for human weakness). They may be “straitened and cast down,” they may suffer “tribulation and persecution” (cf. II Cor. IV, 8–9), but they must be there for as long as Truth is held in captivity. Will that be a long time? God knows. Many of us expected Him to intervene long ago, but God has a very long fuse. However, intervene He will, if anything at all is still to be saved. Patience.

Meanwhile these disciples need a handful of bishops to ensure a minimal continuation in Truth of episcopal teaching and of the sacraments of Confirmation and Holy Orders. In 1988 the Archbishop consecrated four of them for the same reason, two for Europe, and one each for North and South America. As of now the “Resistance” has two in Europe and one in South America. There remains a gap in North America. God willing, this coming May 11 Fr. Gerardo Zendejas will be consecrated bishop in the Traditional parish of Fr Ronald Ringrose in Vienna, Virginia, USA. Please pray for the blessing of Almighty God upon the ceremony – and for good weather!

Kyrie eleison.