Catholic Church

Ancestral Pride

Ancestral Pride on October 15, 2011

In his second volume on the life of Jesus published several months ago, Pope Benedict XVI made remarks enabling journalists to jump to the conclusion that the Jews must no longer be held responsible for deicide, i.e. the killing of God. Worse, on May 17 the executive director of the US Bishops’ Conference’s Secretariat for Ecumenical and Interreligious Affairs said that one cannot charge the Jewish people with deicide at any time in history without falling out of communion with the Catholic Church. Against what many people today want to believe, it is time to recall, however briefly, what the true Church always used to teach on the judicial murder of Jesus.

Firstly, the killing of Jesus was truly “deicide,” i.e. the killing of God, because Jesus was the one of the three divine Persons who in addition to his divine nature had taken a human nature. What was killed on the Cross? Only the human nature. But who was killed on the Cross in his human nature? None other than the second divine Person, i.e. God. So God was killed, deicide was committed.

Secondly, Jesus died on the Cross to save all of us sinful human beings from our sins, and in this sense all men were and are the purpose of his death. But only the Jews (leaders and people) were the prime agents of the deicide because it is obvious from the Gospels that the Gentile most involved, Pontius Pilate, would never have condemned Jesus to death had not the Jewish leaders roused the Jewish people to clamour for his crucifixion (Mt. XXVII, 20). Certainly the learned leaders were more guilty than the unlearned people, says St Thomas Aquinas (Summa III, 47, 5), but they all cried together for Jesus’ blood to come down upon them and their children (Mt. XXVII, 25).

Thirdly, at least Pope Leo XIII considered there to be a real solidarity between the Jews clamouring then for Jesus to be killed and the collectivity of Jews of modern times. Did he not in his Act of Consecration of the Human Race to the Sacred Heart of Jesus have the entire Church, from the end of the 19th century onwards, pray to God that he turn his “eyes of mercy towards the children of that race, once God’s chosen people: of old they called down upon themselves the Blood of the Saviour; may it now descend upon them a laver (i.e. washing) of redemption and life”?

But Leo XIII is by no means alone in observing such a continuity amongst Jews down the centuries. Do they themselves not lay claim today to the land of Palestine on the grounds that it is theirs by right from the God of the Old Testament? Has there ever been a race-people-nation on the face of the earth more proudly self-identifying as identical down the ages? Originally raised by God to cradle the Messiah, alas, when he came they refused, collectively, to recognize him. Collectively also, meaning there are always noble exceptions, they have remained faithful to that rejection, so that they changed their religion from that of Abraham and Moses and the Old Testament to that of Anas, Caiphas and the Talmud. Tragically, their very messianic training by God drives them to go on rejecting the one whom they hold to be a false messiah. Until they convert at the end of the world, as the Church has always taught they will do (cf. Rom. XI, 26–27), they seem bound to choose to go on acting, collectively, as enemies of the true Messiah. How can the Pope let go of such ancient truths?

Kyrie eleison.

Tenth Anniversary

Tenth Anniversary on October 1, 2011

The tenth anniversary of 9/11 came and went on September 11, three weeks ago. Apparently in the US media there was such a downpour of sentimentality for the occasion as to make the recent torrential rains on the eastern seaboard look like a light shower. However, before it becomes “anti-semitic” even to raise the question, let us with an American commentator of indisputable intelligence and integrity ask just what was the reality of that event.

The commentator is Dr Paul Craig Roberts who announced several months ago his retirement from writing. He was discouraged by the lack of readers interested in the truth. Fortunately his retirement did not last long. He is a truth-teller, and there are too few of them around. “In America Respect for Truth is Dead” is the title of his Sept. 12 article, published on infowars.com. As he suggests, the loss of truth is the real drama, both of 9/11 and of the ten years succeeding, not only in the USA, but in fact all over the world.

Dr Roberts has himself a scientific background, and as such he says he was wholly persuaded by the scientific evidence presented in a Sept. 8–11 meeting held in Ryerson University, Toronto, Canada, on the 9/11 events. In the four days of hearings, distinguished scientists, scholars, architects and engineers presented the fruit of their research into the 9/11 events (their findings may still be accessible at http://​www.​ustream.​tv/​channel/​thetorontohearings). Dr Roberts writes that their researches “proved that the WTC7 building was a standard controlled demolition and that incendiaries and explosives brought down the Twin Towers. There is no doubt whatsoever about this. Anyone who declares the contrary has no scientific basis on which to stand. Those who believe in the official story believe in a miracle that defies the laws of physics.”

Dr Roberts quotes a few of the many scientific proofs presented in Canada, for instance the recent discovery of nano-thermite in the dust produced by the fall of the Towers, but he writes that “the revelation of malevolence is so powerful that most readers will find it a challenge to their emotional and mental strength.” Government propaganda and the “Presstitute media” have such a grip on minds that most people seriously believe that only “conspiracy kooks” challenge the government’s story. Facts, science and evidence no longer count for anything (somebody I know has run into that!). Dr Roberts quotes a Chicago and Harvard law professor even proposing that all fact-based doubters of government propaganda should be shut down!

G.K.Chesterton once famously said that when people stop believing in God, they do not believe in nothing, they will believe in anything. Gravest of all amongst the many millions of 9/11 truth-losers are the Catholics who cannot or do not want to see the evidence for 9/11 being an inside job, who cannot or do not want to see the truly religious dimensions of the worldwide triumph of such a mind-bending lie as 9/11 represents. Let such Catholics beware. It may seem a wild exaggeration to say that they risk losing the Faith, but do we not have the terrifying example of Vatican II just behind us in time? Did not in the 1960’s far too many Catholics take such a sympathetic view of the modern world as to think that their Church should be adapted to it? Was not Vatican II the result? What did it do to their Faith?

Kyrie eleison.

“Greek Gifts” – II

“Greek Gifts” – II on August 27, 2011

“But, your Excellency, how could you in last week’s “Eleison Comments” (214) call in question, as you did, the sincerity and good will of the Roman officials who are only seeking to put an end to the alienation of the Society of St Pius X from the mainstream Church? You compared them to the Greeks deliberately deceiving the Trojans by means of the Trojan Horse. But all they want is to overcome the long and hurtful division between Catholics of Tradition and Church Authority!” Answer, one need not at all call in question these Romans’ sincerity and good will. There, in fact, is the problem! After nearly 500 years of Protestantism and Liberalism our age is so confused and perverse that the world is now full of people doing wrong even while being convinced that they are doing right. And the more convinced such people are that they are doing right, the more dangerous they can be, because with all the more force of subjective sincerity and good intentions they push towards doing objective wrong, and they pull others with them. The more sincerely today’s Romans are convinced of the rightness of their Newchurch, the more efficaciously they will destroy the true Church.

“But, your Excellency, God alone judges their intentions!” When it comes to defending the Faith, subjective intentions are comparatively unimportant. If Romans mean well in trying to pull the SSPX into the mainstream Church, I may like them personally but I will hate their errors. If they do not mean well because they know that they are trying to destroy the true Faith, than I shall not like them and I will just the same hate their errors. Their being likeable or not, or liked by me or not, is of little or no importance compared with those errors by which they are, objectively, destroying the Church.

When likeable men are peddling horrible errors, it is all too easy either to say that the errors are as likeable as the men, in which case the men incline us to liberalism, or to say that the men are as horrible as their errors, in which case the errors of the Conciliar Popes incline us to sedevacantism. But the reality today is that it has never been easier in all the history of mankind for men to be likeable at the same time as their errors are horrible. Such is our age. This situation could get worse only under the Antichrist, but it is his forerunners that are already driving the world to its ruin.

In the meantime the Romans who on September 14 are due to meet with the leaders of the SSPX are sure to be convinced of the rightness of the Newchurch as reshaped by Vatican II, in which case they are in grave error, but they may be chosen for their personal charm, to help draw the SSPX towards official Rome. Then be not surprised, dear readers, if the SSPX will be made to seem as though it is spurning Rome’s noble offers and good intentions, but that will not be the case. Any spurning by the SSPX will only be of horrible errors. Long live true Rome! Long live sweet Romans! But perish their errors!

“Your Excellency, what is their essential error?”

Putting man in the place of God. They are sliding into apostasy, and taking numberless souls with them.

Kyrie eleison.

Innocent Ignorance?

Innocent Ignorance? on August 13, 2011

A reader asks a vital question: « If a good Protestant has lived a good life but still firmly believes that the Catholic Faith is wrong, so that he does not even consider entering the Catholic Church, can he still be saved?” The question is vital (from “vita” in latin, meaning “life”), because it is a question of eternal life or death for countless souls.

By way of answer, the first thing to be said is that every soul appearing at death instantaneously before God’s judgment seat will be judged by him with a perfect justice and with a perfect mercy. God alone knows the depths of a man’s heart which a man can hide from himself, let alone from other men. Men may misjudge, but God never. Therefore the “good Protestant” will be damned by himself or saved by God, exactly as God knows that he has deserved.

Nevertheless it stands to reason that if God wants all of us to be saved (I Tim.II,4), and requires of us to believe on pain of damnation (Mk.XVI,16), he will have let us men know what we must believe and what we must do to save our souls. What then must the “good Protestant” believe?

At the very least any soul to be saved must believe that God exists and that he rewards the good and punishes the wicked (Heb.XI,6). If a “good Protestant” who has led “a good life” does not believe that, he cannot be saved. But many Catholic theologians go further and say that to be saved one must also believe in the Holy Trinity and in Christ as Redeemer. If these theologians are right, then there may be many more “good Protestants” who cannot save their souls.

And God may require of them to believe in more than just these absolute basics, depending upon how much opportunity they have had in life to learn of the Truth that comes from him. If they are ignorant of all the rest of the Catholic Faith, have they never come across it? Possibly not. But possibly they have. I can remember my mother telling with admiration how a Catholic priest once answered all the serious questions of her “good Protestant” father, but there was no follow-up that I know of. If then “good Protestants” have even only once come across Catholic truth, why exactly did they not follow up? Unless it was badly presented, they were in effect rejecting truth. Can they have rejected it without some fault? Then did they reject it innocently or wilfully? “Good Protestants” easily consider themselves to be innocent, as do we all, but God is deceived by none of us.

However, there is also what a “good Protestant” must do to be saved. He may not know all that the Catholic Church infallibly requires of us in morals, but he does have at least the natural light of his in-born conscience. Now it may be truly difficult with original sin and with no help from the Catholic sacraments to follow that natural light of one’s conscience, but if one does seriously violate it or twist it out of true, it is easy to live and to die in mortal sin, a state in which no soul can be saved. Again, the “good Protestant” may plead ignorance of the fullness of God’s law as Catholics can know it, but is his ignorance truly “invincible,” i.e. innocent? For instance, did he really not know, or did he actually want not to know, that artificial means of birth control are seriously displeasing to God?

God knows. God judges. May he have mercy upon all “good Protestants,” and upon all of us.

Kyrie eleison.

Faith Victorious

Faith Victorious on August 6, 2011

By way of answer to Bishop Tissier de Mallerais’ persuasive criticism of Pope Benedict’s thinking, laid out briefly in the last four numbers of these “Comments,” what then shall we say (Rom.VI, 1)? Let us look at three arguments by which good Catholics might seek to defend the Pope from the accusation that his thinking is not Catholic.

A first line of defence might claim in general that to attack in any way the Pope is to help the enemies of the Church. But is not the primary duty of the Pope to “confirm his brethren in the Faith” (Lk.XXII, 32)? If then a Pope’s thinking seriously strays from the Faith, to point out to him, with all due respect, where he is going astray, is not to attack him, or to do the work of the enemies of the Church. It is to help him to see clear to do his duty, and to remind him of the one and only means he has of conquering those enemies, who are today more powerful than ever – “This is the victory which overcometh the world – our Faith” (I Jn.V, 4).

A second objection to Bishop Tissier’s argument, particular to our own time, might be that Pope Benedict is a prisoner in the Vatican, so he is not free to defend Catholic Tradition as he would really wish to do. Now it is true that the post-Conciliar Popes have been surrounded by high-up Church officials who are Freemasons secretly bent upon destroying the Church. It is also possible that since Vatican II the money-men have had more and more of a financial slip-knot around the Vatican’s neck. But enough dollars would follow the true doctrine, if only it were proclaimed, and if Benedict’s faith were not imprisoned by Hegelian errors, it would easily have the victory over the Freemasons all around him. Victory by martyrdom? It might take a series of martyr Popes, but if only we deserved them, as in the early Church, the Vatican would soon again be free!

A third more direct objection was alluded to in the last “EC”: Benedict XVI might claim that he believes not only in Faith and Reason correcting one another, but also in the Traditional Faith. Thus, he might say, he himself absolutely believes that Jesus’ own crucified body rose alive with his human soul from the tomb on Easter morning, so if he also tells modern man that the real meaning of the Resurrection is not a material body coming out of a material tomb, but spiritual love conquering death, that is merely to make the Resurrection accessible to disbelieving modern man.

But, Holy Father, did or did not that crucified body rise alive from that material tomb? If it did not, stop believing that it did, stop even pretending to believe that it did, and resign from being the Pope of delusional Catholics. But if it did rise from the tomb, then THAT is what you must proclaim to poor modern man, and you must – pardon my language – cast his disbelief in his teeth. Modern man does not need to be told about luv, luv, luv. He hears it all day long! He does need to hear the rational argument, not pre-supposing faith, that only Our Lord truly risen could have both stopped his implacable enemies in their tracks and turned his totally dispirited Apostles into world-conquerors.

Holy Father, it is useless trying to get through to the world on its own rotten terms. Conquer it on Our Lord’s terms! And if you are obliged to give to us an example of martyrdom, do believe that that is the example that many of us may need in the not too distant future. We humbly pray for you.

Kyrie eleison.

Benedict’s Thinking – III

Benedict’s Thinking – III on July 23, 2011

After studying the roots of Pope Benedict’s thinking (EC 209), Bishop Tissier in his Faith Imperilled by Reason proceeds to study its fruits. If that thinking is rooted above all in the systematic subjectivism of Kant (1724–1804), those fruits cannot be good. How can the objective truths of the Faith be made in any way intrinsically dependent on the participation or reactions of the subjective believer? The Gospel, dogma, the Church, society, Christ the King and the Last Ends will be, one after another, mortally stricken.

Let us start with the Gospel. Its value lies no longer in telling the historical facts of the life and death of Our Lord, but rather in the power of its narrative to evoke existential problems of our own time. For instance whether Our Lord’s very own body sprang re-united with his human soul out of the tomb on Easter morning is not important. What matters is the modern meaning behind the narrative: love is stronger than death, Christ lives on by the force of love, and guarantees that we too will survive by love. Forget the reality or the facts. “All you need is love.”

Dogma needs likewise to be purified of the past and enriched by the present. Now the present-day philosopher Heidegger teaches that the person is a “self-surpassing.” Then Christ was the man so totally self-surpassing, so completely striving for the infinite beyond himself, that he fulfilled himself to the point of becoming divine. So the dogma of the Incarnation no longer means that God became man, but that man became God! Similarly the Redemption must mean no longer that Jesus paid to his Father by his terrible Passion the debt for all men’s sins, but that by his Cross he loved God in our stead as God should be loved, and he attracts us to do the same. Sin has ceased to be a mortal offence against God, it is merely a selfishness, a lack of love. So Mass no longer needs to be a sacrifice, and the priest becomes merely the animator of the communal celebration. No wonder Benedict believes in the Novus Ordo Mass.

As for the Church, since the existent person is the supreme value (cf. EC 209) and all persons are equally existent, then away with a Church of hierarchical inequalities, and away with the Catholic Church as the one and only Ark of Salvation, because the followers of every religion are existent persons. Let ecumenism replace all Catholic missionary efforts. Also, making the person into the supreme value will dissolve society by subordinating the common good to the individual’s rights, and it will undermine both marriage and society by putting the mutual company of the male and female persons in front of children. As for Christ the King, he will be dethroned by the bestowing upon every person such dignity that the State must protect that person’s right to choose his own religion.

Finally death, from a penalty, becomes a remedy for our ills. The particular judgment means only a reward. Hell is no more than an irrevocably selfish state of soul. Heaven will be “an ever new immersion in the infinity of being” – what being? – and so on. Here is a new religion, comments Bishop Tissier, rather more comfortable – at least vhere below – than the Catholic religion.

Kyrie eleison.