conciliarism

Papal Error – II

Papal Error – II on February 6, 2010

Just coming out in English (see truerestoration.blogspot.com) is the valuable 100-page treatise in French by Bishop Tissier de Mallerais of the Society of St Pius X on the doctrine of Pope Benedict XVI: “The Faith imperilled by Reason.” The title says it all. Bishop Tissier’s thesis is that Benedict XVI allows human reasoning to adulterate the Catholic Faith. Let me paraphrase a paragraph from the Bishop’s conclusion which goes to the heart of the matter:—

“Benedict XVI frequently calls for a “hermeneutic of continuity,” meaning an interpretation of Vatican II and of Catholic Tradition which shows that there is no break but continuity

between them. After studying the Pope’s teachings, I now realize that this “hermeneutic” goes further than I originally thought. It means not just a new reading of Faith and Reason, but a new birth of both, and it is of universal application. Firstly, each is to purify the other: Reason will stop Faith from sliding into intolerance, while Faith will heal Reason’s blind independence. Secondly, each is to regenerate the other: Reason will enrich the Faith with the liberal values of Enlightenment thinking, while Faith, suitably re-expressed for modern times, will win a hearing from Reason. And this process is to be applied across the board to all religions and all ways of reasoning. Without any one system of values being imposed on everybody, those values which keep the world going will be strengthened.”

Note here firstly how, on his own admission, Bishop Tissier originally under-estimated the breadth and depth of the Pope’s vision. Catholics following Tradition know that the Conciliar reconciling of the Faith with modernity (especially the sentence that I have underlined above) is wrong, and is destroying the Church, but they do need to recognize that it has been thought out with intelligence, however misguided, and it is held with conviction. Benedict XVI believes profoundly both in the old way of believing and in the new way of thinking, and he is confident that by his own way of solving any apparent problems between them, all men can be brought together. This “solution” drives his Papacy.

Alas, I cannot reconcile 2+2=4 with 2=2=5 by saying that four is “more or less than four and a half,” while five is “more or less than four and a half,” because four apples will remain obstinately four, while five oranges will persist in being five. Thus the true Faith may tolerate the person erring, but it cannot tolerate their error, whereas modern Reason may wish to see, but as long as it is modern it insists on putting its own eyes out, the eyes of the mind (Kant). At every turn Bishop Tissier demonstrates that the eternal Faith, revealed by God, cannot lie down with modern reasoning, fabricated by men, which is designed to exclude either God or at least his demands on men (Religious Liberty).

Thank you, your Excellency! For, however charming may be the Pope’s prospect of “peace in our time,” it is not charm but truth in charity that will get us to Heaven.

Kyrie eleison.

Papal Error – I

Papal Error – I on January 30, 2010

Speaking two weeks ago on relations between the Rome of Vatican II and the Society of St. Pius X (SSPX), Pope Benedict XVI showed once more how subtle and powerful the Conciliar error is. He was addressing on Jan.15 a plenary session of the Roman Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith (formerly known as the Holy Office). The three first paragraphs of his twelve-paragraph address need to be quoted in full, but a summary, as faithful as possible, will have to do.

1. Your Congregation shares in the special ministry of the Pope to ensure Church unity by safeguarding Catholic doctrine. That unity depends on unity in the Faith of which the Pope is the foremost defender. To confirm the brethren in the Faith and keep them united is his prime task. 2 Your teaching authority, like the Pope’s, involves obedience to the Faith, so that there may be one flock under the one Shepherd. 3. At all times the Church must get all Christians to witness together to the Faith, “In this spirit I place a particular trust in your commitment to overcoming any remaining doctrinal problems in the way of the SSPX achieving full communion with the Church.”

The problem here is much more than just whether or not the SSPX is in “full communion with the Church.” The problem is the whole relationship between unity and the Faith. In reality, Catholic unity is essentially dependent on the Catholic Faith. A Catholic being defined firstly by what he believes, then wherever there is no Catholic Faith there can be no Catholics to unite, and wherever there is that Faith there is the essential basis of Catholic unity. Now the Pope does say (1) that “Unity is in fact primarily unity in the Faith,” but generally (1,2,3) he connects unity and Faith as though they are on an equal footing, almost as though they are interdependent, whereas true unity is entirely dependent on the true Faith. How else could he arrive at his conclusion of (3), quoted above in full, where he gives the impression of instructing his Congregation to overcome doctrinal problems for the sake of Rome-SSPX unity?

Yet the duty of Christ’s Vicar is not to unite Rome and the SSPX at any cost, so to speak, but to unite them in the Catholic Faith as given us by Christ. So if there is a doctrinal difference between Rome and the SSPX (and there is, and it is huge!), then his prime problem is which of the two has the Catholic Faith, and which has not. And then he must unite the whole Church around whichever of them has that Faith, even if that happens to be the poor li’l SSPX! “Li’l,” or little, because it is insignificant except by its Faith!

Alas, Benedict XVI is more Conciliar than he is Catholic. But the Council, putting man before God, constantly undermined the Revealed doctrine of God, or the Faith, in the name of the ecumenical unity of men. That is why Benedict XVI is incapable of grasping, short of a miracle, the significance of the SSPX’s doctrinal stand. Yet how many Catholics are not liable to be deceived by the smoothness of his transition from much Truth (in 1,2) to its undoing (in 3)? Few! The error is as powerful as it is subtly conceived and expressed! We must pray for the miracle.

Kyrie eleison.

Calming Confusion

Calming Confusion on December 12, 2009

It has taken three issues of “Eleison Comments” to disentangle why the alleged death-bed testimony of Cardinal Lienart (EC 121) could easily be true, given that it corresponds exactly to how the validity of the Catholic sacraments has been imperilled by the Conciliar sacramental Rites introduced after Vatican II (EC 124, 125, 126). A friendly critic thinks that I have been too concerned to defend the validity of the Conciliar sacraments. But I no more want to exaggerate their validity than their invalidity.

For indeed no reasonable person who loves the truth wants to do anything other than conform his mind to reality, because truth is defined as “the matching of mind and reality.” If a situation is black, I want to call it black. If it is white, I want to call it white. And if it is varying shades of grey in between, I want to make that grey in my mind no more grey-black nor grey-white than it is in reality.

Now it is true that any one sacrament administered in real life will have been either valid or invalid. There are no more shades between valid and invalid than there are between pregnant and not pregnant. But if we consider the Conciliar sacraments being all the time administered throughout the Newchurch as a whole, we can only say some are valid, some are invalid, but they have all been placed on a slide towards invalidity by the Conciliar Rites’ total thrust to replace the religion of God with the religion of man. That is why the Newchurch is on its way to disappearing altogether, and why the Society of St. Pius X can in no way allow itself to be absorbed into it.

But at what exact point on that slide any given priest or priests, for instance, so lose the true idea of the Church that they can no longer Intend to do what the Church does, God alone knows. It may well be that to reach that point takes more than I suggested in EC 125. Maybe it takes less, as our critic suggests. In any case, since only God can know for sure, I do not need to know. All I need to have clear in my mind is that the Conciliar Rites have put God’s sacraments on a slide away from God, and once it is clear to me that they are helping to destroy the Church, that they were even designed to destroy the Church, I should stay away from them.

Meanwhile, as to just how far down the slide is this or that priest, or even the Newchurch as a whole, I will apply the great principle of St. Augustine: “In things certain, unity; in things doubtful, liberty; in all things, charity.” And within the framework of certainties such as, within the Newchurch neither already nothing, nor everything still, is Catholic, I mean to extend to my fellow-Catholics the same liberty to judge of things uncertain as I hope they will extend to me. Mother of God, obtain the rescue of the Church!

Kyrie eleison.

Unique Delinquency – II

Unique Delinquency – II on November 28, 2009

Last week’s “Eleison Comments” argued that the problem with the administration of sacraments in the Church following on Vatican II is that the Conciliar Revolution with its new sacramental Rites is apt to undermine not only the faith but also the sacramental Intention of any Newchurch Minister of a sacrament. It remained to be shown that the Conciliar Church undermines Catholic sacramental Intention in a way in which it can hardly have been undermined for 2000 years!

For indeed that Intention without which no sacrament is valid is the human Minister’s intention to do what the Church does, because by that Intention the Minister puts his instrumental action under the power of God, indispensable source of the sacramental grace which merely flows through the Minister’s action to the recipient of the sacrament.But a human intention depends on what idea I have of what it is that I am intending, and that idea may or may not correspond to reality. For instance I may intend to fly over the North Pole, but if I am not very good at geography I may find myself flying over the South Pole instead.

So if sacramental validity depends on my Intention “to do what the Church does,” that intention will in turn depend on my idea of what the Church does, which will certainly depend on my idea of what the Church is. Supposing then that I intend to administer a sacrament, but have been given a radically false idea of what the Church is and does – how can I have a valid sacramental Intention?

Now never before in all 2,000 years of Church history was an Ecumenical Council designed like Vatican II (1962–1965) to give to Catholics from top to bottom of the Church a false idea of what the Church is and does. This is because never before in these two millennia had mankind so universally replaced the realities of God with the fantasies of man that the fantasy finally swamped God’s own churchmen. To be sure, the fantasy was skilfully designed by them at the Council so as to make as comfortable and imperceptible as possible the slide from Catholicism into what we might call Chocolatism, the feel-good religion, but Chocolatism in its pure state is just officialized apostasy.

So never before in all Church history has it been so easy for the Minister of a sacrament to have a false idea of what the Church is: instead of the assembly of the faithful united by their Faith, sacraments and hierarchy, a sort of Chocolate Club. Never then can sacramental Ministers even with the best of intentions so easily have had false ideas of what the Church does, never so easily have arrived at the South rather than the North Pole. For, if they were born and bred within the Chocolate Club, how can they know the reality of “what the Church does” so as to be able to intend it?

And if they cannot intend it, how can their sacraments be valid?

Vatican II was a unique delinquency. Woe to its authors and to all still promoting it!

Kyrie eleison.

Mass Error

Mass Error on October 3, 2009

An interesting criticism of the Society of St. Pius X, mainly false but slightly true, was made by Cardinal Castrillon Hoyos in an interview which he gave ten days ago to a South German newspaper (text available on the Internet). He said that the SSPX leaders whom he met in 2000 gave him the impression of being fixated on the New Mass as though it were “the source of all evil in the world.”

Obviously the reform of the Latin liturgy of the Mass which followed on Vatican II (1962–1965) is not responsible for all evil in the world, but it is responsible for a great deal of the evil in the modern world. Firstly, the Roman Catholic religion is the one and only religion instituted by the one true God when he once, and only once, took human nature, becoming the God-man Jesus Christ, 2000 years ago. Secondly, Jesus Christ’s bloody self-sacrifice on the Cross, alone capable of placating the just wrath of God inflamed by today’s global apostasy, maintains that placation only through that sacrifice’s unbloody re-presentation in the true sacrifice of the Mass. Thirdly, the ancient Latin rite of that Mass, essential parts of which reach back to the beginnings of the Church, was significantly changed after Vatican II by Paul VI, in a manner which he himself told his friend Jean Guitton was designed to please the Protestants.

But all Protestants take their name from their protesting against Catholicism. That is why the rite of Mass reformed “in the spirit of Vatican II” severely dominishes the expression of essential Catholic truths: in order, 1/ Transubstantiation of the bread and wine, making 2/ the Sacrifice of the Mass, constituting in turn 3/ the sacrificing Priesthood, all by 4/ the intercession of the Blessed Mother of God. In fact the complete ancient Latin liturgy is the complete expression of Catholic doctrine.

If then it is primarily by attending Mass and not by reading books or by attending lectures that the great number of practising Catholics absorb these doctrines and live them out in real life, and if it is by so doing that they act as the light of the world against error and as the salt of the earth against corruption, then it is small wonder if today’s world is in such confusion and immorality. “Let us destroy the Mass, and we will destroy the Church,” said Luther. “The world can sooner do without the light of the sun than without the Sacrifice of the Mass,” said Padre Pio.

That is why Archbishop Lefebvre’s first priority in founding the SSPX was to save the ancient Latin rite of Mass. Thank God, it is slowly but surely making its way back into the mainstream Church (which it will not do under the Antichrist). But now his Society must save the full doctrinal underpinning of that Mass from the victims and perpetrators of Vatican II, still firmly ensconced in Rome. We must pray hard for the “doctrinal discussions” due to open this month between Rome and the SSPX.

Kyrie eleison.

 . . .And If Ever . . .

 . . .And If Ever . . . on September 26, 2009

 . . .And if ever any discussions to be held between Rome and the Society of St Pius X did seem to be arriving at a non-doctrinal “practical agreement” between them, then all Catholics wishing to save their souls would have to study the “agreement” closely – especially the fine print – to see who would in future be appointing the leader or leaders, and their successors, in the Rome-approved SSPX.

He might be given whatever title pleased either party: “Superior General” or “Personal Prelate” or “Lord High Executioner” (a personage of noble rank and title) – the name would be of no importance. Crucial would be, who was to make the decisions, and who would appoint whoever would make the decisions? Would he be appointed by the Pope or by the Congregation of the Clergy, or by any Roman official, or would he continue to be appointed independently of Rome from within the SSPX as now, by a 12-yearly election through some 40 leading SSPX priests (next election in 2018)? Yet what would the “agreement” have gotten Rome if it had not gotten them control over appointing the SSPX leadership?

The history of the Catholic Church is littered with examples of the struggle between the friends and enemies of God – normally Church and State respectively, but no longer! – for control of the appointment of Catholic bishops. For as any intelligent friend or enemy of the Church well knows, the bishops are the key to its future. As Archbishop Lefebvre used to say, in defiance of all today’s democratic nonsense, it is the bishops who form the Catholic people and not the people who form the bishops.

A classic example of this struggle is the Napoleonic Concordat of 1801 by which the newly Freemasonic French State made sure that it acquired a significant degree of control over the choice of bishops in the Church in France. Promptly all pre-Revolutionary bishops were sacked who were still too Catholic, and the Church was then securely on its way to Vatican II. Similarly when in 1905 the Freemasons broke off the union of the French State with the Church, the better to persecute it, the heroic Pope Pius X profited by his unwanted new independence of that State to appoint, and himself consecrate, a mere handful of nine bishops, but their virile Catholicism so scared the Freemasons that as soon as Pius X was dead, they hastened back to renegotiate a certain reunion of Church and State, if only they could recover control of the appointment of French bishops – and Vatican II was back on track.

The pattern was repeated in 1988 when the heroic faith and courage of Archbishop Lefebvre alone saved the SSPX by his consecrating of four bishops independently of the explicit disapproval of Conciliar Rome. The same Conciliar foxes might now “give away the store” in order to regain control of the SSPX’s four “ugly ducklings,” and their potentially independent successors – ducklings make a dainty morsel for hungry foxes! God bless Fr Schmidberger and Bishop Fellay, and all their successors who will maintain that Catholic independence for as long as Rome is out of its Catholic mind!

Kyrie eleison.