conciliarism

White Identity – I

White Identity – I on February 6, 2021

A young white couple that reads these “Comments” wants to come back to the Church, but it has a special difficulty which the 31-year old husband suspects is shared by many of his contemporaries: the present lack of an identity for whites. Both he and his wife have some German in their ancestry, and so in search of identity they have been seriously attracted by Germanic paganism. But they were both born Catholic and they suspect that their Catholic schooling was not all that it should have been. The questions that he asks certainly prove that this was the case, but they also show that he is seeking the truth, so that if he perseveres in his quest he can be sure that God will give him the answers he needs. He asks –

Is Germanic paganism our true identity?

Yes and no. A human being’s true identity is to go to Heaven to be blissfully happy with God for all eternity. That is why so many young people (and older people) are so deeply dissatisfied with their present materialistic way of life – they know that they are meant for something much more, but they do not know what. Now there is much that is noble in Germanic paganism, for instance in the operas of Richard Wagner, but it is wholly incapable of getting a man to Heaven because it has no supernatural grace in it. Grace alone can open God’s Heaven for us. And God’s grace is available to us only through God’s one true religion, which is the Roman Catholic religion. If I refuse it, I am refusing Heaven. This religion, for instance Charlemagne, made Europe, and forged the identity of all the white European nations. Hilaire Belloc (1870–1953) said, “Europe is the (Catholic) Faith and the Faith is Europe.”

But Christianity was invented by the Jews?

The Catholic religion was invented by no human being or beings. It was “invented” from eternity by God alone, and revealed to men through His Divine Son, Jesus Christ, who as a man was a Jew, the son of Mary, and who was helped to found the Catholic Church by a small number of Jews. Hence John IV, 22. But it was also the Jews, leaders and people (Mt.XXVII, 20), who crucified Jesus, and the large majority of Jews have ever since hated Christ and done their best to go on crucifying Him in His Church. So the best of Israelites were incomparable friends of God, but the Talmudists have been His incomparable enemies. It is essential to distinguish between Jews like St Paul, and Jews like Caiaphas. The huge difference is between those who accept Christ and those who reject Him. All turns on Christ.

But is not the New Testament still playing the Old Testament game, so to speak? Are not Christians worshipping Jews, and following the “design” and “rules” of Jews?

Christians are worshipping God, Father, Son and Holy Ghost, the Holy Trinity as revealed by God, Jesus Christ, a revelation far surpassing that of all the rest of the Jews put together. He was and is God. They were and are mere men.

So why was God in the Old Testament so protective of Jews and yet so annoyed by them?

Because He had given them a great part to play, to prepare for the coming on earth of the Messiah, and they were not always faithful to the task. Our vile media and the mere word “anti-semitism” suggest that Jews can never be bad, but they can be very bad indeed. Then they deserve punishment, like anyone else.

But why did God choose the Jews? And why did He choose the Jews in particular?

He had to choose some people to provide the Messiah with a human Mother, family, village, people and religious practice. With Mary, Joseph, Nazareth, the Temple of Jerusalem and the Mosaic religion the Jews did finally provide the Messiah with His earthly framework, only to crucify Him out of their pride.

Why the Jews in particular? God’s mystery. Belloc again: “How odd of God to choose the Jews!”

Kyrie eleison.

SSPX Questions

SSPX Questions on January 16, 2021

A reader of these “Comments,” no doubt anxious from what he sees or hears about the Society of St Pius X being less faithful than it used to be or should be, has in mind a few possible explanations. The author of these “Comments” offered some considerations by way of reply to a few of his questions:—

1. There have been rumours of infiltration of the SSPX. Some of these rumours suggest that there was a plot to infiltrate the Society from the beginning, others argue that it took time for the Society to be infiltrated.

No doubt the classic enemies of the Church, who closely watched Our Lord in His time, discerned rapidly what a threat to their scheming was represented by Archbishop Lefebvre with his priestly Society of St Pius X and its new generation of faithful priests. However, I for one cannot say I ever recognised any clear and conscious enemy infiltrators. But what I could recognise was priestly sons of the Archbishop, formed under his care, but who ceased to recognise what they once recognised, namely the necessity of obeying only selectively orders coming down from the Conciliar Church authorities in Rome and in the dioceses. These priests have gone a long way not exactly to infiltrate but rather to change the SSPX from within. If today it was still defending the Faith as the Archbishop did, it could be doing a power of good to a mass of Catholics now waking up to the Vatican II betrayal, by helping them to see how and where the true Church is surviving. Instead, the loyalty of the SSPX leaders now seems to have gone over to the officials of Vatican II in Rome, and many souls that it could have converted, it now rather confuses than converts.

2. So has the SSPX been infiltrated, and if so, by whom?

Properly speaking, by formal infiltration, perhaps not. But loosely speaking, by an often unconscious abandoning of the Archbishop’s understanding of Vatican II and its officials, yes. The problem has been a gradual going with the flow of today’s universal fantasy, and a corresponding loss of grip on reality, more on the part of the SSPX leaders in HQ than on the part of the humble priests on the ground. The problem of these leaders has been less in their Catholic doctrine than in their application of that teaching to the 21st century, where they have failed to grasp the full evil of the modern world. They are too “nice.”

 3. Some blogs have pointed to an Austrian-Jewish family by the name of “Von Gutmann” who were originally given a financial “leg up” by the Rothschilds. This family has, according to Maximillian Krah, given money to the SSPX via a Foundation. Who is this family and why are they giving money to the SSPX?

It is a Jewish family from Austria, but, as best I recall, the Mrs. Von Gutmann that you name was a bona fide convert, and she left a great deal of money to the SSPX in Austria to help Catholic Tradition to thrive there. 

4. It is rumoured on the internet that Archbishop Lefebvre was a sedevacantist? Is this true?

The Archbishop had, from Paul VI onwards, always a certain sympathy with sedevacantism as a possible solution to the immensely serious theological problem of Vicars of Christ destroying the Church. Twice he entertained in public the possibility – in 1976, and in 1985 – that the apparent Popes in Rome were not real Popes. But he never decided for that solution, and frequently he considered it only to reject it. He considered that it raised more problems than it solves.

5. Why won’t the current SSPX leadership reconcile with Rome? What are your thoughts?

I think that too many of its best priests still think too like the Archbishop about today’s Rome and Romans for the SSPX leaders to be able to slide into the Romans’ arms. But these priests had better watch out!

Kyrie eleison.

Madiran – Conclusion

Madiran - Conclusion on January 9, 2021

After seven issues of these “Comments” considering separately the Prologue and six Parts of the 1968 book of Jean Madiran (1920–2013), The Heresy of the 20th Century, it will be worth stitching the Parts together again so as to highlight some of the main lessons for ourselves in the situation of Church and world today, and to arrive at a general conclusion: how did the Church get into its present confusion?

Right from the Prologue Madiran made several key points: the problem was the leading churchmen, the bishops, who had been slipping anchor for at least 100 years previously, in the name of progress, until in the 20th century they were positively subverting Christianity, in a process leading to Communism. The drama started long before Vatican II. At its root is the bishops’ loss of Faith . The end result will be the triumph of Communism. In 2020 the Covid-lie is placing Communism right at our doors.

In Part I Madiran laid bare, as did Pius X in his 1907 Encyclical Pascendi, the philosophical underpinning by the bishops of their implicit apostasy through their adopting of the subjectivism of modern philosophy, by which any truth at all, including Catholic dogma, becomes optional. Forget objective reality. From now on the object answers to my mind, and no longer my mind to the object. I am liberated from reality.These insane principles are at the heart of the craziness of today’s Church and world, in all domains.

In Part II Madiran declared that the newbishops were wanting a newreligion, and this newreligion could only be at war with the Catholic religion. The newbishops had no right whatsoever to be imposing their false religion, and even as a Catholic layman Madiran had every right to be opposing them. In 2021 it is marvellous to see an Archbishop Viganò taking exactly this position, as did Archbishop Lefebvre. There is an objective and unchanging Catholic Truth which entitles Catholics not to follow their erring bishops.

In Parts III, IV and V Madiran lays out the content of the 20th century heresy in seven Propositions, culled from writings of the Bishop of Metz who, says Madiran, best brought that heresy into focus: 1 All is changing today, so that the very concept of salvation by Christ needs today to be changed, 2 towards being more social, because 3 faith today listens to the world, and 4 the socialising of today’s world is a grace. 5 For indeed no age has been so fraternal, 6 nor has so looked forward, i.e. hoped, as our own.Madiran comments that this fraternal and hopeful socialising is tantamount to a newreligion, and the newreligion is Communism. And indeed ever since Vatican II, the churchmen have been turning more and more to the Left, and their religion of man has been their newcrusade, and man has been their newgod. And Jesus Christ, His Blessed Mother, Heaven and Hell are in real life more and more forgotten.

In Part V Madiran presents the seventh Proposition from the Bishop of Metz: 7 Natural law comes from inside man, in other words there is no objective law for man coming from outside or from above him. In other words, says Madiran, there is no nature, no supernature, no ten Commandments, no true charity, no possibility of society, let alone Christian society. Such sheer subversion allows only of Communism. Here is where we are, and much more so in 2021 than in 1968. In this Part Madiran is getting at the very roots of modern man’s disorientation and dislocation, which make a police State into the only society possible.

In Part VI Madiran finished his book soon after living through the student riots in Paris of spring 1968, and they provided him with a resounding conclusion. In Part II on the bishops he had written that the Newchurch by teaching only things modern was turning today’s youth into tomorrow’s barbarians, and here they were, filling the streets of Paris in 1968 (and streets of the USA in 2020) with chaos. Madiran holds the bishops responsible. Communism is a false solution. God alone is the true solution.

Kyrie eleison.

Madiran – Proposition VII

Madiran - Proposition VII on December 12, 2020

Part V is not the easiest of the six Parts of the 1968 book of Jean Madiran (1920–2013) on The Heresy of the 20th century, because it deals with the Natural Law, which is a difficult concept for modern minds to grasp. And this is because God the Creator is both the writer of the Natural Law and He Who implants it in all His various creatures, and the Great and Good God is a closed mystery for a large majority of modern minds. However, it is for Madiran so important as a means of getting at the 20th century heresy that he makes it the centre of the last of the seven Propositions which he culled from the writings of Bishop Schmitt of Metz in France to give some form to an otherwise formless heresy. Here it is –

7 Natural law is the expression of the collective consciousness of mankind. From which it follows that there is no moral objective natural law promulgated by God and inscribed in the heart of man.

Bishop Schmitt’s reason for denying the existence of any such divine law in men would seem to have been that it made man’s social life too mechanical, as though the solutions to all of men’s social problems could be read off it as from a manufacturer’s hand-book. But the hand-book of God for man fully allows for human liberty even in society, whereas the denial of natural law, says Madiran, founds right and wrong no longer on objective divine law but on subjective human conscience, ultimately no law at all. Man is free and responsible, but he is not free to make his own laws. And the Church’s social teaching certainly starts out from God’s natural law, but to be applied to the immense variety of new concrete situations as in our own time, it needs a great deal of work, such as Pius XII accomplished in his time.

Moreover, with no natural law or order in man, how can there be anything supernatural any more? (What nature is there to be above?). There can be no more 10 Commandments (which express the natural law); no more charity, (which is the beginning and end of the ten Commandments); no more natural religion (constituted by the natural law); no more social life (which presupposes natural justice); nor Christian life (which presupposes natural virtues); and so on and so on. In fact if there is no natural law, all notion of a Christian society becomes impossible, either as society or as Christian.

Objection: All good law is clear and certain. But if natural law requires such elaboration then it cannot be clear or certain. Therefore it is not good law. Reply: In its absolute basics – “Do good, shun evil,” natural law is clear and unshakeable. In everything deriving from those basics it is not so clear for us human beings, and it can be shaken or contested, but it is clear in itself, as when for instance a good judge digs justice out of a confusing court-case. Natural law is known to us from inside us by reason, and from outside us by revelation, for instance the revelation of the 10 Commandments to all men by Moses.

In the third and last Chapter of Part V of his book, Madiran presents the spiritual consequences of the denial of natural law which he has attributed above in P7 to the 20th century heresy. The result in the individual Catholic is that he strays far from a true understanding both of the Christian life and of how far his own life is from it. He no longer has any idea of the absolute necessity of supernatural grace to live a Christian life. He thinks that by his own strength he leads a decent life, yet from that life the Commandments 1 to 4 have vanished, 5 and 7 may still be alive, but 8 is weakened and 6,9,10 have often also vanished. Yet by a sentimental love of neighbour, disciplined by no objective law, he thinks he is fulfilling Christ’s command to love one another as Christ loved us, so he is satisfied with himself. In which state, says Madiran, he cannot be saved. No wonder such a man calls for “a change in the very concept of salvation brought by Christ” – and we have come full circle, back to the first of the seven Propositions in which Madiran summed up the 20th century heresy.

Kyrie eleison.

Madiran – 6 Propositions

Madiran - 6 Propositions on November 28, 2020

From the Prologue of Jean Madiran’s book The Heresy of the 20th Century, presented briefly in #of these “Comments” eight weeks ago, readers may remember Madiran’s own dismissal of the heresy concerned as being “night, emptiness, and nothingness.” Nevertheless that heresy has had in the aftermath of Vatican II, and up till today, a devastating power to wreck the Catholic Faith, liturgy, Church and souls as they were before the Council, and so Madiran gives to his readers some account of the “nothingness.” This account he presents in Parts III, IV and V of his book, where he analyses seven main Propositions of the heresy, culled by himself from writings of Bishop Schmitt, whom Madiran credits with having brought into focus the devastating nothingness of the new Conciliar religion. Here in heavy type are all seven Propositions in order, followed by a brief summary of Madiran’s comments.

1 Today’s changing world imposes a change in the very concept of salvation brought by Christ,

2 and it shows that the Church’s idea of the plan of God was, up till now, not evangelical enough.

3 Faith listens to the world.

4 Socialisation is not only an ineluctable fact of world history. It is also a grace.

5 No age before ours has ever been able better to grasp the Gospel ideal of brotherhood practised.

6 In a world turned towards the future, Christian hope takes on its full meaning.

7 Natural law is the expression of the collective consciousness of mankind. (This seventh Proposition is so devastating that Madiran will reserve for it all of Part V.)

1 The first two Propositions have already been analysed by Madiran in the preceding Part of his book, so on the first (P1) he merely adds here that it is the necessary and sufficient principle of the whole new religion. One could sum up: just as Catholicism is “all Tradition,” so modernism is “all change.”

2 P2 begins to spell out P1, i.e. it begins to specify what change is needed. Like countless systems since Protestantism protesting against Catholicism, it appeals falsely to the Gospel against the Church.

3 P3 makes clear that P1 and P2 have changed what believers are henceforth to believe in: as Catholics used to believe in God because He is God, now they are to believe in the world because it is the world.

4 And believing in the modern world means believing in its great movement of socialisation or collectivism, i.e. Communism, because not only is the movement inevitable, it is also a religious grace (!).

5 In other words “Christ’s salvation” (P1) and “God’s plan” (P2) have become merely words, kept as relics of the past, but with all supernatural meaning and reality emptied out.

6 Similarly all supernatural hope and striving for God’s Heaven are emptied out and fulfilled – better – by modernity. For never before in all 20 centuries of Church history have Christians so well understood Christian hope as we men of today, all straining forward together to the Brave New World Order (!).

Madiran’s final comment is to observe how all six Propositions hang together which he culled from Bishop Schmitt. Thus P1 is the springboard of all six. But why this mania for change, which is so clear also in all modern politicians? Because before the modern age, everything used to be based on, and to turn around, God. But now man rejects God. Therefore everything must be changed, (P2) with man instead at the centre, and (P3) with man’s world as the complete horizon. This centring on man (P4) cannot be reversed, but (P4) it is as good as a religion, and (P5) never have men been better suited than today to centring on man, or (P6) to looking forward to the human future of mankind. The synchronisation of this system with Communism is clear, with its elimination of God and deification of man. It will be even more clear with (P7) the elimination of nature and of the natural law. The summer riots in the USA were all about the final elimination of Almighty God. Lord, have mercy on us!

Kyrie eleison.

Madiran; the Heresy

Madiran; the Heresy on November 14, 2020

In his book “The Heresy of the 20th Century” Jean Madiran (1920–2013) has presented the heresy’s gravity (Foreword); its underlying philosophy (Part I) and the bishops responsible for it (II); in Parts III, IV and V he comes to the heresy itself, which he analyses according to its seven Propositions. In Part III he presents the first two on their own because of their importance; in Part IV the first six in a little detail; in Part V the seventh Proposition, also on its own because of its overwhelming importance for Madiran. Part III, subject of this week’s “Comments,” sub-divides into six Chapters.

In Chapter One, Madiran declares that on the eve of Vatican II (1962–1965) the religious atmosphere was already pestilential in general, but the then Bishop of the city of Metz in Eastern France, Msgr. Schmitt, brought the whole vague pestilence into clear focus. Seven Propositions sum up what was in fact the new religion which he backed by all his episcopal authority. The first Proposition declares that today’s changing world imposes a change in the very concept of salvation brought by Jesus Christ. And the second declares that the Church’s idea of the plan of God was up till then not evangelical enough. In brief, (P1) the Church must promote “socialisation,” says the Bishop of Metz, because (P2) the old Church was not collective enough, but too merely personal in its practice of the Gospel. But what the Bishop is in fact promoting is Communism, says Madiran.

For indeed “socialisation,” argues Madiran in Chapter Two, rests upon a Marxist view of history, materialistic and determinist, which shows that the Bishop of Metz has lost the Christian faith, because how can the spiritual goals of Christianity coincide with the materialistic goals of Communism? Communism is a social system to be rejected for religious reasons, because as a social system it pretends to replace the Church’s social system and therewith Christianity.

In Chapter Three Madiran rejects Bishop Schmitt’s claim that men today best of all understand Gospel brotherhood (cf. Proposition II above). Such a down-grading of all the social works and achievements of the pre-Conciliar Church is ridiculous and for Catholics, says Madiran, it is an unseemly narcissism.

Thus by 1967, says Madiran in Chapter Four, it had become clear to the world that Bishop Schmitt was promoting no less than a new religion, or a heresy, vandalising centuries upon centuries of Catholic tradition. The French bishops are vandals without intelligence or character. Henceforth it is up to the laity to defend the Penny Catechism, in other words the very basics of the Faith!

In Chapter 5, against keeping up with the times (Prop. I), Madiran upholds the First Commandment, because it is the unchanging God and not the changing world that must hold first place in our hearts and minds. Nor will the times ever be with the Church, because the Church is with Jesus Christ. It is only worldly Catholics that the world admires. And against the Church not practising the Gospel enough (Prop. II), Madiran says that the Saints never invented anything in order to be “evangelical enough,” on the contrary they always strove to be as faithful as possible to tradition in order to put the Gospel into practice.

In conclusion, Chapter Six, Madiran denies that there is any truth to be salvaged from Propositions I and II, and he declares that Bishop Schmitt’s new religion wants the Church to gain the whole world by losing its own soul. The new religion has neither true authority nor true obedience, and Madiran has a prophetic vision of Catholic Tradition surviving Vatican II, because it makes free men kneel nobly before their God in accordance with a real authority and a real obedience. Such Catholics will never follow the false religion of poor bishops like the Bishop of Metz, just let him wait and see!

Kyrie eleison.