Tag: Catholic Authority

Archbishop’s Authority – II

Archbishop’s Authority – II posted in Eleison Comments on February 22, 2020

DCLV – in theory, the Pope’s authority is indispensable to the Church. DCLVI – in theory, priests need absolutely the Pope to unite them. DCLVII – in practice, Archbishop Lefebvre’s authority was seriously handicapped by his not having the living Pope behind him. DCLVIII – in practice, the Archbishop exercised the authority he still had in at least three different ways, depending on the subjects over whom he exercised it: those who asked him to exercise authority over them on his terms, or those who asked only for a partial authority on their own terms, or those who asked for none at all.

Notice first of all how the classification is not by the authority, but by those under it. In other words, the subjects are, to a certain extent, “calling the shots.” This abnormal situation in the Church is the direct result of Vatican II, where Catholic Authority radically undermined itself by its wholesale betrayal of Catholic Truth, when it attempted to replace God’s objective religion with a man-made substitute, and to change the God-centred Catholic Church into the man-centred Newchurch. By this Council all Catholic priests were essentially discredited, as they remain to this day, and so will remain, until the churchmen return to telling God’s Truth. Then they will recover their full Authority.

Those who asked the Archbishop to exercise his authority on his terms were of course the members of the Catholic Congregations which he himself founded, notably of secular priests but also of religious Brothers and Sisters and Tertiaries. These Congregations he made as normal as possible, with grades of obedience to himself as the Superior General, with vows at ordinations for the priests and solemn promises on formal entry of priests, Brothers or Sisters into their corresponding Congregations. The vows were to God, and in case of need have often been dissolved (discreetly) by Roman authority, as is normal. The promises have depended rather more on the choice of those who made them, and here the authority of the Archbishop was seriously undermined, as told in last week’s “Comments,” by his being condemned officially by the Pope and his fellow-bishops. If a priest decided to leave the Society for liberalism on the left or for sedevacantism on the right, the Archbishop could, as he said, do nothing more than cut off all future contact, in order that such priests could not pretend that they were still on good terms with the Society. They had chosen to do without him.

Those who, secondly, asked the Archbishop to exercise his authority on their own terms, for instance to receive the sacrament of Confirmation, he would readily satisfy, as far as he could within the norms of the Church, because of the Church crisis which makes questionable the validity of Confirmations conferred with the Newrite of Confirmation. On the one hand, he said, Catholics have a right to certainly valid sacraments, and if on the other hand they wanted nothing further to do with him personally, that was their choice and their responsibility before God.

And thirdly, for those who asked him in no way to exercise authority over him, like a large number of Traditional priests who were sympathetic to his Society but who never wanted to join it, he was always generous with whatever contact, friendship, encouragement or advice they may have asked of him, but never did he remotely pretend or behave as though he had any authority over them. And the same with the laity. Many Catholics never agreed with the stand he took, apparently opposed to the Pope, but he was unfailingly courteous and ready to answer questions, if only the questioner was remotely deserving of an answer. And it was the objectivity and reasonableness of his answers which turned many Newchurchers into Traditionalists who would put themselves under his ministry or the guidance of his priests.

In brief, the Council crippled Church Authority, but where there was a will there was a way, or at least a substitute way, for souls to seek eternal salvation, which is extremely difficult without priests. Through the Archbishop especially but not only, God guaranteed this substitute way for souls, which is still there.

Kyrie eleison.

Archbishop’s Authority – I

Archbishop’s Authority – I posted in Eleison Comments on February 15, 2020

Let us illustrate the relationship between Catholic Truth and Catholic Authority with the concrete example of the Athanasius of modern times that God gave us to show us the way through our pre-apocalyptic crisis: Archbishop Lefebvre (1905–1991). When the mass of the Church’s leaders were persuaded at Vatican II to change the nature of the Faith, and a few years later in the name of obedience to abandon the true rite of the Mass, by the strength of his faith the Archbishop remained faithful to the Church’s unchanging Truth and showed that it is the heart and soul of its divine Authority. As the Spanish proverb says, “Obedience is not the servant of obedience.”

Certainly the Archbishop believed in the Church’s authority to give commands to its members at all levels for the salvation of their souls. That is why in the first few years of the existence of the Society of St Pius X (1970–1974) he took care to obey Canon Law and the Pope, Paul VI, as far as he was able, but when officials sent from Rome to inspect his Seminary in Écône departed far from Catholic Truth in things they said to seminarians, he wrote his famous Declaration of November, 1974, in protest against the whole of Rome’s abandoning the Catholic faith for the new Conciliar religion, and this Declaration served like a charter for what emerged as the Traditional movement at the Mass of Lille in the summer of 1976.

Now the Archbishop himself always resolutely denied that he was the leader of Tradition, because to this day Catholic Tradition is an unofficial movement and has no kind of official structure. Nor was he the only leader among Traditionalists, nor did all of them agree with him or pay him homage. Nevertheless a large number of Catholics saw in him their leader, trusted him and followed his lead. Why? Because in him they saw the continuation of that Catholic Faith by which alone they could save their souls. In other words the Archbishop may have had no official authority over them, because jurisdiction is the prerogative of Church officials duly elected or appointed, but he built up until his death an enormous moral authority by his faithfulness to the true Faith. In other words his truth created his authority, unofficial but real, whereas the officials’ lack of Truth has been undermining their Authority ever since.

The dependence of authority, at least Catholic authority, upon truth, was as clear as clear could be.

However, with the Society of St Pius X which the Archbishop founded in 1970, things were slightly different, because here he did receive from the official Church some jurisdiction from Bishop Charrière of the Diocese of Geneva, Lausanne and Fribourg, a jurisdiction which he cherished because it proved that he was not making things up as he went along but was doing work of the Church. And so he did his best to govern the SSPX as though he was the normal head of a normal Catholic Congregation under Rome, which the defence of the true Faith gave him every right to do. However, the public and official Romans used all their jurisdiction to give him the lie, thereby alienating from him a mass of Catholics who would otherwise have followed him.

Moreover, the Newchurch that they were creating all around him meant that even inside the Society his authority was seriously weakened. For instance, if before the Council a priest dissatisfied with his diocesan bishop applied to enter the diocese of another, the second bishop naturally consulted the first about the applicant, and if the first advised the second to have nothing to do with him, that was the immediate end of the application. On the contrary, if a Society priest dissatisfied with the Society applied to join a Newchurch diocese, the Newchurch bishop was liable to “welcome him back into the official fold” as a fugitive from the “Lefebvrist schism.” Thus the Archbishop was not supported by his brother bishops, which meant that he could not discipline his priests inside the Society as he should have been able to. His authority was walking on eggshells, insofar as he had at his disposal no sanction with which to keep wayward priests in check. Thus lack of truth in the Newchurch left truth in the Society without the Catholic authority due to it to protect it.

Therefore to make up for the lack of unity in Truth coming from the hierarchy, Traditional priests today must exercise a more than normal forbearance towards one another, and Traditional Catholics must pray more than usual for their priests to find this forbearance. It is not impossible.

Kyrie eleison.

Pope Indispensable – II

Pope Indispensable – II posted in Eleison Comments on February 8, 2020

It is to the unfaithfulness of Catholic Authority to Catholic Truth at the Second Vatican Council that these “Comments” last week (DCLV, Feb.1) attributed the unprecedented crisis of the Catholic Church, now well over 50 years old. The logical conclusion was that the crisis will only come to an end when Catholic Authority comes back to the Truth, because the Truth does not change, and so it cannot move to rejoin the Pope and bishops who are meant to be defending it. Moreover it was stated that the Pope must restore the bishops, and that Almighty God alone can restore the Pope, and that God will put the Pope back on his feet only “when we have learned our lesson.” That is because if God lifted us back up the mud-slide too soon, we naughty human beings would profit merely to slide down once more. God cannot afford to be too generous with our perverse generation. So what lesson or lessons do we need to be taught?

Amongst others, that the world cannot do without a sane Church, and the Church to be sane must have a sane Pope, and the sane Pope must be obeyed. For example, by the time Vatican II came to an end at the end of 1965, the churchmen were in full-blooded apostasy. Yet still God gave mankind another chance. In front of Paul VI was the pressing question of artificial means of birth control, contraception for short. Conditions in modern cities were persuading a mass of bishops, priests and lay-folk that the Church’s strict and ancient condemnation had to be relaxed, that the modern city was right and that the unchanging rule of the Church, in other words God, was wrong. Paul VI too wanted to make the rule easier.

However, when the commission of experts which he had appointed to study the question made their report, he himself saw that the rule could not be relaxed. His final arguments for maintaining the rule have not the force of the old arguments based on the immutable natural law, but nevertheless Paul VI did uphold the essential law in his Encyclical “Humanae Vitae” of 1968. But when he published it, all hell promptly broke loose in the Church. And in 1969 he imposed on the entire Church the Novus Ordo Mass. Is it idle speculation that if the bishops and priests had obeyed the Pope, instead of rejecting God’s unchanging law, God might have spared them the New Mass? As it was, disobeying the Pope when he was faithful to God’s law, they all contributed to the breakdown of Authority in the Church. All bets were then off, and chaos took over inside the Church.

Here is a classic example of Truth needing Authority, of the world needing the Church and of the Church needing the Pope. Especially in today’s big city, men cannot see what is wrong with contraception, on the contrary, it seems to be mere common sense. Thus if there is no divine Authority to forbid contraception, nothing and nobody else will stand up to the human passions which drive towards it. In this way Vatican II (Gaudium et Spes # 48) suggested that in the act of marriage recreation comes before procreation, and it opened the flood-gates to divorce, adultery, pre-birth then post-birth abortion, euthanasia, homosexuality, gender change, and horrors yet unknown, but all implicit in the breakdown of the subordination of recreation to procreation. Mother Church always knew that to smash the act of marriage is to smash successively marriage, the individual person, the family, society, the nation and the world. This chaos is where we are today. Such is the need of Authority.

And the most important Authority is that of the Church, to impose upon men’s erring minds God’s infallible Truth, and upon their wayward wills God’s eternal Law, so that they can get to His Heaven and avoid their Hell. And to embody that Authority and to project it before men, the Incarnate God instituted His One Catholic Church as a monarchy of which the single ruler is the Roman Pope, who alone has the mission and the grace to govern and to hold together, in the Catholic Truth, all members of the Church. It follows that when he quits the Truth, as with Vatican II, then the sheep are necessarily scattered, because nobody other than the Pope has from God the mission or the grace to unite them (cf. Lk. XXII, 32).

Kyrie eleison.

Restoring Authority

Restoring Authority posted in Eleison Comments 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.

Menzingen Defended – II

Menzingen Defended – II posted in Eleison Comments on March 3, 2018

No doubt some readers of these “Comments” are not so interested in reading about what seem to them merely internal squabbles among relatively few Catholic priests. Let such readers beware of missing the importance of these “squabbles.” Religion leads the world because God exists, and how men stand to him (religion) governs how they stand to their fellow-men (politics). The Catholic Church leads religion because since Christ’s Incarnation Catholicism is the only religion founded by the one true God. And Catholic Tradition leads the Catholic Church because that Church is as essentially unchanging as Our Lord Himself. And for 42 years (1970–2012) the Society of St Pius X was in the front-line of the defence of Catholic Tradition because it was the only worldwide Catholic organisation effectively resisting the unfaithful modernisation of the Church by the Second Vatican Council. Therefore all men alive, atheists or Protestants or Conciliarists, especially priests and followers of the SSPX, are concerned by the problem of infidelity to Catholic Tradition within the SSPX. Read on, everybody!

Another champion of Menzingen, Fr. B., has stepped into the lists to defend its policy of rejoining Conciliar Rome – let us call them the Reconciliarists – with an article in the official monthly magazine of the SSPX in the USA. Ever since Vatican II separated Catholic Authority from the Catholic Truth which it only exists to defend and maintain, all Catholics have been necessarily more or less schizophrenic – either they follow Authority and abandon Truth, or they follow Truth and abandon Authority, or they choose any one of a variety of combinations in between.

The Founder of the SSPX, Archbishop Lefebvre, chose Truth, but kept as much respect for the holders of Catholic Authority as was compatible with faithfulness to the Truth, and as a result he suffered serious persecution and condemnation from all Catholics who more or less preferred Authority On the contrary, his successors at the head of his Society are wanting to take it back under Conciliar Authority, so that from 2012 the Society has been officially Reconciliarist. By this switch of the SSPX from the Founder’s Truth back to Conciliar Authority, they have filled the Society with schizophrenia, causing a movement of “Resistance” to their “Reconciliarism.”

For most of his article, Fr B. is Catholic in his principles, but at the end he is Reconciliarist in their application. Therefore possibly to help the Society’s present Reconciliarist Superior General to be re-elected in July, he attacks the “Resistance” not for its attachment to Truth, which is its strong point, but for its detachment from Catholic Authority, both in Rome and in Menzingen. Thus, Fr B. says, towards Rome the “Resistance” is for the sake of its own “ease and convenience” in danger of ignoring the Pope and of not acknowledging his authority, while towards Menzingen it is refusing proper respect and obedience, and by criticising every word uttered by the Superior General it is sowing suspicion and blocking the channels of grace.

But, Reverend Father, among your Catholic principles you yourself acknowledge the primacy of the Faith. Now Vatican II was a disaster for the Faith, by trying to put modern man in the place of God. Therefore Conciliarism and Reconciliarism are both disastrous, and both the officials of Rome and the Society’s present Superior General are to be judged accordingly. And he must not be replaced by another Reconciliarist. The problem is not the “Resistance” which does not “ignore” the Pope and is certainly not seeking its own ease and convenience, because it is highly uncomfortable for Catholics to be deprived of all support from recognisable Catholic officials above. Therefore the “Resistance” is neither falling into “a schismatic attitude in its own right,” nor is it wrecking the channels of grace. The problem is the Council causing schism, the Council poisoning the Popes and the Council strangling the grace of Jesus Christ. The present Superior General must not be re-elected if anything of the true Society is to survive.

Kyrie eleison.

Bishops’ Declaration – II

Bishops’ Declaration – II posted in Eleison Comments on April 30, 2016

Here is the second and last part of the bishops’ Declaration at Bishop Thomas Aquinas’ consecration in Brazil on March 19, six weeks ago:—

Yet the gravest of all in our 21st century is perhaps the mass of Catholics, both clergy and laity, who are still docilely following the destroyers. As to the churchmen, how can the destroyers amongst them not be aware of what they are doing? It must be by that “diabolical disorientation” mentioned even before the Council by Sister Lucy of Fatima. And as for the laity, how can so many still not see that Catholic Authority only exists to establish Catholic Truth, and once it betrays that Truth it loses its right to be obeyed? It must be by the same “disorientation.” So in what exactly does this disorientation consist? In the loss of Truth, in the progressive loss of all sense of the very existence of objective truth, because men have wanted to break free from the reality of God and his creatures and to replace that reality with their own fantasy, so as to be able to do as they like. It is always false freedom at work.

But God does not abandon his Church, and so in the 1970’s he raised up Archbishop Lefebvre to come to its help. The Archbishop recognized that the Pope and his kindred spirits at the Council were for the sake of being modern leaving behind the Church’s Tradition, and that by so doing they would destroy the Church. By a sort of miracle he managed to set up within the Church a solid resistance to the on-going destruction, in the form of a Priestly Fraternity which he dedicated to St Pius X, a Pope who saw right through the corruption of modern times. But the Roman authorities would not put up with anyone refusing their supposed “renewal” of Vatican II, so they did everything within their power to make the Archbishop’s resistance disappear.

However he stood up to them, and in order to guarantee that his work of immense importance for the defence of Catholic Tradition would survive, in 1988 he proceeded to consecrate four bishops, against the express will of the mistaken Roman authorities, but in line with the implicit will of all Popes since the beginning of the Church, with the exception of the last four, all won over to the Council.

This heroic decision by by Archbishop Lefebvre was amply justified by events, notably the uninterrupted downfall of the Church authorities whose only wish was to bring the Church in line with today’s corrupt world. Of these four bishops, the Spanish-speaker was appointed to settle in South America to look after Catholics wishing to keep the Faith of all time in a whole continent, formerly so Catholic, but where there were now no more bishops that could be relied on to lead souls to Heaven.

Alas, the downfall has gone on ever since, only now it is the Archbishop’s Society of St Pius X that is in turn falling victim to the universal corruption by its General Chapter of 2012, where the Society’s leaders under their Superior General made the Society lurch towards the Council. Instead of insisting on the primacy of the Church’s unchanging doctrine, on Tradition, they opened the door to an agreement with official Rome, given over to the Council. And so since 2012, the same disorientation has been making its way within the Society, whose bishops can at least for the moment no longer be relied on. That is most sad, but altogether normal in the present state of Church and world. Hence once more, a reliable bishop needs to be consecrated to make sure that the unchanging Faith survives, especially where a whole continent of souls needs a true shepherd to save their souls for eternity.

May God be with him! Let us pray to the Blessed Virgin Mary that she keep him faithful under her mantle, faithful unto death.

Bishop Jean-Michel Faure.
Bishop Richard Williamson.