Catholic Church

Two Errors

Two Errors on June 30, 2012

Whether or not the Society of St Pius X survives its present severe trial, liberals will keep coming back with false arguments to persuade it to commit suicide. Let us look at two more of them.

The first has come up constantly in recent debates over whether the SSPX should accept some practical (non-doctrinal) agreement with Conciliar Rome. It is simple: a Catholic leader (or leaders) has graces of state from God, therefore he should not be criticized but automatically trusted. Answer: of course God is offering to every one of us at all times, and not only to leaders, the natural assistance and/or supernatural grace we all need to begin fulfilling our duty of state, but we have free-will to co-operate with that grace or to refuse it. If all Church leaders always co-operated with their graces of state, how could there ever have been Judas Iscariot? And how could we ever have had Vatican II? The argument from graces of state is as foolish as it is simple.

The second argument is more serious. It was put forward last month in a ten-page article by a Mr. J.L. in a conservative Catholic periodical in England. It favoured a Rome-SSPX practical agreement. Here it is, abbreviated of course, but not distorted. The Catholic Church is today under heavy attack, from without (e.g. by the USA government) and from within (e.g. by bishops who love the good life but do not know their theology), and at the topmost level by a Vatican administration riddled with scandals and in-fighting. The Pope is besieged on all sides, and he is looking to the SSPX for help to re-establish within the Church the sane influence of the Church’s past, in which he believes, even if he also believes in Vatican II. Monsignor Bux gave voice to the Pope’s appeal: if only the SSPX would respond by accepting a practical agreement, it would immensely benefit not only the whole Church but also the SSPX itself. Fr Aulagnier, a former high-up SSPX priest, clearly sees as much.

Dear J.L., full marks for your love of the Church and recognition of its problems, for your concern for the Pope and your desire to help him, but low marks for your grasp of where those problems come from and of what the SSPX is all about. Like one zillion souls in today’s Church and world, including Fr. Aulagnier, you miss the absolutely basic importance of the doctrine of the Faith.

The USA government attacks because the Church is weak. The Church is weak because the bishops’ poor behavior follows on their poor grasp of the doctrine of Heaven, Hell, sin, damnation, redemption, saving grace and the Redeemer’s ever-present sacrifice in the true Mass. The bishops have such a poor grasp of these world-saving truths because, amongst other things, the Bishop of bishops only half believes them. The Pope only half believes them because the other half of him believes in Vatican II. Vatican II undermines all the true religion of God by the deadly ambiguities planted throughout its documents (as you recognize), and designed to put man in the place of God.

Dear J.L., false doctrine is the basic problem. By the grace of God the SSPX has up till now upheld Jesus Christ’s true teachings, but if it put itself under Church authorities only half-believing them at best, it would soon stop attacking error (as is already happening), and it would finish by promoting error, and with error all the horrors you mention. God forbid!

Kyrie eleison.

Flowers Teach

Flowers Teach on June 23, 2012

If flowers speak (cf. EC 255), then they can also teach: the value of time, the justice of God, the harmony of grace and nature.

For instance, if God exists and he is not unjust by making a soul’s whole eternity depend upon its choices made during one brief life, even lasting 90 years, then it stands to reason both that every moment of that life counts, and that in every moment (even if not always with the same force) God is appealing to us to join him for eternity. That is why it makes sense that he should be talking through the flowers and through every other gift of his creation, because what soul alive can truthfully say that it has nothing and nobody to love? Even the most rabid “atheist” has, say, his dog or his cigarettes. And Who designed dogs and tobacco plants, and kept them reproducing down to our own day?

So just before he dies the “atheist” may still claim that he at least was never spoken to by God, but in the instant after he dies he will grasp in a flash that for every moment of his waking life God has been appealing to him through some creature or other around him. “Am I now unjust,” God might ask him, “if I condemn you for every remaining moment of my life, when for every moment of your life you have been refusing me? Have what you have chosen. Depart from me into . . .” (Mt. XXV, 41).

Conversely, take a soul that has profited by every moment of its life to love the great and good God behind all the good things it has enjoyed, and that has even recognized the permission of his Providence behind all the bad things it has not enjoyed. Then who needs to be recognized, or famous, who needs to appear in the media, or to fill drawers of vacation photographs, in order to give meaning to his life? Small wonder that in past ages talented souls could bury their talents in a cloister or monastery in order to devote them wholly to the loving of God. For indeed every moment of our time is of measureless value, because upon every moment hangs for good or ill a measureless eternity.

Moreover, that flowers speak can help us to make sense of another well-known problem: how can non-Catholic souls be condemned for not having the Catholic faith when Catholic missionaries never reached them? Whatever mystery is here may at least partly be solved, humanly speaking, if one recalls that it is the selfsame God who creates flowers and instituted the Catholic Church. Thus if God’s Providence never allowed for Catholic truth to reach the ears of a given soul, nevertheless that soul will not be able to plead that it knew nothing of the true God, and it can be judged on what it did know, for instance the beauty of cloudscapes, of sunrises and sunsets. Did it, beholding them, say with the pagan Job (Job XIX, 25), “I know that my Redeemer liveth,” or did it say, “Well, yes, that’s nice, but now let me visit my neighbour’s wife . . .”?

In fact a number of complaints that men have today against their Creator arise even with Catholics, because many Catholics are, like everybody else today, more or less cut off from Nature by their urban or suburban lives, and their “spirituality” becomes correspondingly artificial. “Woe to anybody who has never loved an animal,” somebody has said. Children are close to God. Watch how naturally children love animals.

Great and good God, grant us to see you where you are, deep down everything and everybody, at every moment.

Kyrie eleison.

Flowers Speak

Flowers Speak on June 2, 2012

God is infinite Being, infinite Truth, infinite Goodness, infinitely just and infinitely merciful. So teaches his Church, and the idea is grand and beautiful, so I have no objection. But then I learn that his Church also teaches that for just one mortal sin the soul can be damned for all eternity to sufferings harsh and cruel beyond all imagination, and that is not so nice. I begin to object.

For instance, I was never consulted before my parents decided to bring me into existence, nor was I consulted on the terms of the contract, so to speak, of my existence. Had I been consulted I might well have objected to such an extreme alternative between unimaginable bliss and unimaginable torment as the Church teaches, both without end. I might have accepted a rather more moderate “contract,” whereby in exchange for a shortened Heaven I would have faced the risk of only an abbreviated Hell, but I was not consulted. An endlessness of either seems to me to be out of all proportion to this brief life of mine on earth: 10, 20, 50 even 90 years are here today, gone tomorrow. All flesh is like grass – “In the morning man shall flourish . . . in the evening he shall fall, grow dry and wither” (Ps. LXXXIX, 6). Along this line of thought God seems so unjust that I seriously wonder if he really exists.

The problem obliges us to reflect. Let us suppose that God does exist; that he is as just as his Church says he is; that it is unjust to impose upon anybody a heavy burden without that person’s consent; that this life is brief, a mere puff of smoke compared with what eternity must be; that nobody can be in justice due for a terrible punishment if he has not been aware of committing a terrible crime. Then how can the supposed God be just? If he is just, then logically every soul reaching the age of reason must live long enough at least to know the choice for eternity that it is making, and the import of that choice. Yet how is that possible for instance in today’s world, where God is so universally neglected and unknown in the life of individuals, families and States?

The answer can only be that God comes before individuals, families and States, and that he “speaks” within every soul, prior to all human beings and independently of them all, so that even a soul whose religious education has been null and void is still aware that it is making a choice each day of its life, that it alone is making that choice for itself, and that the choice has enormous consequences. But once again, how is that possible, given the godlessness of a world all around us like ours today?

Because the “speaking” of God to souls is far deeper, more constant, more present and more appealing than the speaking of any human being or beings can ever be. He alone created our soul. He will continue to be creating it for every moment of its never ending existence. He is therefore closer to it at every single moment than even its parents who merely put together its body – out of material elements being sustained in existence by God alone. And the goodness of God is similarly behind and within and underneath every good thing that the soul will ever enjoy in this life, and the soul is deep down aware that all these good things are mere spin-offs from the infinite goodness of God. “Be quiet,” said St. Ignatius of Loyola to a tiny flower, “I know who you are speaking of.” The smile of a little child, the daily splendor of Nature at all times of day, music, every sky a masterpiece of art and so on – even loved with a deep love, these things tell the soul that there is something much more, or – Someone.

“In thee, O God, have I hoped, let me never be confounded” (Ps. XXX, 2).

Kyrie eleison.

Doctrine Undermined

Doctrine Undermined on May 26, 2012

Entire books have been written on the subject of religious liberty as taught by Vatican II in its Declaration of 1965, Dignitatis Humanae. Yet the Revolutionary teaching of that document is clear: given the natural dignity of every individual human being, no State or social group or any human power may coerce or force any man or group of men to act, in private or in public, against their own religious beliefs, so long as public order is observed (D.H.#2).

On the contrary the Catholic Church always taught up until Vatican II that every State as such has the right and even duty to coerce its citizens from practising in public any of their false religions, i.e. all non-Catholic religions, so long as such coercion is helpful and not harmful to the salvation of souls. (For instance in 2012 freedom is so widely worshipped that any such coercion would scandalize the citizens of nearly all States and make them scorn, not appreciate, the Catholic religion. In that case, as the Church always used to teach, the State may abstain from using its right to coerce false religions.)

Now the precise point on which these two doctrines contradict one another may seem quite limited –whether or not a State may coerce the public practice of false religions – but the implications are enormous: is God the Lord or the servant of men? For if on the one hand man is a creature of God, and if he is social by nature (as is obvious from men’s naturally coming together in all kinds of associations, notably the State), then society and the State are also creatures of God, and they owe it to him to serve him and his one true religion by coercing false religions at any rate in the public domain (which is the State’s business), so long as that will help rather than hinder the salvation of souls.

On the other hand if human freedom is of such value that every individual must be left free to corrupt his fellow citizens by the public practice and proselytizing of any false religion he chooses (unless public order be disturbed), then false religions must be left free to flourish in the public domain (e.g. Protestant sects in Latin America today). So the difference between false religions and the one true religion is less important than human dignity. So the true religion is not so important. So the worth of God compared with the worth of man is not so important. Thus Vatican II down-grades God as it up-grades man. Ultimately Vatican II is replacing the religion of God with the religion of man. No wonder Archbishop Lefebvre founded the Society of St Pius X to uphold the transcendent dignity and worth of God, of Our Lord Jesus Christ, in a world and Church gone mad, drunk on man’s dignity.

But now comes a religious leader who pronounced in public earlier this month: “Many people have an understanding of the Council, which is a wrong understanding.” Religious liberty, he said, “is used in so many ways. And looking closer, I really have the impression that not many know what really the Council says about it. The Council is presenting a religious liberty that is a very, very limited one: very limited . . .” Asked whether Vatican II itself, i.e. as a whole, belongs to Catholic Tradition, he replied, “I would hope so.”

See for yourselves the interview, given in English and accessible on YouTube under the title, “Traditionalist leader talks about his movement, Rome.” Can anybody be surprised if “his movement” is currently going through the gravest crisis of its 42 years of existence?

Kyrie eleison.

Benedict’s Ecumenism – V

Benedict’s Ecumenism – V on May 19, 2012

Because of the need to break a long argument into several pieces, readers may have lost the thread of the several EC’s on “Benedict’s Ecumenism.” Let us sum up the argument so far:—

EC 241 established a few basics: the Catholic Church is an organic whole, amongst the beliefs of which if anyone picks and chooses, he is a “chooser,” or heretic. Moreover, if he takes with him a Catholic belief outside the Church, it will not remain the same, just as if oxygen is taken out of water by electrolysis, it ceases to be part of a liquid and turns into a gas. Conciliar ecumenism supposes that there are beliefs which non-Catholics share with Catholics, but in fact even “I believe in God” is liable to be quite different when it is incorporated in a Protestant or in a Catholic system of belief, or creed.

EC 247 used another comparison to illustrate how parts of the Catholic whole do not remain the same when they are taken out of that whole. Gold coins may remain identical gold coins when they are taken out of a heap of coins, but a branch cut off a living tree becomes something quite different, dead wood. The Church is more like the tree than like the coins, because Our Lord compared his Church to a vine-plant, in fact he said that any branch cut off it is thrown into the fire and burnt (Jn. XV, 6 – interestingly, no living branch is so fruitful as the vine-branch, no dead wood is so useless as vine-wood). So parts cut off from the Catholic Church do not remain Catholic, as ecumenism pretends.

EC 249 would show how Vatican II documents promote these false ideas of ecumenism, but EC 248 had to issue a preliminary warning that those documents are notorious for their ambiguity, So it gave the example of how Dei Verbum (#8) opened the door to the modernists’ false notion of “living Tradition” Then EC 249 presented three Council texts, crucial for the modernists’ ecumenism: Lumen Gentium #8, suggesting that Christ’s “true” Church reaches beyond the “narrow” Catholic Church, and Unitatis Redintegratio (#3), suggesting firstly that the Church is built up of “elements” or parts that can be found the same inside or outside the Catholic Church (like coins in or out of a heap), and secondly, that these elements can therefore serve to save souls inside or outside the Catholic Church.

EC 251 came at last to the ecumenism of Benedict XVI in particular. Quotes of Fr. Joseph Ratzinger given by Dr. Schüler in his book Benedict XVI and the Church’s View of Itself,” showed how the young theologian in the 1960’s thought entirely along the lines of golden coins in or out of the heap. Later quotes indeed showed that the older Cardinal and Pope has continually tried to keep his balance between the Church as a heap of coins and the Church as an organic whole, but as Dr. Schüler argues, this very balancing act presupposes that half of him still believes in the Church as a heap of coins.

Unless readers demand textual quotes of Joseph Ratzinger to prove that these are not being twisted or taken out of context, the last EC in this series will conclude with an application of its lessons to the situation of Archbishop Lefebvre’s Society of St Pius X. On the one hand the SSPX is part of the true Catholic whole, “one, holy, Catholic and apostolic.” On the other hand it had better avoid making itself part of the diseased Conciliar whole. As a healthy branch grafted onto the unhealthy Conciliar plant, it would necessarily catch the Conciliar disease. No way can a mere branch heal that disease.

Kyrie eleison.

Benedict’s Ecumenism – IV

Benedict’s Ecumenism – IV on May 5, 2012

The Catholic Church has always taught that it is Jesus Christ’s one and only true Church, so that even if the mass of believers leave it, as will happen at the end of the world (cf. Lk.XVIII, 8), still it will not have lost its unity. Thus St Cyprian said that the unity of the Church arises from a divine foundation knit together by heavenly sacraments, and it “cannot be torn asunder by the force of contrary wills.” Souls may fall away or tear themselves away, but the Church they leave behind remains one. On this view “Church unity” can only mean souls coming back one by one into the one true Church.

That is not Vatican II’s view of the Church. By saying (Lumen Gentium #8) that Christ’s Church “subsists in” the Catholic Church, the Council opened the door wide to distinguishing between the two, and to pretending that Christ’s “true” Church is broader than the “narrow” Catholic Church. On this view there are pieces of Christ’s true Church scattered outside the Catholic Church, whereupon “Church unity” means putting these pieces together again without individuals having to convert one by one. This was certainly the view of the brilliant young Council theologian, Fr. Joseph Ratzinger, as is shown by astonishing words of his from soon after the Council, quoted with references in Dr. Schüler’s Benedict XVI and the Church’s View of Itself, pp. 17–19. A brief summary highlights their drift:—

Wherever there is Bishop, Table and Word of God, there is “church.” This true broad Christian communion has been gravely narrowed down over the centuries by Roman centralization, which drove the Protestants to break with Rome. The doctrinal differences should have been lived with. So return-to-the-fold ecumenism needs to be replaced with co-existence ecumenism. Churches must replace Church. Catholics must open up. Conversion will be only for the individual who wishes. Protestant errors are, virtually, Protestants’ rights.

But where is the Faith in all this talk of Church and churches? Or doctrine? Apparently nowhere. And what kind of unity can exist between souls that have beliefs as contradictory as those of Catholics (old-fashioned) and Protestants? It can only be a quite different unity from that of the pre-conciliar Church, and therefore quite a different Church. Indeed young Fr. Ratzinger was working towards the Newchurch. However, the Newchurch’s unity became a problem. Firstly, the unity of the Church is a dogma. And secondly, as Cardinal and Pope, Joseph Ratzinger found himself having to defend Newchurch unity against even wilder Revolutionaries than himself (e.g. Fr. Leonard Boff), for whom the Newchurch “subsists” all over the place, in many different pieces.

So Schüler quotes the Cardinal arguing that the Church of Christ has its complete realization in the Catholic Church, but not so as to exclude its incomplete realization elsewhere (but then how is it one?). Similarly the identity of the Church of Christ with the Catholic Church is substantial but not exclusive (but how can identity be anything other than exclusive?) Again, the complete being of Christ’s Church is in the Catholic Church, but it also has incomplete being elsewhere (but how can a being be complete if part of it is elsewhere?). And so on.

In brief, Benedict XVI’s Newchurch includes elements both Catholic and non-Catholic. But even partly non-Catholic is not Catholic as a whole. Therefore Benedict’s ecumenical Newchurch is, as such, not the Catholic Church.

Kyrie eleison.