Deposit of Faith

Sinister Fashions

Sinister Fashions on November 8, 2008

There reached me today an interesting letter from a German wife and mother in her early 50’s, who was born and bred in Communist Czechoslovakia, but who by motherhood and the grace of God found her way out of the modern scene and back to traditional values, to the Catholic Faith in particular. Now she is planning to help write a book about her experiences and conclusions. Here are two paragraphs from her letter:

“Thanks to my previous career as a photographic model, I came to know what goes on behind the scenes of fashion design. It is shattering to realize how trends in fashion are forced on women with one deliberate end in view – the destruction of their femininity and the stripping away of their dignity as women.

“Every year from Paris and Milan to London, fashion-designers put on display ready-to-wear clothing in which any ‘fashion-conscious’ woman is presented almost exclusively as a male or a woman of the street. One glance at a fashion-magazine like Vogue is enough for one to sense the all-embracing dictatorship of fashion, which brooks no resistance from behind its twisted mask of sensuality and provocation.” Strong words!

The womanliness of woman, tied to her natural destiny as mother, is so deep-seated in human nature that it is one of the last bastions to come under assault by the enemies of mankind. If the good German lady follows up their trail behind the scenes, she will stumble upon that massive plot against God and man which reaches back many centuries, and of which today’s onslaught on womanhood is all the more furious for being, as the plotters sense, one of the last battles they must win to achieve their final victory, as they think.

In this relentless war, one pressing need is to fight on today’s battlefields and not only on yesterday’s. Mother of virgins, Mother of mothers, obtain for the projected book to enable many souls to see how to take some first steps off the road to eternal damnation.

Kyrie eleison.

Youth Pleads

Youth Pleads on October 4, 2008

A 26-year old Buenos Aires student wrote to me one month ago with an earnest plea. Here it is:—

“ . . . I consider that your appreciation of the present situation in all areas is correct, and I agree. I have listened to conferences and read articles of yours, and I understand your pessimism and share it in part. It can hardly be avoided if one takes an overall view of the world in which we live. I have also heard from young folk of the SSPX what you think and say. In all humility, I earnestly beg of you, especially when you are addressing young people, male or female, please give your criticisms a positive slant. Please add to what you say some words of encouragement, hope and perseverance. Yours . . . . Patricio.”

Dear Patrick, I have much sympathy with your entreaty. You belong to a generation that has been gravely misled by a world that has for several centuries been going wrong, and is now on the brink of catastrophe, humanly speaking. With your head you recognize that the situation is as grave as I say it is, but your heart is nevertheless troubled. Here is Our Lord’s own answer:

“Peace I leave with you, my peace I give unto you: not as the world giveth, do I give unto you. Let not your heart be troubled, nor let it be afraid” (Jn XIV, 27). And several verses earlier: “Let not your heart be troubled. You believe in God, believe also in me” (Jn XIV, 1).

In other words, in the agitation and distress being felt by the Apostles after the Last Supper as the wicked world is closing in on their Divine Master – just like today! – they are not to pretend that the world is not as wicked as they know it is, instead they are to activate their Catholic Faith!

Patrick, with your Faith you know, amongst other things, firstly that the Lord God has everything perfectly under control, and all the devils of Hell (and earth) cannot lift a finger without His permission. Secondly, that He has a master plan to bring an even greater good out of today’s rampant evil. Thirdly, that if today’s godlessness were not producing chaos, that would be a far greater catastrophe than its imminent crash will be, because the tranquil success of godlessness would mean that we human beings were meant to be no more than beasts.

Patrick, believe in God, believe also in Our Lord! And pray His Mother’s Holy Rosary.

Kyrie eleison.

De-Clawed Minds

De-Clawed Minds on September 27, 2008

When two weeks ago “Eleison Comments” suggested that any Catholic not believing 9/11 to have been an inside job might be suffering from a “de-clawed Catholicism,” one reader (at least one – probably there were many more) protested vigorously. Clearly he wondered how on earth such a question as what brought down the Twin Towers in New York, or slammed into the Pentagon seven years ago, can possibly bear on his religion.

It is possible that this reader has seriously studied the massive arguments in favor of 9/11 having been other than what our vile media continue to pretend. But those arguments are so powerful that one may have to look for some other explanation than serious thinking for so many people accepting the media’s version. For example, here are, very briefly, three arguments of the sheerest common sense:—

How could kerosene burning at 850

Weak Tea?

Weak Tea? on September 6, 2008

To a layman asking whether one should – or could – attend today the (Tridentine) Mass of a priest ordained in 1972 with the 1968 new rite of Ordination, an SSPX priest answered that the SSPX “would not recommend it.” The layman found this answer “too weak to be definitive.” His hope for stronger answers is surely shared by many souls suffering from today’s all-round confusion.

However, clear answers are not always possible. Where an object is grey, one cannot say it is black or white. At the point of dawn, one cannot say it is night or day, because it is in between. Where the truth is confusing, it is more important to try to be true than to try to be clear. Alas, with Novus Ordo ordinations as with Novus Ordo Masses, no doubt they are more and more often invalid as the pre-Conciliar Church’s ways drop more and more into the past, but even today one cannot truthfully say that all Novus Ordo sacraments are automatically invalid.

A sacrament to be valid requires valid Minister, Form, Matter, and Intention. In 1972 it is reasonable to assume (one can always check) that the ordaining Minister (bishop) and his sacramental Intention were still Catholic. The Form of the 1968 rite of priestly Ordination includes (even in English) all the elements necessary for validity. And one can assume that the Bishop laid both hands on the future priest’s head, which means there was the Matter. For a 2002 Novus Ordo ordination the need to check elements necessary for validity is definitely more pressing, but for a 1972 ordination, surely the SSPX priest’s abstaining in his answer from a clear condemnation was reasonable.

Nevertheless he said the SSPX “would not recommend” attendance at such a priest’s (Tridentine) Mass, and surely that is also reasonable. Besides the remote off- chance (in 1972) that the ordination was invalid, the Mass in question may be set in a whole Novus Ordo context liable eventually to undermine the Catholic Faith of those attending.

However, unless a priest knows personally such a celebrant and his manner of celebrating the Tridentine Mass, he must leave to Catholics who do know him to judge whether his way of celebrating is of a nature to nourish or to undermine the Faith of Catholics. Certainly not all Novus Ordo priests today picking up the Tridentine Mass mean to bring souls round to Vatican II. On the contrary.

Almighty God, we beg of You, restore order in Your Church!

Kyrie eleison.

Fatal Turn – II

Fatal Turn – II on August 30, 2008

To say that the “turn to man” is the key-note of Vatican II is not an insult to Vatican II. Was not “die anthropologische Wende” (“the turn to man” in German) at the heart of Fr. Karl Rahner’s thinking, and was not Rahner one of the very most influential minds at work in the Council? The question is not whether or not Vatican II turned to man. The question is whether that turn was a good or bad thing.

The Council’s Declaration on Religious Liberty, Dignitatis Humanae(Of Human Dignity), argues that every civil government must grant to all its citizens the civil right to practise in public whatever religion those citizens choose to practise, because even if they misuse that right by choosing to practise a false religion, still their intrinsic dignity or worth as human beings demands that they be granted that liberty to choose. No liberty, no dignity.

Here is the key quotation: “The right to (civil) religious freedom has its foundation not in the subjective disposition of the person” (broadly equivalent to what we call “second nature”) “but in his very nature” (what we might call, as against second nature, man’s “first nature”). “In consequence, the right to this immunity continues to exist even in those who do not live up to their obligation of seeking the truth and adhering to it . . .” In other words, where the Catholic Church always used to teach that the prime worth of a human being so consists in his getting closer to the true God that a State may – wherever it will not be counter-productive for the salvation of souls – forbid the public practice of false religions, i.e. all non-Catholic religions, the Conciliar Church henceforth teaches that the prime worth of a human being so consists in his making his own choice of religion, true or false, that no State should place any civil hindrance in the way of any citizen practising in public the religion of his own choice.

The difference may seem slight at first sight, but the implications are enormous: man in the place of God. For Catholicism, a man’s prime worth or dignity consists in the right use of the free will intrinsic to his (first) human nature. Free will is not an end in itself but merely a means of so choosing good as to get to Heaven. God’s good is the end, man’s freedom is merely the means. Man’s first nature is for his second nature. First nature is not enough for eternal salvation.

On the contrary, for Conciliarism a man’s prime worth so consists in his first nature that the mere exercise of his free will, regardless of the good or evil he chooses, is more important for the human person and therefore for the State than the right use of his free will. In other words man’s free will comes before God’s right or wrong, before God’s Heaven or Hell. The mere exercise of freedom is becoming an end in itself. “First nature” now has priority over second nature. If “God” condemns men to “Hell” for “misuse” of their free will, that is God’s problem (or a problem of the old religion), not a problem for man!

Could any doctrine put men more surely on the road to Hell than such a “turn to man”?

Kyrie eleison.

La-La Landslide – II

La-La Landslide – II on August 9, 2008

On November 17 of last year Eleison Comments said that the Great Warning prophesied at Garabandal might take place in February or March of this year. That did not happen. One reader asks me why.

The reason is simple. It was not yet the time fixed by Almighty God. When is that time? I do not know. However, I still believe that Garabandal is a sleeping volcano, and I believe it may easily erupt in 2009, because my main reason for taking seriously a few pointers to 2008 was the instability and precariousness of the world situation, which is more unstable and precarious than ever.

The capitalism launched in England by the founding in 1694 of the first Central Bank of a nation is collapsing around our ears. The hurting capitalists who just recently would blast any government that interfered with free enterprise, are now themselves begging the US government to bail out their banks. So capitalism, having made itself “too big to fail,” is now, sure enough, mutating into government control, which, being atheistic and materialistic, amounts to communism!

What will happen then in the next few years, only God knows. But it is easy to imagine inside the USA martial law becoming necessary to maintain a semblance of law and order, and outside the USA the Third World War, which is coming and will be terrible. It may well come soon, because for years now the vile media have been beating the drums of war for an attack on Iran, and as the people become more and more discontented with the collapse of money inside the United States, the temptation for the politicians to distract them with a war outside may become virtually irresistible.

There is much evidence that both collapse and war have long been planned by enemies of God to give them control of the entire world. The only light in which one can grasp the full problem and its correct solution, is the light of God and of our Catholic religion. God is not mocked. Read the Old Testament prophets, especially Jeremiah, and pray up to or over 15 Mysteries a day of the Holy Rosary.

Kyrie eleison.