Benedict XVI

“Pascendi” – I

“Pascendi” – I on July 28, 2007

In a little over one month’s time, on September 8, all Catholics who rejoice in Pope Pius X’s resistance to modernism will be celebrating the 100th anniversary of his great Encyclical letter, Pascendi Dominici Gregis (in English, “Feeding the Lord’s Flock”).

I think it is essential to come to grips with the central doctrine of Pascendi if one does not wish to lose one’s footing in today’s crisis of the Church, ongoing and by no means over, on the contrary.

In brief, Pius X says that thanks to delinquent modern philosophy (both reflecting and promoting modern living), the human mind has become unhooked from objective reality, and is spinning around inside the subject, fabricating whatever he wants and then imposing it on his surroundings. One name for this stupendous error is “subjectivism.” Truth becomes what I say it is. This is such insanity that I can only survive by applying it only selectively. For instance two and two will be four when I need them to be (e.g. in designing an aeroplane); they will be five when I want them to be (e.g. in choosing a religion).

Now when this error began in the universities, over 200 years ago, a lot of peasants living on the land still had a lot of common sense. But today a lot of city-dwellers have little or no common sense left, and a mass of quite ordinary people are subjectivists, indeed so many that they are no longer the exception, they have become the rule. Whereupon it is that much more difficult for them to realize that they are – objectively – insane. They can well think – subjectively – that they are perfectly sane.

Such is surely the case with many – not all – modernist churchmen, and I would include Pope Benedict XVI amongst them. So he can be objectively insane from the standpoint of the Catholic Faith, and yet subjectively in a kind of good faith. What does this “good faith” matter if he is objectively way off the mark? What matters is that he thinks he is normal and in the truth, so he behaves as though he is, and so he persuades many Catholics that he is. Here is why this crisis of the Church is so terrible – so many cardinals, bishops and priests cannot believe that they or their Pope are in any way off the mark.

Conclusion? – I need not believe that they are not at all cardinals or bishops or Pope, because when virtually everybody is insane, they are that much less necessarily aware that they are not sane. So I can treat the Pope with all the charity and respect due to his exalted position, and I can rejoice in all the objective good that he does, for instance in the recent Motu Proprio but I will do nothing, but nothing, to associate with his insane Conciliar belief-system until it is clear as clear can be that he repudiates both Vatican II and his subjectivism.

Read Pascendi! Kyrie eleison.

Motu Proprio – II

Motu Proprio – II on July 14, 2007

After many false reports of an imminent publication of Pope Benedict XVI’s Motu Proprio on the pre-Conciliar rite of Mass, at last it appeared on July 7, under the title of Summorum Pontificum.

Amongst Catholics holding to Catholic Tradition, it has in the last week met with a mixed reception. On the one hand throughout the Society of St. Pius X, for instance, a Te Deum was sung out of gratitude for everything in the document which favors and to some extent sets free the old rite of Mass. On the other hand Catholics who distrust anything and everything coming out of Conciliar Rome, some to the extent of disbelieving that Benedict XVI is even Pope, have little difficulty in discovering in the Motu Proprio the numerous contradictions which reflect Pope Benedict XVI’s vain attempt to reconcile Catholicism with the intrinsically anti-Catholic modern world.

Now the contradictions are certainly there, because while the Pope cleaves in his heart to the old liturgy of his pre-war Bavarian childhood, he believes with his Conciliar mind in the reconciliation of irreconcilables, such as Catholicism and the revolutionary world all around us. However, as the proverb says, Rome was not built in a day, and Catholic Rome will not be rebuilt in one day. In fact will it take anything less than a flood of the wrath of God to wash the modernism out of this Rome’s Augean stables? One may wonder.

Nevertheless, “The journey of a thousand miles begins with the first step.” Given the terrible official persecution of the true rite of Mass ever since 1969 when the Novus Ordo was introduced, surely two things at least in the Motu Proprio were worth a Te Deum. Firstly, the official, Papal, public recognition that the old Mass was never truly suppressed. We always knew it, but now every Catholic knows it in the Universal Church. What a change of perception that must entail! And secondly, a certain definite freedom for Latin rite priests to celebrate the old Mass, at least in private and to a greater extent than before also in public.

Let us pray as much as ever for the Pope, if not more, that his Bavarian heart continue to push his Conciliar head in a Catholic direction!

Kyrie eleison.

Motu Proprio – I

Motu Proprio – I on July 7, 2007

The long-awaited Motu Proprio of Benedict XVI, due to partly set free what is known as the Tridentine rite of Mass, should be published tomorrow (July 7). Here are four questions on the subject, and the answers which I gave six months ago (Rivarol is a French periodical):

Rivarol: It is said that Benedict XVI is about to set free the traditional rite of Mass. Will this measure be enough to solve the crisis in the Church? Bishop W.: I may be wrong, but I think that even just a partial setting free of the traditional Mass would be a great step forward for the universal Church. The powerful grace contained in the Mass, presently strangled as it were by the rite of Paul VI, would start to flow again all over the world. However, it would take much more than just restoring the true rite of Mass to solve the crisis of faith in the Church.

Rivarol: But will not this “Motu Proprio” end up by creating more confusion than clarity in the area of doctrine? Bishop W.: Precisely, it is not by merely allowing once more the true rite of Mass that Catholics would learn again how to attend it as they should. Everything needs to be re-built, so there would indeed, to begin with, be a great deal of confusion, for instance hybrid Masses. But the re-building must start somewhere, and I think we need to trust in the intrinsic power of the true rite.

Rivarol: Don’t traditional Catholics risk melting into Conciliar parishes at the expense of the integral Faith? Bishop W.: If following on the setting free of the true rite, traditional Catholics were to blend back into Conciliar parishes, one would have to ask if they ever had the integral Faith. It is the Faith which is at stake. Therefore it would be up to the leaders of Catholic Tradition to form their flock in advance, in such or way that the Motu Proprio would do more good to the Conciliarists than harm to the Traditionalists. This would require the latter to understand clearly that the basic problem is the whole of the Catholic Faith, and not just the rite of Mass.

Rivarol: Would not setting free the traditional Mass without abolishing the Novus Ordo Mass mean accepting in principle the co-existence and equal worth of what Archbishop Lefebvre called “The Mass of All Time” and the “Mass of Luther”? Bishop W.: “Ab inimico disce,” learn from your enemy, said the Latins. Why are so many Conciliar bishops in uproar at the mere possibility of the true rite of Mass being set free? Is it not because they know that if the Ark of the Alliance is allowed into their temples again, their rites of Dagon are in peril? (Read Chapter V of the first book of Samuel!) Are we with our rite of Pius V to be more afraid than they are with their rite of Paul VI?

Rightly or wrongly, these are still the answers I would give to the same questions. Time will tell.

Kyrie eleison.