Catholic Church

Bleeding Church

Bleeding Church on May 5, 2018

A colleague resisting the change of Archbishop Lefebvre’s Society of St Pius X into Menzingen’s Newsociety, just like the change of the Catholic Church of Tradition into the Newchurch of Vatican II, has written some interesting considerations, translated here below. They were private, but they are too precious not to be shared more widely. A colleague of his had written to him expressing the hope for Easter that “the Church (and the SSPX) might soon rise from the dead.” He replied:—

A 60-year old man who I take to be wise, said to me on Holy Saturday, “The Church must be crucified as was her divine Master on Good Friday . . . we are now living through Good Friday . . . . Holy Saturday is still to come, and it will last a while yet.”

To which I would like to add a few thoughts.

The Church is by no means about to rise again, rather it is going to bleed to death in a most painful way until it even seems to be no longer there. Whether the SSPX (above all its priests) will be part of this glorious bleeding to death, Heaven alone knows. In any case it is the death by bleeding which is sowing seed for the resurrection.

If the SSPX refuses to belong to the bleeding Church by wanting to continue to work its way little by little into the multi-religious community presided over by Pope (?) Francis – and Menzingen and Fr Schmidberger have been at work for years to turn the Society into another such Fraternity of St Peter – then the Society will still bleed to death, because one way or another the persecution is probably coming for everybody, especially for people wearing the cassock. However, the Society will not then be suffering as glorious Apostles of the end-times, but rather, alas, as a punishment for their material comfort, lukewarmness and unfaithfulness to the Archbishop who founded their Society . . .

(If there is above a question mark against “Pope Francis,” it is because for objective reasons there is at the least some uncertainty, some doubt, as to whether he is Pope. That is precisely why in 1988 in the gentlest of ways Heaven separated the Society from a Rome which had become somewhat schismatic . . . . Indeed we have no communion in the Faith with the present authorities in the Vatican, we are truly outside of their communion, or ex-communicated – which is our good fortune and to our honour – just as on the afternoon of the first Good Friday, the Church severely reduced in numbers was also to be found only outside of Jerusalem, on Calvary . . . )

In truth, nothing throws so much light on the present state of the Church as the Gospel narrative of the Passion of Christ, and conversely one can say that nothing throws so much light on the Gospel narrative as the present desolation of the Church. And just as then the Apostles themselves, even after being repeatedly warned by Our Lord of his coming Passion (Mt. XVI, 21; XVII, 21; XX, 17–19) could still not believe it was real when it came upon them, so too now many a good Catholic can hardly believe that it is the Church of Christ which has such tormenting problems and such inadequate Popes.

But God’s purpose in creating the universe was to share His divine happiness by populating His Heaven with rational creatures, angelic or human, that would freely choose to join Him in His Heaven. The key word here is “freely.” With the faculty of reason God gives to every human being capable of using it, also free-will, and He so balances circumstances for each of us as to make the choice real between Heaven and Hell. Therefore He allows as much freedom as possible for human beings to kill His own Son or to pull down His Son’s Church, but never so much freedom as completely to frustrate His Son or His Church. Therefore He allows unimaginable tribulations for His Church such as only time will fully tell between now and world’s end, but the wisdom of God reaches way beyond our little imaginations (Is. LV, 8,9).

Kyrie eleison.

Church Resurrection?

Church Resurrection? on March 31, 2018

And the day before Easter should be a good moment to think of how Mother Church is going to rise from her present stricken state. By our Catholic Faith we know with absolute certainty that she will rise again, and that she will last to the end of the world (Mt. XXVIII, 20). But it is a great mistake to think that she will rise this time by human means, because then I start believing for instance in human means to come to her rescue, like for instance “theological discussions” or diplomatic negotiations with her present masters in the Vatican.

Thus the theological discussions of 2009–2011 led nowhere, which is why we have heard almost nothing of them ever since, because they proved that the doctrinal gulf between Conciliar Rome and Catholic Tradition cannot be bridged. And diplomatic negotiations can lead at most to the mere appearance of a rescue for Tradition, because today’s Romans have 2000 years’ experience of diplomacy, and they do not want Tradition, because it is a serious obstacle in the way of their New World Order, where Our Lord Jesus Christ has no business to be doing any more reigning. The problem is a wholesale rejection of God on the part of mankind in general, and on the part of His own churchmen in Rome in particular.

Therefore the problem is not going to be solved by merely human means. As Cardinal Villot (1905–1979), a former Secretary of State in the Vatican under three Conciliar Popes (1969–1979), admitted on his deathbed, “Humanly, the Church is finished.” And it is a great lack of supernatural spirit, not without some arrogance, on the part of the present leaders of the Society of St Pius X to argue as they do that the Society must negotiate some settlement with the Church officials in Rome because there is no other solution for the crisis of the Church. Do these men really think that the Lord God is short of means to come to the rescue of His Church? Do they really think that the arm of God is shortened by the wickedness of men? Here speaks His prophet Isaiah (LIX, 1–3):—

1 Behold, the LORD’s hand is not shortened, that it cannot save, or his ear dull, that it cannot hear; 2 but your iniquities have made a separation between you and your God, and your sins have hid his face from you so that he does not hear. 3 For your hands are defiled with blood and your fingers with iniquity; your lips have spoken lies, your tongue mutters wickedness. 4 No one enters suit justly, no one goes to law honestly; they rely on empty pleas, they speak lies, they conceive mischief and bring forth iniquity.

Men’s iniquities are the problem. And is it likely that God has no solution? No. And is it likely that He wants men to play no part in His solution? No. And is it likely that what He wants them to do to save His Church is specially difficult or complicated? No. But is it likely that it will require some humility? Yes, because “God resists the proud and gives grace to the humble” (James IV, 6). And will it require some faith? Certainly, because “Without faith it is impossible to please God” (Heb.XI, 6). And is there any chance that God will not have told mankind, on the brink of destroying itself, what humble means He wants men to believe in and to apply, for Himself to step in and save them from destruction? There is no such chance at all. Then what has He in fact told mankind for His Church to be able to rise again?

He said it through His Mother, at Fatima, in 1917, in Pontevedra in 1925, and in Akita in 1973. In Fatima: Russia must be consecrated to the Immaculate Heart of Mary by the Pope with all the Catholic bishops. In Pontevedra: Catholics must practise the Devotion of the First Saturdays. In Akita; Catholics must pray the Rosary, for the Pope, for bishops, for priests. Are these three points humble? Yes. Are they supernatural, requiring supernatural faith? Definitely. Are any of them too much to ask, for the Church to rise again, and for mankind to come back from the brink of destruction? Definitely not. Then let nobody complain that there is nothing they can do!

Kyrie eleison.

Chaos Deciphered

Chaos Deciphered on March 24, 2018

Just before Holy Week is a good moment to reflect on the passion (suffering) of the Catholic Church. A

reader writes: “Can you tell us what on earth is going on with SSPX, Bishop Fellay, and others? We’re hearing some weird stories down here, and we don’t quite know what to believe. THINGS ARE FRACTURED ALMOST BEYOND BELIEF – EVERYWHERE. Starting from (1) the Novus Ordo, we have (2) the SSPX, (3) the Sedevacantists, (4) the SSPX Resistance, and (5) Fr. Pfeiffer’s group, with more splits to come, no doubt! What on earth is “Pope” Francis up to? He spends all his time playing politics, nothing spiritual! And one hears that Fellay is chasing a scarlet hat! What does that mean?

Dear Friend, the Catholic Church is in a state of chaos, by a just punishment of God, because His Church is the “light of the world” and the “salt of the earth,” but all over the world mankind is turning away from Him, including even His own churchmen. Nor is it any use God raising a good Pope too soon, because the churchmen would merely turn and tear him (Mt. VII, 6), as perhaps they assassinated John-Paul I. So the whole world is going to be in darkness (no light) and corruption (no salt), until enough men are so overwhelmed by today’s galloping chaos that they get back on their knees to beg God in His mercy to put the Pope back on his feet, who at the moment, as you say, is playing politics instead of religion.

The Pope is crucial because he is the rock on which the Church is built (Mt. XVI, 18), so that if he is fractured through wanting to follow the corrupt world instead of leading it out of its corruption, then as you say “things are fractured almost beyond belief – everywhere.” When Our Lord was struck in the Garden of Gethsemane all the Apostles were scattered (Zachary XIII, 7; Mt. XXVI, 31). Today Pope Francis is so deeply struck that authority throughout the Church is essentially dislocated.

The problem of Pope Francis goes back to the Second Vatican Council (1962–1965), because that was when and where the Popes gave up resisting the decadent modern world and decided to follow it instead. Up till Pius XII included (1939–1958), the Popes had resisted that decadence, but it was so glamorous and overpowering that John XXIII, Paul VI, John-Paul II and Benedict XVI all allowed themselves to be deluded (not without their own fault). They created your (1), the Novus Ordo or Conciliar Church, named after the New Order of Mass which has turned masses of Catholics into virtual Protestants. Pope Francis not only shares these Popes’ errors from the accursed Council, but he also puts them most destructively into practice, causing more chaos in the Church than ever.

Yet soon after the Council, God had raised a Catholic Archbishop to found a Congregation to look after all souls that refused to abandon Catholic Tradition which was then being abandoned by the Popes and the mass of churchmen. That was your (2), the SSPX, or Society of St Pius X, which flourished until the Archbishop died in 1991. But before he died there began also your (3), the “sedevacantists” who are so scandalised by the Conciliar Popes that they refuse even to believe that they are true Popes. And after the Archbishop died, his younger successors at the head of his Society, suckled on the modern world, fell foul of the same errors as the Council, notably Bishop Fellay who may well be seeking a Cardinal’s hat as a reward for his corrupting the resistance of Tradition to the Newchurch. This betrayal of the Archbishop’s true resistance from inside the Society gave rise to your (4) the SSPX “Resistance,” in which scattered priests hang loosely together to keep the Catholic Faith being now corrupted inside both the Novus Ordo and the SSPX. Good Catholics hanker for less looseness, but by now half a century of Conciliar Popes had essentially broken Catholic structure. However, your (5) now arose, Fr. Pfeiffer’s group, to which the (4) “Resistance”did not seem to be resisting enough.

In brief, within all five groupings there are scattered Catholic sheep known to God, who have the faith and want and mean to be Catholics, but Conciliar Popes are incapable of pulling Catholics together in the true Faith. And since nobody less than a Pope in his right mind can fulfil that function, then “what cannot be cured must be endured,” until God intervenes. For God to intervene, let any Catholic – or non-Catholic! – pray 15 Mysteries of the Rosary every day for God’s Mother to intercede with her Son.

Kyrie eleison.

Benevolent Ally?

Benevolent Ally? on January 28, 2017

Bishop Athanasius Schneider, originally from Germany but now a Bishop of Astana in Kazakhstan, has made himself known to Traditionalists in recent years for his many statements at least apparently sympathetic to Catholic Tradition. For instance last year he associated himself publicly with the four Cardinals’ questioning of Pope Francis’ doctrine in the papal document, Amoris Laetitia. When he himself does so much to criticize the Church swinging “left,” he may not understand or appreciate coming under attack from the “right,” but it is the Truth which is at stake, not our little personalities. Your Excellency, thank you for much truth that you have had the courage openly to defend, but do understand that the full Truth is much stronger, and more demanding, than you think. You gave recently an interview to Adelante la Fe. Please do not take it personally if I quote (in italics) a few of your answers and criticize them:—

I am convinced that in the present circumstances, Msgr. Lefebvre would accept Rome’s canonical proposal of a Personal Prelature without hesitation. Your Excellency, that is impossible. Archbishop Lefebvre believed, and proved by argument from Church theology and history, that Vatican II was an unprecedented betrayal, by the highest authorities in the Church, of 1900 years of unchangeable Church doctrine. But official Rome is still following that objectively treacherous Council. Therefore to put the SSPX under this Rome will be to put the fox in charge of the hen-coop. The Archbishop always hoped Rome would come right. It has still not done so.

Msgr. Lefebvre was a man with a deep”sensus ecclesiae,” or sense of the Church. That is true, because above all he had a deep and clear grasp of Catholic doctrine, or teaching, which is at the heart of the Church. “Going, TEACH all nations,” was Jesus’ last instruction to his Apostles (Mt.XXVIII, 20). Vatican II betrayed Catholic doctrine, so the Archbishop’s very sense of the Church made him repudiate that Council. Today’s Conciliarists in Rome can never rebuild the Church.

He consecrated four bishops in 1988 because he was convinced that there was a real state of necessity. It was the objective crisis that gave rise to the subjective conviction, and not the other way round. Our modern world is mentally sick with subjectivism. The Archbishop was an objectivist.

If the SSPX remains canonically independent for too long, its members and followers will lose their sense of the need to be subject to the Pope, and they will end up ceasing to be Catholic. The Pope is Pope in order to “confirm his brethren” in the Faith. See Luke XXII, 32. If he is a Conciliar Pope with his faith corrupted by Vatican II, he can no longer give what he has not got. It is by being subject to Conciliar Popes that countless Catholics since the Council have lost the true Faith.

No Catholic can pick and choose which Popes he will or will not be subject to. God guides His Church. The present crisis in the Church is unprecedented because never before in Church history has there been a series of Popes out of line with the true Faith as we have seen since Vatican II. This means that Catholics must – exceptionally – judge their Popes, bishops and priests. By this crisis God is purifying His Church, and when the purification is complete, He will grant to His Church a great and truly Catholic Pope.

I have told Bishop Fellay, we in Rome need the SSPX in today’s great battle for the purity of the Faith. Your Excellency, do believe that Conciliar Rome will do its best to complete the SSPX’s corruption of the Faith. Already the official SSPX has slidden far from the Archbishop’s objective Faith.

Kyrie eleison.

Isaiah’s Card

Isaiah’s Card on December 24, 2016

If Almighty God were himself to send Christmas cards, what might he write in his about the coming of his own Son to be born on earth as a human child of his human Mother? In fact God wrote many things about the Messiah through the writers whom he directly inspired to put together the books of the Old Testament, and of course one of the best-known of these quotes comes from the prophet Isaiah, Chapter IX. In the preceding Chapter Isaiah has been prophesying the desolation and ruin that will come upon the Jews for their sins. In IX he turns to the glory of the Messianic age: a great light will light up Galilee – v. 1,2. (Jesus’ home province). Then joy as at harvest-time or after a military victory will come(v.3), after the defeat of the Assyrians, as after Gideon’s defeat of the Madianites (v.4), and the features of war will disappear (v.5). Isaiah continues with the “Christmas card” (glorified in the music of Handel’s Messiah):

6: For a CHILD IS BORN to us, and a son is given to us, and the government is upon his shoulder: and his name shall be called, Wonderful, Counsellor, God the Mighty, the Father of the world to come, the Prince of Peace. 7: His empire shall be multiplied, and there shall be no end of peace: he shall sit upon the throne of David, and upon his kingdom; to establish it and strengthen it with judgment and with justice, from henceforth and for ever: the zeal of the Lord of hosts will perform this.

6: Thus the supreme reason for joy is the coming of the Messiah: to us, to redeem all of us will be born a royal child and son, who will take the weight of the world upon his shoulder (the Church Fathers take this weight to be the Cross), and with a series of epithets Isaiah tells who the child will be: Wonderful, Counsellor, more than able to counsel all nations for their true happiness and prosperity down to the end of the world. God the Mighty – Talmudic Scripture scholars do their best to avoid admitting that Isaiah is saying that the Messiah will also be God (as Catholics know, Second Person of the Holy Trinity), but the definite article in the Hebrew and the meaning of the expression “God the Mighty” everywhere else in the Old Testament strongly indicate that Isaiah means exactly that. The Father of the world to come – the Messiah will be a true and tender Father for the messianic age, for ever and ever (cf. Mt. XI, 28).

7: His empire shall be multiplied – the Catholic Church will spread all over the world and there shall be no end of peace because the Messiah’s Church will generate peace wherever it is respected, until world’s end. He will be a royal descendant of David to sit upon the throne of David to which it was promised that it would last for ever (II Sam. VII), as Our Lord promised to his Church (Mt. XVI, 18; XXVIII, 20). But this kingdom will be a kingdom of the King of Hearts (Jn. XII, 32), strengthened with judgment and with justice, not a kingdom of the Knave of Clubs, established by force (Mt. XXVI, 52; Jn. XVIII, 36). All these marvels will come from the zeal of the Lord God, from his burning desire to bring souls to Heaven to share eternal and uninterrupted bliss with him, for ever and ever.

What makes it difficult for us today to appreciate Isaiah’s glorious vision of the messianic future is that it has turned into the masonic past. The fifth age of the Messiah’s Church, the Age of Apostasy, began 500 years ago when Luther broke up Christendom, so that when another 200 years later it was still not yet obvious for many men that the benefits of Christendom were well on the way to being undermined, Judeo-masons could begin to persuade men that Christendom, or Christ, was no longer necessary. And not even the horrors of another 200 years later of anti-Christian Communism, let loose by the Russian Revolution and spreading worldwide, could persuade men that from the Incarnation onwards, the alternatives for any civilisation are Jesus Christ and his Catholic Church, or the Devil. But it is true.

Happy Christmas, readers!

Kyrie eleison.

Living Popes

Living Popes on November 29, 2014

On January 29, 1949, Pope Pius XII made the following remarks about the importance of the Pope: If ever one day – speaking purely hypothetically – material Rome were to collapse; if ever this Vatican basilica, symbol of the one and only victorious Catholic Church, were to bury beneath its ruins the historic treasures and sacred tombs which it encloses, even then the Church would be in no way demolished or split. Christ’s promise to Peter would still hold true, the Papacy would last for ever, like the Church, one and indestructible, being founded on the Pope then living .”

Since these words are classic Church doctrine (only the underlining has been added), resting as they do on Our Lord’s own words (Mt. XVI, 16–18), then it is small wonder if, ever since 1962 when the living Popes became Conciliar, millions upon millions of Catholics have been driven to becoming likewise Conciliar and liberal. The only way out of the problem that sedevacantists can see is to deny that the Conciliar Popes have been Popes at all, which can seem to be common sense, but to most Catholics it seems even more to be common sense that the Church designed by God to rest upon the living Pope cannot have existed for the last half century (1962–2014) without one.

It is easy to see how the decline of Christian civilisation since the height of the Middle Ages has led to the present corruption of the living Popes. It is easy to see how God can have permitted this appalling corruption to punish that appalling decline. What is less easy to see is how the Church can still live when the living Popes on whom it is founded are convinced that liberalism, war on God, is Catholic. In Our Lord’s own words, A good tree cannot bring forth evil fruit and an evil tree cannot bring forth good fruit (Mt. VII, 18).

But a tree half good, half bad, can produce fruits half good, half bad. Now taken as a whole, a mixture of good and bad is bad, but that does not mean that taken part by part, the mixture’s good parts are as bad as its bad parts. Cancer in the liver will kill me, but that does not mean that I have cancer in the lungs. Now no living churchman, any more than any man alive, is entirely good or entirely bad. We are all a fluctuating mixture until the day we die. So can there ever have been a living Pope whose fruits were entirely evil? The answer can only be, no. In which case the Catholic Church can have half-lived for the last 50 years on the half-good fruits of the Conciliar Popes, with a half-life permitted by God to purify his Church, but which he would never permit to go so far as to kill his Church.

Thus for example Paul VI wept for the lack of vocations. Benedict XVI hankered after Tradition. Even Pope Francis surely means to bring men to God when he drags God down to men. So, Conciliar Popes are dreadfully mistaken in their ideas, fatally ambiguous in the Faith where they need to be absolutely unambiguous. The Church has been and is dying beneath them, but whatever parts in them have still been good have enabled the Church to continue, and they have been needed as living heads to continue the body of the living Church, as Pius XII said. Then let us not fear that they will be allowed to kill off the Church, but let us for our part fight their liberalism tooth and nail and pray for their return to Catholic sanity, because we do need them for the life of our Church.

Kyrie eleison.