Eucharist

Distinguish, Discriminate

Distinguish, Discriminate on December 17, 2016

If the evidence, apparently serious, for Eucharistic miracles taking place within the Novus Ordo Mass (NOM) is to be believed – and such miracles may even be happening frequently, one of the latest seeming to come from Legnica, also in Poland (see here) on Christmas Day of 2013 – then indeed some of us may need to do some rethinking. Here is how one reader put it: “God cannot contradict himself, so his miracles cannot contradict his Church’s teaching. But the NOM does depart from essential Catholic doctrine on the Mass. Therefore either the miracles are false or the NOM is from God, in which case what is the justification for Traditionalists clinging to Tradition? For if the NOM at the heart of the Newchurch is confirmed by miracles, then the Newchurch is also confirmed by God, and the Newpopes, and I have to obey them. I cannot pick and choose, can I?” Yes, you can, and not only you can, but you must, in order to fulfil your absolute duty to keep the Faith.

That is because another name for what you call “picking and choosing” is “distinguishing.” All of us need to distinguish all day long. That is common sense, and that is what St Thomas Aquinas does from beginning to end of his miraculous Summa Theologiae. Let us take a closer look at our friend’s argument.

The basic bone of contention is the NOM. The NOM is a rite of Mass, a book of hundreds if not a thousand pages, containing many things. From a Catholic standpoint the rite as a whole is unquestionably bad, because it radically changes the concept of the Mass from being a propitiatory sacrifice centred on God to being a community meal centred on man. As such, since most Catholics live their religion by attending Mass, then when its concept changes, their religion in effect changes. That is why the NOM is the principal destroyer of the true Church, and the main engine of the Newchurch. That is why the NOM as a whole is not only bad, but very bad indeed.

But that does not mean that all its parts, as parts, are bad. As parts, some are still Catholic because they had to be, in order to deceive the mass of priests when the NOM was introduced in 1969, that it was not essentially different from the Tridentine rite of Mass, especially in the Consecration. Otherwise they would have refused it, and it could not have done its work of destroying the Church. So the NOM is, as to its parts, part good and part bad, while as a whole, it is ambiguous, treacherous, a crooked piece of work.

However, as for men, “to the pure all things are pure” ( Titus I, 15), and so to innocent souls not yet aware of its intrinsic danger for the Faith, it can by its Consecration and good parts, still give grace and spiritual nourishment, especially when these are less strangled by a priest making the ambiguities as Catholic as possible. And as for God, he “writes straight with crooked lines,” says the proverb, and so the bad parts of the NOM need not stop him from working miracles with the Catholic parts to nourish the innocent and to warn the guilty.

Therefore on the one hand the NOM as a whole is very bad, and Traditionalists are absolutely necessary to the Church to witness to its badness, and to make available a true Mass for when souls wake up to the NOM’s badness, as they do at different times and different speeds, so that such souls can keep the Faith and last out the crisis. On the other hand the NOM is in parts still good enough to nourish innocent souls and to enable God to work miracles, also for souls’ nourishment or for their warning. God is not thereby confirming either the NOM as a whole, or the Newchurch as a whole, or the Newpopes as a whole, but he is relying on me to use my brain and the Faith which he gave me to discern good from bad. He wants no mindless robots in his glorious Heaven!

Kyrie eleison.

NOM Miracles?

NOM Miracles? on December 3, 2016

In the United Sates last year there arose a serious controversy as to whether God can work miracles within the framework of the Novus Ordo Mass. Now if God does work supernatural miracles, it is obviously for them to be believed in, so that they will strengthen people’s supernatural faith. And if he wants something outside of the natural order to be believed in, he is obviously going to provide enough evidence, like Lazarus walking out of his tomb in front of a large crowd of bystanders. And in this respect the most convincing evidence is of a material and physical sort, such as can in no way be the product of any human mind (however pious), like the fireworks of the sun in Fatima in October, 1917. Then what is the material and physical evidence of a eucharistic miracle having taken place in any Novus Ordo Mass?

One such miracle is alleged to have taken place in the parish church of Sokulka, Eastern Poland. On October 12, 2008, a priest, ordained five years ago by a Polish bishop consecrated in 1980, dropped a Sacred Host on the altar step while distributing Holy Communion. He stopped to pick it up and placed it in the small vessel containing water next to the Tabernacle. After Mass it was locked inside the sacristy safe for the Host to dissolve in the water, so that the Real Presence would no longer be there and the water could be safely discarded. This procedure is altogether normal for such accidents in the Catholic liturgy.

But when on October 19 a parish Sister went to check on the dissolving Host, she saw in its centre some matter intensely red in colour, like a blood clot. She immediately informed the parish priest who came with other priests to observe what looked like a piece of living flesh. All observers were amazed. Next came the local Archbishop, of Bialystok, with several diocesan officials. All of them were deeply moved. By the Archbishop’s instructions, on October 30 the Host was removed from the water, transferred onto a small corporal and placed in the Tabernacle to dry out. To this day it retains the form of a blood clot.

On January 7, 2009, a sample from the Host was taken to be examined by two pathomorphologists, separately, at the nearby Medical University of Bialystok. Their unanimous judgment, but independent of one another, was that “of all the tissues of living organisms, the sample most resembles human myocardial tissue,” from the left ventricle of the heart, typical for a living person in a state of agony. Furthermore both pathologists found, presumably under their microscopes, that the fibres of the myocardial tissue and the structure of the bread were so tightly bonded together that any possibility of a human fabrication was ruled out. On January 29 this material and physical evidence was presented to the Metropolitan Curia in Bialystok, where the Church’s official judgment upon the supernatural origin of the occurrence is patiently awaited. In that wait, said the Archbishop in a sermon of October, 2009, decisive will be the spiritual fruits among Catholics. Already there has been a significant rise in the piety and religious practice of local Catholics, and from abroad there have been hundreds of pilgrimages, with numerous miracles of healing and conversion also taking place.

If the material evidence is to be believed, then in Sokulka God worked one more in a long series down the ages of eucharistic miracles to help souls to believe in something normally difficult enough to believe in, namely that he is Really Present beneath the appearances, once consecrated, of bread and wine. But how is that possible when Traditional Catholics know that the New Mass is the single major cause of the Church’s destruction by loss of faith since Vatican II? An answer may be that the Sacred Heart, knowing that the shepherds were mainly responsible for the ambiguous NOM, refused to abandon his sheep, and continues to feed them with what is still Catholic amidst the ambiguity. And amidst all the Newchurch’s relative carelessness in dealing with the Holy Eucharist, the Sokulka event is also a daunting reminder to shepherds and sheep alike – “Remember whom you are handling – it is I, your God!”

Kyrie eleison.

Resistance Vision

Resistance Vision on August 24, 2013

A number of Catholic souls today keeping the Catholic Faith are scared by the direction still being taken at present by the leadership of the Society of St Pius X, and since they appreciate just how much they have received from the Society over the last few decades, they desperately wish for a replacement Society to take its place. They are scared by the different vision of a network of independent pockets of resistance being their future. They may be reassured to know that it was the vision of an outstanding prophet and pioneer of the Traditional movement, the French Dominican priest Fr Roger-Thomas Calmel (1914–1975). Here are pages, freely translated and adapted from the French, of his Brief Apology for the Church of all Time (pp. 48–51):—

“However crazily the Catholic hierarchy may behave, priests cannot take the place of bishops, nor can laity take the place of priests. Do we then think of setting up a huge worldwide league or association of priests and Christian layfolk to enter into dialogue with the hierarchy and force them to restore Catholic order? It is a grand and touching idea, but it is unreal. That is because any such group, wanting to be a Church group but being neither a diocese nor an archdiocese nor a parish nor a religious order, will come under none of the categories over which and for which authority is exercised in the Church. It will be an artificial grouping, an artefact unknown to any of the Church’s real groups which are established and recognized as such.

“So, as with every grouping together of men, the problem of leadership and authority will arise, and the huger the group, the sharper the problem. Unfailingly it will come down to this: being an association, the group must solve the problem of authority; being artificial (no kind of natural or supernatural group), it cannot solve the problem of authority. Rival sub-groups will rapidly arise, war will become inevitable, and there will be no canonical way to end or wage such a war.

“Are we then condemned to being able to do nothing amidst the chaos, often a sacrilegious chaos? I do not think so. Firstly, the indefectibility of the Church guarantees that down to the end of the world there will be enough of a genuine personal hierarchy to maintain the sacraments, in particular the Eucharist and Holy Orders, and to preach the one and only unchanging doctrine of Salvation. And secondly, whatever be the failings of the real hierarchy, we all of us, priests and laity, have our little part of authority.

“Therefore let the priest capable of preaching go to the limits of his power to preach, to absolve sins and to celebrate the true Mass. Let the teaching Sister go to the limits of her grace and her power to form girls in the Faith, good morals, purity and literature. Let every priest and layman, every little group of laity and priests having authority and power over a little fort of the Church and Christendom, go to the limits of their possibilities and powers. Let leaders and inmates of such forts know and be in contact with one another. Let each of the forts protected, defended, trained and directed in its praying and singing by a real authority, become as far as possible a fortress of holiness. That is what will guarantee the continuation of the true Church and will prepare efficaciously for its renewal in God’s good time.

“So we need not to be afraid, but to pray with all confidence and to exercise without fear, according to Tradition and in the sphere that is ours, the power we have, preparing thus for the happy time when Rome will come back to being Rome and bishops to being bishops.”

Kyrie eleison.

“You Choose”

“You Choose” 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.

Infection? – Who?

Infection? – Who? on August 25, 2012

A favourite proverb of mine comes from China: “The wise man blames himself, the fool blames others.” Not that others are never to blame, obviously, but that I can usually do little or nothing to change their behaviour, whereas I am at least in theory in command of my own. As the Imitation of Christ has it, we rarely think with profit on the sins of others, always with profit on our own.

This age-old wisdom is called to mind by the letter of a reader of “Eleison Comments” (# 263) in which she complains of the “Conciliar infection” that she observes in the way in which Society of St Pius X Tridentine Masses in the USA can be celebrated by the priests and attended by the laity. If her dark observations are summarized below, it is not in order to overwhelm priests or laity with the darkness, but to suggest how each of us can examine his own behaviour.

In general she says that the “Conciliar infection” has been creeping into the SSPX chapels for some time. She goes so far as to say that the situation is deteriorating and desperate, and the damage is already done. It is as though Latin has taken pride of place over the Faith, as though anything goes if only it is a Tridentine Mass said in Latin. Not having understood – or retained – what the Mass really is, she says, the laity find it normal merely to attend. Many attend Mass daydreaming, and then they receive Holy Communion in a very disrespectful way, just like in the Newchurch.

She blames the priests for not having sufficiently explained the Faith or the Mass. As for their sermons, she wonders at times whether they understand what they are proclaiming and at times she finds that the personal ideas of the priest and the context of the sermon as a whole come over as Conciliar. Liturgical rules are not respected, rubrics are not consistent, the Canon of the Mass is hurried through. In brief she is not surprised if a number of SSPX priests and layfolk are ready to join the Newchurch, nay, may even already belong to it.

Now nobody in his right mind would claim that her dark description fits all SSPX Masses, but such is the corruption of our age that a deterioration of the kind she observes is all too normal. The corruption presses upon priests and laity alike, and it means that all of us need to observe closely how it may be creeping up on ourselves. As Sister Lucy of Fatima once said in the 1950’s, the laity can no longer rely on the clergy to do all the work for them of getting them to Heaven. In fact they never could do so, but a lazy “obedience” is still today a common temptation. If layfolk want good priests to lead them, and if they do not want the SSPX to go Conciliar, then let them observe their own household to put it in order – for instance, how do I myself and my family attend Mass?

As for us priests, let us not forget the dire warning of the prophet Ezechiel (III, 17–21) to pastors: if the pastors tell the people how they are sinning, and the people go on sinning, the Lord God will punish the people but he will not hold the pastors responsible. Contrariwise, if the people sin and the pastors do not tell them how they are sinning, then the Lord God will hold the pastors guilty for the people’s sins. “Judgment should begin at the house of God” (I Pet. IV, 17).

Therefore it depends on all of us to do what is in our power to prevent the SSPX from catching the “Conciliar infection.” That is today more easily said than done, but as St Paul says (I Cor. IV, 3–5), let each of us look to his own sins. It is God who judges.

Kyrie eleison.

Benedict’s Ecumenism I

Benedict’s Ecumenism I on February 25, 2012

A valuable study of conciliar ecumenism appeared in Germany a few years ago, written by a certain Dr. Wolfgang Schüler. In “Benedict XVI and How the Church Views Itself,” he argues that the ecumenism let loose by Vatican II transformed the Church’s understanding of itself, and he proves by a series of textual quotations that Joseph Ratzinger as priest, Cardinal and Pope has consistently promoted this transformation, from the time of the Council down to today. Nor can he be ashamed of having done so.

In logical order – it will take more than one “Eleison Comments” – let us look at the true Church’s view of itself, and then with the help of Dr Schüler, at how that view was changed by the Council and how Benedict XVI has consistently promoted that change. Finally let us draw the conclusions that emerge for Catholics wishing to keep the true Faith.

The true Catholic Church has always seen itself as an organic whole, a society one, holy, catholic and apostolic, consisting of human beings united by the Faith, the sacraments and the Roman hierarchy. This Church is so much one, that no piece can be broken off or taken away without its ceasing to be Catholic (cf. Jn. XV, 4–6). For instance, that Faith which is the prime constituent of the Catholic believer cannot be held piecemeal, but must be held either altogether (at least implicitly) or not at all. This is because it is on the authority of God revealing the dogmas of Catholic Faith that I believe them, so that if I disbelieve only one amongst many dogmas, I am rejecting his authority behind them all, in which case even if I believe all the other dogmas, my belief is resting no longer on God’s authority but only on my own choice.

In fact the word “heretic” comes from the Greek word for “to choose” (hairein), so because a heretic’s belief is henceforth merely his own choice, he has lost the supernatural virtue of faith, so that even if he rejects only one dogma of Faith, he is no longer Catholic. A famous quote of Augustine runs: “In much you are with me, in little you are not with me, but because of that little in which you are not with me, the much in which you are with me is of no use to you.”

For instance a Protestant may believe in God, he may even believe in the divinity of the man Jesus of Nazareth, but if he does not believe in the Real Presence of God, body, blood, soul and divinity, beneath the appearances of bread and wine after their consecration at Mass, then he has a profoundly different and deficient concept of the love of Jesus Christ and of the God in whom he believes. Can one then say that the true Protestant and the true Catholic believe in the same God? Vatican II says one can, and on the basis of supposedly more or less shared beliefs between Catholics and all non-Catholics, it builds its ecumenism. On the contrary Dr Schüler illustrates by a series of comparisons that what may look like the same belief, when it forms part of two different creeds, is not really the same at all. Here is one illustration: oxygen molecules mixed with nitrogen are the selfsame molecules as when compounded with hydrogen, but they are as different in the two cases as the air we breathe (O + 4N) from the water we drink (H20)! Stay tuned.

Kyrie eleison.