building fund

Good News

Good News on January 18, 2014

The first piece of good news is that Queen of Martyrs house in south-east England is being bought these very days. At first the purchase price seemed out of reach, but two telephone calls to a French and an American benefactor promptly raised about two fifths and another quarter respectively of the sum needed, and suddenly the purchase came within range. About another seventh part came from the many benefactors of the St Marcel Initiative, I emptied out several piggy-banks of my own, and finally an Asian benefactor put us over the top.

Resounding thanks to every one of you that contributed, because the smaller donations are not to be scorned. God does not look only on the amount. Maybe only when he sees enough widows caring enough to pay in their widows’ mites (Lk.XXI, 1–4), does he inspire the benefactors capable of the larger donations. With God, spirit leads matter, and not the other way round. But do please pray for the three benefactors mentioned above, to whom we are all indebted. Especially I think of the house being able to serve as a refuge for priests to visit, as an island of sanity.

For indeed the second piece of good news is that the betrayal of the Faith by the leaders of the Newsociety of St Pius X is becoming clearer, little by little, to SSPX priests. One by one, some of the best of them are being alienated and then excluded by the Newsociety. It pretends that they are leaving of their own free will, or for purely personal reasons, or that they are being excluded for their disobedience. Never of course will these traitors in SSPX headquarters admit that it is their own treachery which is driving these priests out. Yet one after another they are declaring that their problem with the Newsociety is one of doctrine: the official SSPX documents of April 15 and July 14, 2012, and June 27, 2013, demonstrate that the Newsociety leaders are abandoning Archbishop Lefebvre’s glorious fight for the Faith in exchange for a mess of Conciliar pottage.

Thus in South America a capable and devoted SSPX Prior is refusing a change of post obviously designed to control and silence his opposition to the sell-out by Headquarters, and he writes to his District Superior that his refusal is for purely doctrinal reasons. In Austria a long-suffering and faithful former Prior gives five serious reasons for his departure from the SSPX, and all that the First Assistant finds to reply is that his reasons are “beneath consideration.” In France above all, a group of 12 priests have met together and issued a public declaration of allegiance to the doctrinal stand of Archbishop Lefebvre, and they have placed their priesthoods at the disposal of parents needing education for their children, of young men needing formation for the priesthood and of souls needing the sacraments. It has taken time for the priests in France to begin to react, but the reaction should be all the stronger for the delay. Archbishop Lefebvre was fond of quoting the French proverb which says that time does not respect anything done without it.

Have patience, dear readers. God is not in a hurry, nor is he mocked (Gal.VI, 7). If the SSPX misleaders try to console themselves that the priests departing or excluded represent only a small minority of the total of some 500 SSPX priests, how little they understand the power of truth! They have abandoned it, and it is abandoning them – inexorably. God have mercy on us all.

Kyrie eleison.

Please Help

Please Help on November 2, 2013

Regularly over the last 20 years I have said that the Society of St Pius X could fail. Colleagues never liked me saying it, and contrary to what some people think, I did not enjoy saying it either, but here we are. Here for instance is a quotation sent to me recently by a reader, taken from an ordinations sermon I gave in 1984, and which of course I had completely forgotten:—

“At the beginning of the Church Militant Jesus Christ led his followers through the catacombs and persecution out into the open, and at the end of the Church Militant He may well lead them from the tent in the open field through persecution back to the catacombs. If it comes to that, and if we make it to the catacombs, for many of us it will certainly not have been without the Society but back in the catacombs we may have to do without the Society ( . . .). Dear seminarians! Regularly I tell them ( . . .) that the whole world is against them; that the whole world is going to hell in a hand-basket; that the Society of St. Pius X could easily perish; that the future is dark and where there is no gloom it is full of doom. Do you know, I do believe that if any of my dire forebodings actually came true, seminarians would be pleasantly surprised!” And what do I think I see now in the “Resistance”? The painful but steady emergence of the joyful remnant of Catholics from the remnant of Traditionalists who in their time emerged from the ruins of Vatican II. Nothing yet persuades me of the need for a structure or a seminary to replace those of the SSPX, but these are early days in the history of the Resistance. What I do think is needed is a base of Resistance operations in England, not far from the Continent nor from London airports, bricks and mortar to lend some solidity to the Resistance, and to provide, for instance, a refuge where priests can recuperate for at least a few days, under no kind of pressure, from the real hardships of today’s apostolate.”

The house has been chosen, it does exist, we have agreed to buy, and donations are coming in, but we do now need both £40,000 by the end of November and another £360,000 by mid-December. I do not like making promises, but with the help of God I have no intention of abandoning the defence of the Faith, whatever form that defence may take over the next several years. Please help, and in today’s shadow of tomorrow’s collapse of currencies, do think of making a heavenly investment guaranteed by the whole host of Heaven. Bless you for any and all donations. I attach again details of means of payment.

Kyrie eleison.

* In ANY CURRENCY small credit- or debit-card contributions from anywhere in the world can easily reach us via PayPal. (Go towww.paypal.com/sendmoney and send the contribution to buildingfund@stmarcelinitiative.​com).

* Contributions in POUNDS STERLING by banker’s draft or check should be made out and sent to the St Marcel Initiative, P.O. Box 423, Deal CT 14 4BF, England.

* Banker’s drafts or checks in US DOLLARS should likewise be made out to St Marcel Initiative and sent to 9051 Watson Rd., Suite 279, Crestwood, MO 63126, USA (the US contributions will soon be tax-deductible).

* In EUROS, checks made out to “Institut Culturel St Benoît” should be posted to ICSB, BP 60232, F78002 Versailles Cedex, France. Euros can also be sent by wire transfer from inside France to RIB – [write to letters@eleisoncomments.com for the number]; from outside France to the International Bank Account Number IBAN – [write to letters@eleisoncomments.com for the number].

* For other bank wire transfers, please write to us for details at buildingfund@dinoscopus.org, or, in the USA, use the convenient “e-check/bank wire” form at www.stmarcelinitiative.com.

Happy Anniversary

Happy Anniversary on October 12, 2013

I have good news for all Catholics who understood what Archbishop Lefebvre was about. An eight-bedroom house is being bought in south-east England to serve as a base of operations for anybody wishing to continue his work outside of the present SSPX. For a whole year since my “exclusion” from the SSPX I have lain low, at least physically speaking, to watch and wait to see how things would develop within the SSPX, but they are not getting any better, alas.

And so just as the Archbishop can only have wished that Conciliar Rome would come back to its Catholic senses so that there would be no further need for his Society to maintain Tradition, so too one might now wish that the present SSPX leaders would come back to the Archbishop’s way of thinking about Conciliar Rome, so that resistance to their virtual conciliarism would be unnecessary. But wishes do not make reality go away, and that reality is that just as Conciliar Rome is obdurate in its apostasy, so too the SSPX leaders have not stopped promoting their own authority to do what they like with the Archbishop’s legacy – authority over truth. That is why some bricks and mortar have become a necessity for the on-going service of the true Church.

The house is being bought in England because England is the only country that I cannot be thrown out of as a foreigner. It is in south-east England with a relatively gentle climate for England, in a town not too far by fast train from London, and of easy access by Eurostar from Paris and Brussels. It is a picturesque town, and should be an agreeable place for priests to visit, to wind down, to talk (in all discretion), and to wind up again for today’s difficult apostolate. But it will cost more or less £400,000 to buy, and it will cost rather more to run than my present frugal way of life, for which I have not been in need and have hardly appealed. Let people who are themselves in need not think of contributing (see II Cor.VIII, 12–13), but let investors with fragile investments think of transferring funds to their completely secure bank accounts in Heaven before the stock markets collapse and before today’s paper monies are inflated out of all recognition. I must find within two months or so a tenth of the sum, and the rest soon afterwards.

* In ANY CURRENCY small credit- or debit-card contributions from anywhere in the world can easily reach us via PayPal. (Go to www.paypal.com/sendmoney and send the contribution to buildingfund@stmarcelinitiative.​com)
* Contributions in POUNDS STERLING by banker’s draft or check should be made out and sent to the St Marcel Initiative, P.O. Box 423, Deal CT 14 4BF, England.
* Banker’s drafts or checks in US DOLLARS should likewise be made out to St Marcel Initiative and sent to 6051 Watson Rd., Suite 279, Crestwood, MO 63126, USA (the US contributions will soon be tax-deductible).
* In EUROS, checks made out to “Institut Culturel St Benoît” should be posted to ICSB, BP 60232, F78002 Versailles Cedex, France. Euros can also be sent by wire transfer from inside France to RIB – [write to letters@eleisoncomments.com for the number]; from outside France to the International Bank Account Number IBAN – [write to letters@eleisoncomments.com for the number]. For other bank wire transfers, please write to us for details at letters@eleisoncomments.com, or, in the USA, use the convenient “e-check/bank wire” form at www.stmarcelinitiative.com.

Any contribution please mark “Building Fund.” Thank you in advance for all and any help.

Kyrie eleison.