Tag: Christendom

Cardinal’s Clarity

Cardinal’s Clarity posted in Eleison Comments on July 20, 2019

In a recently appeared book or interview by a Roman Cardinal one can read unusual good sense on the waves of immigration that have now for tens of years been threatening to swamp the once great Western nations. But Cardinal Sarah is no “racist” – he comes from black Africa. If only Europeans would appreciate God’s gifts to Europe as he does! But who in Europe wants God? “Ay, there’s the rub,” as Hamlet says.

I am scandalised by all these men dying at sea, by the human trafficking, by the mafia networking, by the organised slavery. These people emigrating with no papers, nor prospects for the future, nor family. Do they think they are going to find paradise on earth here? It’s not in the West! If these people are to be helped, better do it where they come from, in their own villages, amidst their own races. The economic imbalances and the human dramas cannot be justified. You cannot welcome migrants from all over the world. To welcome means not only letting these people into your own country, it means giving them work. Can you do that? No. It means giving them somewhere to live. Can you do that? No. Parking them in inadequate lodgings, with no dignity, no work, that is not what I call welcoming people. It is more like something organised by the mafia! The Church cannot co-operate in human trafficking, which is more like a new form of slavery.

What I find equally scandalous is using the Word of God to justify all that. God does not want people migrating. The Christ child took refuge in Egypt, because of Herod, but he returned home afterwards. God always brought His people back to Israel, whether it was a famine at home, or a captivity abroad. A country is a great treasure, it is where we were born, where our ancestors are buried. When you welcome somebody, it is to give them a better life, not to herd them into immigration camps. When you are fed without doing any work, there is no dignity there.

And what culture do you have to offer them? Are you capable of sharing your Christian culture and roots? I am afraid that the population imbalance brought about by these waves of immigration will make you lose your identity together with what makes you who you are. Europe has a special mission given to it by God. It is you Europeans that taught us the Gospel, and the values of family, personal dignity and freedom. If you give up your identity, if you allow yourselves to be swamped by peoples that do not share your culture, then your Christian values and identity risk disappearing. Like happened when ancient Rome was invaded by barbarians. You need to think – are today’s migrations not a new form of slavery, being organised to get cheap labour? All of these people coming here in pursuit of a dream way of life. What a lie! What sheer cynicism! Pope Benedict XVI was especially clear and prophetic on all these questions. [ . . . ]

You Europeans have been moulded by Christianity, everything in Europe is Christian. Why deny it? No Muslim denies his identity. If you do not come back to being who you are, you will disappear. And if Europe disappears, there will be an appalling upset: Christianity would risk disappearing from the face of the earth. You see how you are being invaded by Islam: Muslims mean to take over the world, and they have the financial means to do it. They will not succeed because the Lord is with us to the end of the world. But you must not deny who you are: those immigrants that you allow in must integrate into your culture, assuming that you still have a culture. You will not integrate them into your atheistic materialism. They want nothing to do with it.

Kyrie eleison.

Brexit – II

Brexit – II posted in Eleison Comments on May 11, 2019

There is a deservedly famous English poem from the 19th century which throws much light on the huge fuss which has been stirred up by the attempt of the British people to escape from the trammels of the European Union. “Dover Beach” was written probably in 1851 by Matthew Arnold (1822–1888), and presents in four uneven verses his deep melancholy as he stands on the shore of the English Channel and listens to the unceasing beat of the surf on the beach in front of the house where he is staying for the night with his beloved, presumably his lawful wife.

The first verse is a beautiful description of the moonlit seashore and of the surf, concluding with the “eternal note of sadness” that he seems to hear in the surf. As an accomplished classical scholar, he recalls a quotation from the Greek playwright Sophocles (496–406 BC) who heard in the same surf ebbing and flowing on a similar beach thousands of miles away and more than two thousand years ago “the turbid ebb and flow of human misery,” and Arnold’s mind turns to the deep troubles of his own age, the Victorian age. Arnold was never a Catholic, but in the third verse he traces these troubles back to his 19th century’s loss of Faith, whose “melancholy long withdrawing roar” he seems to hear in the sound of the surf ebbing away before him.

In the fourth and least verse he presents the only solution that he has to the problem of the life ebbing out of what was once Christendom, and that is to turn to his beloved beside him and beg her to remain true to him, because all that they really have is one another. Thus in the poem’s dark conclusion, everything else

Hath really neither joy, nor love, nor light,
Nor certitude, nor peace, nor help for pain;
And we are here as on a darkling plain
Swept with confused alarms of struggle and flight,
Where ignorant armies clash by night.

So Arnold had enough faith to see that the essential problem of his civilization was the loss of religious faith, but he lacked the faith to believe in the real and existing alternative to the resulting darkness and confusion, namely the Catholic Church. Similarly the Brexiteers have enough sane instincts left to sense that the European Union is going the wrong way, but they have even less religion left in them than Arnold had, and so they have even less idea than he had of how to avoid the “darkling plain.” Hence the Brexit debate continues to be a “clash of ignorant armies by night,” because everybody is framing the debate in economic terms, when in fact the real debate is religious, between the last vestiges of the Christian nations on the one side and the onset of the Antichrist with his New World Order on the other side. It is the religious dimension that gives to the debate its force on both sides. It is the lack of religion on both sides that gives to the debate its confusion.

For indeed God is the great Absentee from modern “civilization,” but as Cardinal Pie once said, if He does not govern by His presence, He will govern by His absence. Without Him, the Brexit debate is being conducted in largely economic terms, on the basis of which the Brexiteers are bound to lose. But are they willing to turn in the direction of God? That is the question.

Kyrie eleison.

Parenting Today – I

Parenting Today – I posted in Eleison Comments on February 17, 2018

Nearly 20 years ago a priest of the Society of St Pius X, master of an Ignatian Retreat House in France and therefore in close contact with Traditional Catholic family problems, wrote an excellent editorial on How our youngsters are evolving. He paints a dark picture. Alas, the picture has grown only darker in the meantime. We must not despair, but on the other hand parents must see things as they are. It is not as though today’s youngsters are blameless, but parents must do everything possible to put them on the path to Heaven, because even today that is still the responsibility of parents. Here is the dark picture, adapted and abbreviated from Revue Marchons Droit, # 90, avril-mai-juin, 2000:—

In the Retreats we see youngsters growing up, incapable of rebuilding Christendom. The sacrifices made by parents and teachers seem to have borne no proportional fruit. Clearly something is not working , and if we do not react, then within two generations we will be swallowed up by the spirit of the world.

Young people we observe between 18 and 30 years old are profoundly ignorant of the crisis in Church and world, not because they have not been taught, but for lack of interest . Broadly speaking, they follow along the lines of their parents, but they cannot explain on their own what is wrong with the New Mass, with Vatican II, with the New World Order. Never having had to fight, to defend their beliefs or to resist, and so never having studied for themselves, when they meet the world they easily give way. They want to be like everybody else , they do not want to be different, they lack the personal conviction to stand up for Catholic Tradition, and so instead of being Apostles of Christ, little by little they go with the flow.

Where will there be tomorrow the good vocations, the good Christian families we so urgently need? Vocations grow rare, marriages grow weak or dry up altogether, formation grows soft, immaturity takes over. All the youngsters want is to enjoy. The boys lack character, sense of responsibility, generosity, self-control, everything that parents should be inculcating in them to turn them into the men we can rely on for tomorrow: men chaste, mature, thoughtful, hard-working, magnanimous. Without such men of conviction, where will be the heads of tomorrow’s families? The girls are also being reared in disorder.

Instead of preparing for motherhood and for looking after a family, they learn to look down on the domesticity which is their true vocation, and they are encouraged to study longer and longer, thus acquiring a spirit of independence , alongside a worldliness turning to fashion, parties and rock music. How can mothers give way to their girls’ mini-skirts and trousers, to their loose dress for parties which are obvious occasions of sin, where they waste their time and soil the purity of their hearts?

The result is young people getting married at 20 or 22 years of age, when they are absolutely not ready. And soon the children are arriving whom they have no idea of how to bring up. If I look at the young couples I have married – in Tradition – since my ordination in 1980, thank God there have been no divorces, but I have to say that half the marriages are hanging on a thread, being held together only by the youngsters’ Catholic principles. Parents, do you realise what you need to be giving to your children for their future in today’s world? You must for God’s sake form your boys to be men worthy of the name and your girls to be women worthy of the name. Do your duty. Otherwise, your children risk losing their souls, and Christendom is finished.

Surely Fr Delagneau is right. Christendom is in serious danger, no less. Now can we see why in 2018 God is allowing Europe and France in particular to be filled by His enemies with His enemies? And why He is allowing the Society of St Pius X to be sliding into the arms of His enemies? He did not create us to fall into Hell. He created us to fight the good fight to get to Heaven. And He will permit any disaster that will shake us off the road to Hell, and put us back on the road to Heaven. Wait for it!

Kyrie eleison.

Donoso Cortés – I

Donoso Cortés – I posted in Eleison Comments on September 6, 2014

One of the most important Catholic dogmas is that of original sin, whereby all human beings (except Our Lord and his Mother) have a nature seriously wounded from birth through our mysterious solidarity with Adam, father of all mankind, when with Eve he fell into the first of all human sins in the garden of Eden. Of course for most people today that Fall is just a fairy-tale, or mythology, and that is why they have built a Disneyworld all around us. In principle Catholics believe in original sin, but so seductive is Disneyworld that many hardly take original sin seriously in practice. After all, ith not at all nithe to believe we are all thinnerth. We are all thwimming in luv, luv, luv, ar’n’twe!

But a man who saw very clearly original sin in action was the Spanish nobleman, writer and diplomat, Donoso Cortés (1808–1853). His life spanned that first half of the 19 th century when in the wake of the French Revolution (1789), Europe was slowly but steadily replacing the old Christian order (“ancien régime”) with the Judeo-masonic New World Order. Outwardly the old order was put back in place by the Congress of Vienna (1815), but inwardly it was not at all the same as before, because men’s minds were now resting on quite different foundations, liberal foundations, notably the separation of Church and State. When Donoso entered Spanish politics at a young age, he proclaimed himself to be a liberal, but as he observed the Revolutionary ideas working out in practice, he became more and more conservative until in 1847 he converted to Spain’s ancient Catholic religion. From then on until his early death his written and spoken words carried all over Europe his prophetic Catholic analysis of the radical modern errors forging the New World Order.

At the back of all these errors he discerned two: the denial of God’s supernatural care for his creatures, and the denial of original sin. From Donoso’s Letter to Cardinal Fornari (1852) come the following two paragraphs which connect to original sin the rise of democracy and the diminution of the Church (the translation here is from a French translation):—

“If the light of men’s reason is in no way darkened, its light is enough, without need of the Faith, to discover the truth. If the Faith is not needed, then man’s reason is sovereign and independent. The progress of truth then depends on the progress of reason, which depends upon the exercise of reason; such an exercise is to be found in discussion; hence discussion constitutes the true basic law of modern societies, the matchless crucible in which by a process of melting, truths are separated from errors. From this principle of discussion flow freedom of the press, the inviolability of freedom of speech and the real sovereignty of parliaments.”

Donoso continues with a parallel diagnosis of the consequences of man’s will being supposed to be free from original sin: “If man’s will is not sick, then he needs none of the supernatural help of grace to pursue good, its attraction being enough: if he needs no grace, then he can do without prayer and the sacraments which provide it.” If prayer is not needed, it is useless, and so are contemplation and the contemplative religious Orders, which duly disappear. If man needs no sacraments, then he has no need of priests to administer them, and they are duly banned. And scorn of the priesthood results everywhere in scorn of the Church, which amounts in all places to the scorn of God.

From such false principles Donoso Cortés foresaw an unparallelled disaster in the very near future. Actually it has been delayed for over 150 years, but how much longer?

Kyrie eleison.

“You Choose”

“You Choose” posted in Eleison Comments on March 23, 2013

What confusion reigns in the Church and so in the world! We see one after another the best of men, with perhaps the best of intentions, giving up the struggle and making the decision to resist no longer, to go with the flow, to follow the current, to do what everybody else is doing. Yet that flow remains godless, and it is condemned by God without appeal, because he does not change. No doubt he is right now appealing to the new Pope to do what is right, cost what it may.

Between 1966 and 1975 he seems to have appealed to a woman in France to get a French prelate to put in Paul VI’s own hands a series of divine messages calling for the Pope to lead massive pilgrimages of penance to the famous basilica of Vézelay (and, from 1972, to restore the Tridentine Mass). The messages are given the title of the Lenten Chant, Parce, Domine, Populo Tuo(Spare, O Lord, Thy People), They come with no official authorization but they fit Holy Week. Readers who care to read these brief extracts can judge for themselves if they ring true:—

16-X-65: The world is on the brink of catastrophe. However, do believe that the entreaty in prayer of a few humble souls has great power over My heart.

3-III-68:Tell the Holy Father to sing imploringly the Parce, Domine with his arms held up in the form of a cross, in front of the crowds that he is to gather together in Vézelay.

2-III-70:If My appeal is not heeded, the waters of My wrath will drown everything. What weeping and groaning there will be at that moment, but it will be too late.

13-II-71:Tell the priests to call for prayer and penance amidst collapsing Christendom, and to set the example themselves. Otherwise there will be massacres on French soil. If you refuse to send up to My Father cries of humble repentant prayer, you will perforce send up cries of terror. You choose! 25-III-71:My little children, if you do not want processions of love, you will have processions of hate. These are already starting. What more do you need to believe in My appeal to you?

28-IV-72:If they don’t want to genuflect in front of the Blessed Sacrament, they will genuflect in the salt-mines! 10-VII-72:If the Pope does not do what I have asked for, divine Justice will come down heavily on the world, and you will have to undergo such suffering that if you knew the details now, you would be frozen with terror. 15-VII-72:I appeal to My faithful children. Am I to find only deserters? If you knew, my children, what awaits you, how you would hasten to fulfil My desires. But justice will soon be done. You will cry out to Me in your terror, but it will be too late. 6-XI-72:Were I to show you what awaits you, you would spend entire nights in prayer at My feet, to keep the terrible chastisement away.

13-VII-73: The laity are presently the hope of the Church. Pray for your unfaithful shepherds.

2-V-75:In the evil times coming, Christian families will have to get together and work out how to look after the needs of My faithful priests, who will have to exercise their ministry hidden from public view . . . It is back to the catacombs. There is no other way.

Parce, Domine.

Christ Born

Christ Born posted in Eleison Comments on December 22, 2012

The appeal of the divine baby in the arms of his Virgin Mother still makes of Christmas the most popular of Christian Feasts, but as the world turns away from God, so the heart and soul of the Nativity Scene fade out, and “Christmassy” feelings become more and more fake. Truly Christendom is burnt out. It is time to turn back with the liturgy of Mother Church to the ages before Christ when wise men rejoiced intensely in the expectation of his coming. For them, it alone made sense of the unhappiness of mankind being ravaged by the consequences of original sin. It was their great hope, and it could not be shaken. The Christ would come, and with him the gates of Heaven would be open once more to souls of good will. Here are the Antiphons of the fourth Sunday of Advent, composed from texts of the Old Testament.

“Blow the trumpet in Sion, because the day of the Lord is near: behold, he will come to save us, allelujah, allelujah.” If men do not want to be saved, then they can hardly understand what they were born for, and they must die in a greater or lesser degree of despair. But if we want to be happy for all eternity, and if we know that Jesus Christ alone makes that possible, then how must we rejoice that he came!

“Behold, the desired of all nations will come, and the house of the Lord will be filled with glory, allelujah.” As original sin is universal, so the Magi came from strange and distant lands to adore their Saviour in Bethlehem, and they could have come from all nations of the world in desire of him. Since their time, Christians have indeed come from all nations to find their Saviour in his Catholic Church, and they have filled it with the glory of beautiful ceremonies, buildings, vestments, art and music, ever since.

“The crooked shall become straight, and the rough ways smooth: come, O Lord, and do not delay.” Four thousand years on from the Fall of Adam and Eve, the world had become quite crooked. Two thousand years ago the most astonishing transformation of mankind began with Our Lord being born. For centuries we have taken for granted that smooth ways of civilization will remain smooth, but with men’s spurning of Christ those ways are turning rougher than ever – see any newspaper of today. Come, O Lord, come back, and do not delay, because otherwise we shall all be devouring one another like wild beasts.

“The Lord will come, go to meet him, saying:”Great is his beginning, and of his kingdom there will be no end: God, Mighty, Lord of all, Prince of Peace, allelujah, allelujah.” With such words maybe the Magi greeted the Christ Child when after long travels they found him. Converts of today, after long travails in the desert of godlessness, may still find similar words to remind us of how the Child in the crib should be greeted. Without him the world cannot have peace, and it stands on the brink of another terrible war. Divine Child, come, do not delay, or we perish.

“Thy Almighty Word, O Lord, will leap from thy royal throne, allelujah.” Christmas is the Second Person of the Holy Trinity descending all the way from Heaven, being clothed in a feeble human nature and being born of a human Mother to buy us back from slavery to the Devil and re-open the gates of Heaven for souls of good will, ready to believe. Divine Child, I believe. Help thou my unbelief, and help with special graces on the Feast of your birth millions and millions of unbelieving souls.

Kyrie eleison.