Benedict XVI

Providence’s 2009

Providence’s 2009 on December 27, 2008

In mid-November last year “Eleison Comments” recommended “fastening seat-belts” for the year 2008, because a couple of private revelations and above all “pressure building towards a third World War” together constituted “at least an orange alert.” Was the alert justified? What about 2009?

As for the alert, WW III has still been postponed, but it is surely not cancelled. “The justice of God grinds slow,” says the old proverb, “but it grinds exceeding small.” In other words, the Lord God may take his time – “He dealeth patiently for your sake” says St. Peter, “not willing that any should perish, but that all should return to penance” (II Pet.III,9) – yet God does not miss the least little detail. The year 2008 has seen only the stepping up of the offences against him – indifference, blasphemy, immorality, etc, etc. At a given moment he is going to say, “Enough!” In 2009?

Possibly. In any case it is worth recalling that in 1917, under Pope Benedict XV, Our Lady said at Fatima that if Russia were not consecrated to her Immaculate Heart in the way she would come to ask, then another more terrible war than WW I, then raging, would break out “under the reign of the next pope.” This would be Pius XI. Yet Pius XI died in February of 1939, whereas WW II was declared by England and France only in September of that year, under Pius XII. Had Our Lady made a mistake?

That is not likely. What happened was that in January of 1938, while Pius XI was still pope, exactly when the unusual red light foretold by Our Lady to be the warning sign of “the more terrible war” was seen all over Europe’s night-sky, Stalin was being told in Russia how, by making an alliance with Hitler (the subsequent Ribbentrop Pact), he would enable Hitler to launch an exhausting war to the West (declared ten days after the Pact!) which would open the way for Russia to take over all Europe from the East. In other words, WW II broke out in public under Pius XII only because it had been previously planned and decided in private under Pius XI. So Our Lady was not mistaken. And God knows how for well over a century his enemies have been planning WW III.

So as for the coming year, let souls still asleep in economics or politics wake up to how it is God’s justice that is closing in, and let souls awake but who may be discouraged or frightened by what they see around them, take heart! Shortly before dying of a horribly painful tuberculosis, St Therese of Lisieux said, “I am more convinced than ever that Providence watches over the least little detail of our lives.” How could it be otherwise?

Kyrie eleison.

Masterly Confusion

Masterly Confusion on November 15, 2008

Ever since Vatican II (1962–1965), a number of intelligent and serious Catholic souls have striven to prove that the changes made to the Latin Church’s sacramental rites by Pope Paul VI in particular render these rites automatically invalid. One might reply, if only it were that simple! But simplicity is no substitute for truth.

Here is how one such soul seeks to prove that the new rite of priestly Ordination is automatically invalid, and his argument is not without value:

Major: Wherever the words of a sacramental Form, essential to the validity of the sacrament, are significantly changed, or wherever the same words are being given in context a significantly different meaning, the Form, and with it the sacrament, can only be invalid.

Minor: Now the words themselves of the new Form of priestly Ordination have not been significantly changed, but in the context of the new rite taken as a whole, the same word of “priest” is being given a significantly different meaning, in accordance with the Council’s total revolutionizing of the Catholic priesthood.

Conclusion: Therefore never can a priest be validly ordained with the new rite.

In this argument, there is no problem with the Major, which is Catholic doctrine. As for the Minor, it is true that the words of the Form have remained essentially intact. It is also true that the whole drift of Vatican II and the post-Conciliar reforms is towards an emptying out of the Catholic priesthood, as of the whole Catholic religion, to replace it with a religion of man. But the argument above, to arrive at its conclusion, would have to prove that Conciliar documents and reforms in themselves positively exclude the Catholic priesthood and religion, because so long as the new rite can be taken not to exclude the true priesthood, it can still be used validly to ordain a true priest.

Alas (for purposes of clarity), the will of Paul VI as seen in all his reforms (and now of Benedict XVI) is so to introduce the new religion of man alongside the Catholic religion of God as to include and not exclude the latter! Now any sane mind cannot stand the idea of 2 and 2 being 5 in such a way as not to exclude their being 4. But Conciliar minds are not sane. They want to apostatize while still remaining Catholic! Thus the new rite of Ordination may omit many features of the Catholic ordination, but it introduces nothing that positively excludes a true ordination. If only it did! Then it could no longer deceive so many souls into thinking that it presents no problem for Catholics. Here is the problem: the drift of the text is to invalidate the true priesthood (2+2=5), but the text may still be used validly (2+2=4)! Sister Lucy of Fatima called it “Diabolical disorientation.”

Kyrie eleison.

Mind-Rot Explains

Mind-Rot Explains on October 11, 2008

Let me quote another reader’s reaction, this time a little more complimentary, but only in order to suggest to readers puzzled or offended by seemingly anti-Roman positions of „Dinoscopus” that a time may come for them when these positions begin to make more sense. Here are extracts from the letter I received, which I summarize and paraphrase, but without changing the sense:

„Around 1999, reading a (non-SSPX) manifesto of protest against Church leaders, I threw up my hands in a kind of fear of finding myself „outside the Church.” I decided I would give the Conciliar Popes the benefit of the doubt and just try to focus on practical Catholic matters while awaiting a „reform of the reform.” But after the election of Benedict XVI, I was gravely disappointed by his apparent failure, after meeting directly with the clear heretic Hans Küng, to sanction him in any way.

„My optimism was dashed to the ground. It became clear that Benedict XVI was constructing a new unprecedented pluralism which embraced heretics and Traditionalists, also Jews, and every other kind of Church enemy. Frankly it broke my heart. The Traditionalists were right and I was wrong . . .

„Last year I found some old classroom videos of yours, with descriptions of the modernist mind and its contradictions, due to absorbing the polluted spirit of the age. I was helped to see at least the possibility of there being a difference between material and formal heresy in some theoretical instances . . . I now wish you and I had talked more in depth when we met many years ago. Maybe I would have spared myself some pain and confusion . . . I plan to buy your letters from Ridgefield and Winona as soon as I can.” (End of extracts from letter).

For anyone else who can imagine how the mental pollution of our age might ease for them the agonizing problem of how the Conciliar Popes can be so uncatholic and still popes, let them also try Volumes I and II of the Ridgefield and Winona Letters, available from True Restoration Press. The mind-rot of modern times is the explanation that has always made the most sense to me. See also „Eleison Comments” of April 19 of this year, „Deadly Mush.” The Conciliar popes are much to be pitied. They are truly into their false way of thinking!

Kyrie eleison.

Carrot Again

Carrot Again on July 5, 2008

So it looks as though I guessed right last week. On the one hand the Society of St. Pius X did not comply with the June 5 “ultimatum” of Cardinal Castrillón as the Cardinal might have wished. It replied instead with a letter of Archbishop Lefebvre to Pope Paul VI in which in 1975 the Archbishop explained why he was defending Tradition, yet with no disrespect intended towards the Church authorities in Rome. Once again, the Society may have raised a few anxieties, but it has not “given away the store”

On the other hand, the Cardinal did not proceed to any further official exorcism of the Society, but – reportedly – declared that he had never intended his text of June 5 to be an “ultimatum.” And so the situation returns to where it was before. I think we may expect the past pattern to go on repeating itself. The loving son will continue to try to get close to his leprous mother, the leprous mother will continue to try to hug him, the loving son will continue to jump back, then try to get close again, and so on.

What confusion! A distinguished Italian journalist cannot understand the Society’s rejecting Rome’s “generous advances.” Reportedly Pope Benedict XVI and Cardinal Castrillón have both been sincerely hurt by recent statements coming from the Society about Rome or about Romans suffering from leprosy. “What? Lepers? Us???” “Ay, there’s the rub,” as Hamlet said. Leprosy is an Old Testament figure of heresy, and Vatican II is not only heresy, it is a total new religion.

A Catholic is a Catholic primarily by his faith. He chooses with his mind to adhere to a series of true propositions which are supernatural, i.e. beyond the reach of his merely natural mind. His will is therefore needed to push his mind to submit to these truths above it. But these truths are not merely wishful thinking. They are revealed by God, transmitted by the Church, and may not be tampered with. Did or did not Vatican II tamper with them? Hamlet again: “That is the question.”

The leader of the Traditional Redemptorists based in the Orkney Islands north of Scotland, who has just led as many of them as will follow him back into the embrace of Conciliar Rome, writes ecstatically of how “sweet” it “tastes” to be once more in “peaceful and undisputed communion” with the Vicar of Christ. Good luck, dear Father, with avoiding the leprosy! But at least you must be giving some consolation to Cardinal Castrillón! What confusion!

Kyrie eleison.

Guidelines

Guidelines on March 8, 2008

A young German friend asks me some questions which deserve straight answers. Here is how he expresses his main concern:—

Question:— Since the promulgation last July of the ‘Motu Proprio’ of Benedict XVI partially liberating the Tridentine rite of the Mass, there are various views and opinions as to what it means or can mean for the Society of St. Pius X. Some people are optimistic. Others say it is a trap for the SSPX. Some go so far as to say that the leadership of the SSPX is preparing a sell-out to Rome . . . I have the feeling that the average SSPX faithful are somewhat confused. What can you give me by way of a guideline, so that I don’t get lost in useless guessing-games or needless fears? Answer:— We must save our souls. To save our souls we must keep the Catholic Faith, because “without faith it is impossible to please God” (Heb. XI, 6). The stupendous achievement of Archbishop Marcel Lefebvre between 1970 when he founded the SSPX and 1991 when he died, is that he enabled many souls to keep the true Faith in a Church where millions of Catholics were losing it, consciously or unconsciously, because the leading churchmen had come to believe in the anti-Catholic ideals of the modern world. Ever since the Second Vatican Council (1962–1965), these churchmen have behaved like ice-salesmen who are convinced they must expose their wares in bright sunshine! The Church has been melting before their eyes ever since!

Yet still they cling to the anti-Catholic ideas of Vatican II. Alongside the “Motu Proprio” apparently favoring the Mass of the true Faith, Benedict XVI organizes and presides over ecumenical meetings which, by placing the Catholic religion on a more or less equal footing with all other religions, officially represented and all necessarily more or less false, are a grave offence to God. So any apparent benevolence shown by Benedict XVI towards the true Faith or the true Mass can only mean that he wishes them to be reconciled with the Conciliar religion and all other religions! Therefore if he is not a conscious agent of truth-dissolving Freemasonry, at any rate he has no understanding of the true Faith, and so he cannot grasp how absolutely opposed it is to the man-centred religion of Vatican II.

Question:— Then was the ‘Motu Proprio’ a trap to draw the SSPX (along with others) towards reconciliation with this false Rome? Answer:— God alone knows for sure what were Benedict XVI’s intentions. Any benevolence of his towards Tradition, towards the SSPX, towards the true Mass, may, for all we know, be subjectively sincere. But objectively the Motu Proprio and the Letter to the Bishopswhich accompanied it, by no means recognize the full rights of the True Mass or the true Faith. So if someone suggested that either of these documents did recognize those rights, he would indeed be falling into a trap.

Question:— Yet there has been much praise and little criticism of the ‘Motu Proprio’ from within the SSPX.

Answer:— Catholics are so longing for the Roman churchmen to come back to the Faith that they rejoice at the least indication of Rome’s doing so, but, sadly, that can be a mistake. What use is it if an arithmetician says two and two are four when you know that alongside, and all the time, he is also saying they are five? He obviously has no grasp of true arithmetic. What use is it for Benedict XVI to say that the true Mass has never been abrogated, and (within limits) to set it free, when he is also constantly organizing ecumenical meetings? He obviously has no grasp on the true Faith.

Question:— What about the rumor of the SSPX preparing a sell-out to Rome? Answer:— Certainly the SSPX has no intention of betraying Archbishop Lefebvre’s defence of the Faith. So if any of the members entertain any serious thought of going in with Rome’s Neo-modernists, it is because they will have been deceived by the modern world, like so many before them. This time round the deceit will have taken the form that things have got better in Rome since the Archbishop’s time. But they have not. The apostasy at least objective is as wild as ever. So I cannot believe that the heirs of Archbishop Lefebvre would let themselves be deceived to that extent.

However, I have often made myself unpopular with colleagues in the SSPX by recalling the obvious fact that the SSPX does not have the guarantee of indefectibility that the Catholic Church has. The SSPX could fail. That is why, given what service it has rendered since 1970 to the Universal Church in guarding the Faith, and what service it can still render, Catholics must pray for it, especially for the leadership, that it may not fail.

Question:— If the SSPX were to be re-absorbed into the mainstream Church, would that mean the crisis of the Church had come to an end?

Answer:— By no means. The SSPX being “re-absorbed” or not is not the problem. The problem is the Roman churchmen, especially the Pope. When they come back to the true Faith, and only then, will the crisis be over.

Question:— And what if the SSPX is re-absorbed without the crisis being over?

Answer:— Our Lord says, “Sufficient for the day is the evil thereof.” In other words, we will cross that bridge when we come to it, as the proverb says. However, one thing is certain: the Good Shepherd CANNOT abandon sheep that do not want to abandon him. Have no fear! If in His wisdom and providence He were to allow the SSPX to fail – and that is merely a possibility, not a certainty – he would offer to all sheep of good will, in some other form, all the guidance and support they would need to save their souls.

Question:— I have a strange sense of violent storms on the horizon. What do you think? Answer:— Nothing seems to me more likely. The financial storm has started, and is increasing every day in weight and speed. Storms economic and political are bound to follow, and, as a chastisement of God, I do believe, World War III, which will be terrible.

“In the world you shall have distress,” says Our Lord, “but have confidence, I have overcome the world.” (Jn XV, 33).

Kyrie eleison.

False Anti-Semitism

False Anti-Semitism on March 1, 2008

When “Eleison Comments” last week argued that insofar as Pope Benedict XVI’s Good Friday prayer change worked against the eternal salvation of Jews, he had proved himself – no doubt unintentionally – to be a true anti-semite, ie enemy of Jews purely as Jews, a number of readers apparently agreed. I congratulate them, because they had to be thinking with their Catholic minds instead of merely emoting with their (objectively) vile media. Let us think a little further.

Obviously, the basic principles apply to all men and not just to Jews: to wish them eternal salvation is to love them truly, because it is to wish them the greatest good of all, namely everlasting happiness in Heaven, through and with Our Lord Jesus Christ. To wish them welfare or prosperity merely in this little life on earth is to love them much less, especially if that worldly success would get in the way of their eternal salvation, as it all too easily can do – Mt.XIX, 24.

But fewer and fewer people today believe in life everlasting or in Our Lord, and so naturally the perspective of such people is different. If I urge upon them eternal life, or if I do what I prudently can to obstruct their campaigning against Our Lord, then I will seem to them to be their enemy when I am in fact their best friend. It is all a question of perspective, but it is not a question of opinion: the eternal perspective is true, while the anti-Christian perspective is objectively and absolutely false.

Now ever since the Jews were responsible for the crucifying of Our Lord Jesus Christ – “His blood be upon us and upon our children,” Mt.XXVII,25 – they have as a race and as a religion, always with noble exceptions, continued to reject him down to our day. Thus St. Paul observed that they not only “killed the Lord Jesus and the prophets,” but they also prohibited St. Paul himself from “speaking to the Gentiles so as to save them.” In brief, their behavior was such that “they please not God and are adversaries to men” (I Thess. II, 14–16). Closer to our own time, it is a matter of historical record that the designing and launching of, for instance, Communism, to wrest mankind away from God and to replace his Heaven with a man-made paradise, was largely their achievement.

So they persecuted St. Paul at every turn (see Acts of the Apostles) as being one of their arch-enemies, when in fact nobody loved them more truly or laboured more for their real well-being than did St. Paul (cf. Rom. IX,1–5). Similarly today, they will call an “anti-semite” anybody who gets in the way of any godlessness of theirs, when in fact all people labouring for their salvation, as for the salvation of Gentiles, are their best friends.

St Paul, pray for us!

Kyrie eleison.