Deposit of Faith

God’s Grandeur

God’s Grandeur on February 21, 2009

To celebrate the return of a native to his English homeland after 35 years of wandering abroad, let us take a brief look at a famous sonnet of the 19th century English Jesuit priest and poet, Fr. Gerard Manley Hopkins. Most suitably the sonnet commemorates the greatness of God. Let anyone who has never met with Hopkins prepare for a bumpy ride, but let him stay with it, because the ride is worth it. Here is “God’s Grandeur”:

The world is charged with the grandeur of God.

It will flame out, like shining from shook foil;

It gathers to a greatness, like the ooze of oil

Crushed. Why do men then now not reck his rod?

Generations have trod, have trod, have trod;

And all is seared with trade; bleared, smeared with toil;

And wears man’s smudge and shares man’s smell: the soil

Is bare now, nor can foot feel, being shod.

And for all this, nature is never spent;

There lives the dearest freshness deep down things;

And though the last lights off the black West went

Oh, morning, at the brown brink eastward, springs—

Because the Holy Ghost over the bent

World broods with warm breast and with ah! bright wings.

Hopkins was born in 1844, the first of nine children of a High Anglican couple. A bright schoolboy, he obtained a scholarship to Balliol College, Oxford, where he became the star scholar in classical studies. Coming under the influence of John Henry Newman, famous Oxford convert to Catholicism 20 years earlier, Hopkins became Catholic one year before leaving Oxford, and at the age of 23 entered the Society of Jesus. In the course of his studies he came across the theology and philosophy of Duns Scotus which revived his interest in writing, and there rose up from within him a wholly personal vision of unchanging nature and English poetry. In 1877 he was ordained priest and did parish work in England. In 1884 he was moved to Dublin, where in 1889 he died of typhus, saying, “I am so happy.”

Therefore Hopkins’ life was wholly framed within the 19th century, hey-day of English Liberalism and Romanticism. However, that within him which made him convert to Catholicism and become a priest made his Romanticism quite different from that of his contemporaries, who could mostly hear only “the melancholy, long, withdrawing roar” of faith, of God, of hope. “God’s Grandeur” is full of God, and full of hope.

Cast in classic sonnet form, the poem’s first four lines tell of God’s greatness flashing and oozing forth from all Creation. Then how (line 4) can modern man be paying him so little attention? The answer (l.5–8) is that centuries of living for money (“trade”) have cut man off from nature (“nor can foot feel”), and stripped both man and nature (“soil is bare”) of God. Yet (l.9–14) God is still there, deep within natural things, as ever. Man may be putting out the lights of Western civilisation, still God is constantly recreating the world with brightness and warmth.

On a first reading, the originality of Hopkins’ language and imagery may be off-putting. Who ever heard for instance of the Lord God being compared to tin-foil or to oil? But inside Hopkins is a new wine which will not go into old bottles. To get his message across, the lifelessness of modern man, he resorts to repetitions (“trod . . .trod . . .trod”: “seared . . . bleared . . .smeared”), and in 12 of the 14 lines he uses old-fashioned alliterations (“smudge,smell,”“foot, feel,”etc.).

As for the rhythm, instead of the classic English iambic pentameter (te-tum,te-tum,te-tum,te-tum,te-tum), we have a variety of feet and a varying number of beats to a line, from three (L9,13), to five (l.10), mostly four (e.g. the first line).

However, let nobody think Hopkins is indisciplined. He has chosen the Petrarchan sonnet form which allows of only four different rhymes for the 14 lines (here:— od, – oil, – ent and – ings), which for an English poet is quite demanding. And notice how carefully crafted is the last line of the sonnet, its climax:— “World broods” matches “warm breast” and balances “bright wings” (wb, wb, bw), while the spondees (tum, tum) “World broods” and “bright wings” at each end frame two anapaests (te-te-tum) “with warm breast” and “and with ah!.” Read the line slowly aloud, and see if you do not get a kick out of Fr. Hopkins!

Clearly he has no interest in being original for its own sake. Rather from within the liberal 19th century, decadent and growing tired, the convert-priest has a fresh vision of Creation and its Creator which calls for fresh language and rhythms. In truth, whoever recovers God will recover originality!

Could weary men but once more find their way

To God, how light and fresh would dawn the day!

Kyrie eleison.

Heroic Harmonies

Heroic Harmonies on February 7, 2009

Just before the media uproar of the last two weeks a dear friend asked me to write about any piece of music that I especially liked. It would have to be a piece by Beethoven (1770 – 1827). Then I might single out the first movement of his Third Symphony, known as the “Eroica,” or Heroic Symphony.

Really the whole symphony is heroic. It is the musical portrait of a hero, originally Napoleon, until Beethoven learned that from First Consul of the French Republic he had made himself into an old-style Emperor of the French Empire, whereupon Beethoven ripped out the dedication page to Napoleon and dedicated the symphony instead to a hero. But the music remained unchanged: the revolutionary expression of Beethoven’s ardent hopes for a heroic new age of mankind to emerge from a tired old order of kings and cardinals.

It was however that old order, as expressed by Haydn (1732 – 1809) and Mozart (1756 – 1791) in particular, that gave to Beethoven the musical structures within which to shape and contain his dramatic new emotions. The first movement of the “Eroica” was unprecedentedly long in Beethoven’s own day – over 600 bars, lasting in performance anywhere around a quarter of an hour. Yet from first bar to last, the varied wealth and dynamic force of the musical ideas owe their tight unity and overarching control to the classical sonata form which Beethoven had inherited from the 18th century: Exposition, Development and Recapitulation (ABA), with a Coda mighty enough (innovation of Beethoven) to balance the Development (ABAC).

Leaping into action with two E flat major chords, the hero strides forth with his main theme, the first subject, built solidly out of that chord. The theme goes to war. A valiant re-statement precedes several new ideas of varying rhythms, keys and moods until moments of calm come with the classically more quiet second subject. But war soon returns, with off-beat rhythms and violent struggle, culminating in six hammering chords in two-time cutting right across the movement’s three-time. A few vigorous bars close the Exposition.

Upheavals and calm alternate for the rest of the movement. Notable in the Development is the most tremendous upheaval of all, culminating in a threefold shattering discord of F major with E natural in the brass, out of which mouth of the lion comes the honey of a brand-new lyrical melody, but still striding! Notable in the Coda is the fourfold repetition of the hero’s triumphant main theme, climaxing with inexorable logic in a blaze of glory. Lord, grant us heroes of the Faith, heroes both tender and valiant, heroes of the Church!

Kyrie eleison.

“Excommunications” Lifted

“Excommunications” Lifted on January 24, 2009

As of course a large number of readers already know, a Decree dated Jan. 21 from the Congregation of Bishops in Rome (not Ecclesia Dei) “remitted” the “excommunicating” Decree of July 1, 1988, so that the four Society of St. Pius X bishops, then declared to be “excommunicated,” are now “re-incommunicated.” In my opinion this latter Decree is a great step forward for the Church without being a betrayal on the part of the SSPX.

It is a great step forward for the Church because if the Church’s problem ever since Vatican II has been a separation of Catholic Authority from Catholic Truth, with this Decree Catholic Authority has taken a decisive step back towards their re-union. Just as after the Motu Proprio of July, 2007, nobody could any longer say that the true rite of Mass was banned by Rome, even if they can still behave as though it is, so too now nobody can any longer say that Catholics holding to Tradition are “outside the Church.” Certainly a number of Conciliarists will go on behaving as though they are, but they clearly no longer have the Pope on their side only. The difference is enormous!

Of course there is still a long way to go before the neo-modernists in Rome, conscious or unconscious, realize – if ever! – how they mistake the Faith, but as the old proverb says, “Rome was not built in a day,” and it will not be repaired in a day. The fact is that “Half a loaf is better than no bread” – ask a hungry man! – so meanwhile let us know how to thank God for this major shift of the rudder of the Conciliar Church. Let us then thank the Blessed Virgin Mary whose intervention will have been decisive, thanks to the nigh on one and three quarter million rosaries offered to her for this intention, by a number of yourselves amongst others. And let us thank and pray for Benedict XVI and all his collaborators who helped to push through this Decree, despite, for instance, a media uproar orchestrated and timed to prevent it.

However, by asking for and accepting such reconciliation with the Conciliar Church, is not the SSPX threatening to lead the way back into Conciliarism? In no way! No doubt some Conciliarists in Rome are hoping that the Decree will serve to draw the SSPX back into the fold of Vatican II, but the Decree itself, as it stands, commits the Society to nothing more than to entering into those discussions to which the Society committed itself in 2000 when it proposed the liberation of the Mass and the ending of the “excommunications” as pre-conditions in the first place.

Then are such discussions without danger? Certainly not! But St. Peter says we should always be “ready to satisfy every one that asks you for a reason of that hope which is in you” (I Pet. III, 15). How can the SSPX not rejoice in the opportunity to lay out in Rome, before the Roman authorities themselves, the profound doctrinal reasons which we believe to be at the root of the Church’s present distress? Woe unto us Catholics of Tradition if we were not ready to give reason for that hope which is in us for the rescue of the Church! So continue to pray the Rosary, dear Catholics, for the possible realization and outcome of such discussions, so that they may serve first, last and foremost, the interests of God, of God, of God.

Kyrie eleison.

Come, Lord!

Come, Lord! on January 10, 2009

If the rolling crash of finance and economics will help to pull families together and even impose some hunger, it will be a blessing, a blessing in disguise maybe, but still a blessing, if one listens to what a family physician practising medicine in the Eastern United States has to say about the current state of his patients. Here are a few of his observations (more may appear in an upcoming issue of the “Angelus”):

“There is a war on fertility taking place. A soft eugenic war, which chooses who lives, is being waged against the American people, according to a Fabian program of gradualism and incrementalism, to get rid of social problems, e.g. poverty and old age, by getting rid of the people! Contaminated food and water serve in this war. Also anti-depressant pills, all of which stop the reproductive function. Sperm counts are way down.

“Our food is no good, and people know it. The more natural diet of poor people is healthier than that of the well-to-do. When deer face a choice between natural corn and manipulated corn, they make straight for the natural corn! Hispanics and blacks still have some common sense, but the disintegration of the family amongst the white people is causing a loneliness, loneliness, loneliness, which is pushing them to eat their unnatural food for comfort. Cases of diabetes have doubled in the last ten years. Recently I had in my office a 14-year old weighing in at 393 lbs! And youngsters like him are more and more common. People are overfed yet undernourished. Children fed in the way they are being fed today will not live. Drugs like Ritalin only calm them down externally because they stimulate them internally. Modern pills are dangerous, liable to upset people’s brain-chemistry for ever, like in the Soviet Gulag. As a patient said to me recently, ‘I just don’t feel right any more’.

“But the genocide is not only physical. People are being deprived of their faith as of their nutrition. The slow, rich, Catholic culture is going, going, gone, to be replaced by a toxic Protestant anti-culture, pushing frenetic parents, for instance, to orchestrate their children’s lives at such a fast pace that they cannot grow normally, and their attention span is destroyed. People are profoundly out-matched by this anti-culture. They do not stand a chance. They cannot listen any more. They can only believe what they see on television. They are despondent, but it is tough for anyone like me to go up against what is supposed to be “science” in the attention-deficit culture.

“The Novus Ordo religion is no help because it is part of the problem! It is saturated in female hormones, and has nothing with which to go up against the anti-culture. I completely understand that to get through to the modern world, Heaven may need to resort to a miraculous world-wide Warning, such as we were told of at Garabandal in the 1960’s. Such a warning fits the condition of my patients like a key fits a lock.” End of doctor’s quote.

Come, crash! Come, Warning! Come, Lord Jesus! (Apoc. XXII, 20)

Kyrie eleison.

Campos Resilient

Campos Resilient on December 20, 2008

Catholics regularly ask, “What has happened to Campos?” They are referring of course to the Brazilian diocese which Bishop de Castro Mayer, lone hero of the post-Conciliar episcopate alongside Archbishop Lefebvre, maintained in Catholic Tradition until his death in 1991, but which his second successor, Bishop Rifan, led back under the Roman authorities ten or so years later. The question then is, how well is Catholic Tradition faring in the Campos now under Roman control?

And the answer is that the 40-plus-year war between Catholicism and Conciliarism is unfolding along the usual lines: the laity who cleave to Tradition are tranquil in their Faith; the best of the priests now under, ultimately, neo-modernist Rome are suffering from split loyalties; their bishop, loyal to the same Rome – or to his own ambition – is manoeuvring all the time to Conciliarise the work of Bishop de Castro Mayer.

Ambition is the only explanation that the most clear-sighted layfolk can find for the defection to neo-modernist Rome of Bishop Rifan. These layfolk say, “If he was wrong to follow Tradition for so long, why should he be right now? The valid books he wrote then, are they invalid now?” The Bishop threatens them with taking away their priests. Reply of one of these layfolk: “Your Excellency, that’s entirely up to you. As for me, at Easter I will bring in a priest from outside, if necessary.” Over such souls the Bishop has lost all influence.

Some of the laity say that nothing has changed in the eleven parishes of Tradition, and they declare that Bishop Rifan can do no wrong. Others notice the beginning of changes, for instance how the priests no longer tell the people to throw out the television set because it is enough to keep it under control. Logically, for a bishop and priests letting go of the complete truth, their preaching is tending to become more authoritarian. However, they are liable to back down where they sense a resistance which would diminish the numbers of their flock.

Typically, the clear-sighted laity, in particular a group of some 180 souls in three chapels of the Traditional parish of Vari Sai, are turning to priests uncompromisingly Traditional to say Mass for them and to maintain their Faith. Long term, their hope is in the Society of St. Pius X, which is the major support system of such priests, and which is showing no signs of being about to fall in with the neo-modernists of Rome. But the struggle must continue. As Our Lord says, “If these days were not shortened . . .”

Kyrie eleison.

Masterly Confusion

Masterly Confusion on November 15, 2008

Ever since Vatican II (1962–1965), a number of intelligent and serious Catholic souls have striven to prove that the changes made to the Latin Church’s sacramental rites by Pope Paul VI in particular render these rites automatically invalid. One might reply, if only it were that simple! But simplicity is no substitute for truth.

Here is how one such soul seeks to prove that the new rite of priestly Ordination is automatically invalid, and his argument is not without value:

Major: Wherever the words of a sacramental Form, essential to the validity of the sacrament, are significantly changed, or wherever the same words are being given in context a significantly different meaning, the Form, and with it the sacrament, can only be invalid.

Minor: Now the words themselves of the new Form of priestly Ordination have not been significantly changed, but in the context of the new rite taken as a whole, the same word of “priest” is being given a significantly different meaning, in accordance with the Council’s total revolutionizing of the Catholic priesthood.

Conclusion: Therefore never can a priest be validly ordained with the new rite.

In this argument, there is no problem with the Major, which is Catholic doctrine. As for the Minor, it is true that the words of the Form have remained essentially intact. It is also true that the whole drift of Vatican II and the post-Conciliar reforms is towards an emptying out of the Catholic priesthood, as of the whole Catholic religion, to replace it with a religion of man. But the argument above, to arrive at its conclusion, would have to prove that Conciliar documents and reforms in themselves positively exclude the Catholic priesthood and religion, because so long as the new rite can be taken not to exclude the true priesthood, it can still be used validly to ordain a true priest.

Alas (for purposes of clarity), the will of Paul VI as seen in all his reforms (and now of Benedict XVI) is so to introduce the new religion of man alongside the Catholic religion of God as to include and not exclude the latter! Now any sane mind cannot stand the idea of 2 and 2 being 5 in such a way as not to exclude their being 4. But Conciliar minds are not sane. They want to apostatize while still remaining Catholic! Thus the new rite of Ordination may omit many features of the Catholic ordination, but it introduces nothing that positively excludes a true ordination. If only it did! Then it could no longer deceive so many souls into thinking that it presents no problem for Catholics. Here is the problem: the drift of the text is to invalidate the true priesthood (2+2=5), but the text may still be used validly (2+2=4)! Sister Lucy of Fatima called it “Diabolical disorientation.”

Kyrie eleison.