First Cause

Eternal Damnation? – II

Eternal Damnation? – II on May 25, 2013

It is idle to pretend that any of us human beings can fathom the mystery of one single soul’s damnation, let alone that of the majority of human beings that live and die, but there are certain things that can be said which make it easier to accept that there is a mystery beyond our human possibility of knowing.

The key to the mystery is surely the infinite greatness, or the limitlessness, of God. If he is infinite, then to offend him is to commit an offence which is in a certain way limitless. But the only way for a finite human being to suffer infinitely is for the suffering to have no limit or end in time. Therefore there is a certain proportion between any grave offence committed against God, and an eternal punishment.

As for the infinity or limitlessness of God, it is not too difficult for our reason to grasp it in the abstract. Effects exist all around us which require a cause. But a chain of causes can no more go on for ever than an endless series of links in a chain can hang without a ceiling-hook. So there must exist a First Cause, which we call God. But if this First Cause were composite, or put together out of parts, then whoever or whatever put it together would have to have been prior to the First Cause – impossible. Therefore God is in no way composite, he can only be simple and pure Existence. But existence is not by itself, as such, limited. Any limits on God’s being would have to have been put on him by a prior limiter, again impossible. Therefore the First Cause has no limits to his being, God is infinite existence.

In the concrete however, it is not so easy to get our minds around the infinity of God. Our human minds are working all day long on, with and from limited or finite creatures. Only when we turn our hearts and minds to God are we thinking of the infinite. Hence the common difficulty of prayer, because we can only think of what is limitless goodness by thinking of some limited goodness around us and then thinking away the limits. For instance God is as beautiful as a sunset, only infinitely more so.

It follows that the more we allow ourselves to be immersed in daily living, the less chance have our minds and hearts of grasping who or what is the God behind all the limited beings that make up our daily living. Contrariwise, the more we turn our minds and hearts to the knowing and loving of the unlimited Goodness necessarily behind all the limited good things of our daily lives, the better the access we will have to the mystery of God’s infinite goodness and to the corresponding mystery of the ingratitude of so many of his human creatures.

Therefore to lessen – without remotely fathoming – the mystery of souls’ eternal damnation, I need to follow St Dominic’s example, and to pray. That does not mean fooling myself that God is right when he is in reality wrong. It means my getting to the truth, namely that he is right, and that I – am wrong!

St Ignatius’ Spiritual Exercises greatly help to turn heart and mind to God. A Saint prayed along these lines: “O love, thou art not loved. Would that thou wert loved. Give me only to love thee as thou needest to be loved, and then do with me what thou wilt.”

Kyrie eleison.

Assisi-Ism – No!

Assisi-Ism – No! on January 8, 2011

Some people are still afraid that Archbishop Lefebvre’s Society of St Pius X is on the way to a bad agreement with Benedict XVI’s Rome, but by the Pope’s Assisi-ism amongst other things, one might say that Benedict XVI himself is doing his best to prevent any such occurrence.

Six days ago he argued in theory that the world’s “great religions” can constitute “an important factor of the peace and unity of mankind.” Five days ago he announced in practice that in October of this year he will go “as a pilgrim” to Assisi to commemorate the 25th anniversary of the Prayer Meeting of World Religions held there by Pope John-Paul II in 1986. But the theory of all “great world religions” contributing to world peace was absolutely rejected by Archbishop Lefebvre, and the practice of the 1986 Prayer Meeting in Assisi he condemned as a flagrant violation of the First Commandment, which, coming from the Vicar of Christ, constituted a scandal unheard of in all the history of the Church. Only the fear of too much repetition being counter-productive might have stopped him from castigating this latest piece of Assisi-ism.

However, the Archbishop did recognize that all too few Catholics then grasped the enormity of the scandal. This is because the whole modern world marginalizes God, brackets out the divinity of Our Lord Jesus Christ, makes religion a matter of free choice and turns Catholic Tradition into a mere question of sensibility or feeling. Infecting even the Popes, this way of thinking has become so normal all around us that every one of us is threatened. Let us get back to basics:—

All being requires a First Cause. That Cause, to be the First, must be Being Itself, which must be all-perfect being, because any second god, to differ from the First, would have to have some perfection lacking to the First. So the true God can only be one. This one true God took human nature once, and only once, in the divine Person of Our Lord Jesus Christ, who proved his divinity by a quantity and quality of miracles that have accompanied no other man ever, but have accompanied his Church ever since: the Roman Catholic Church. Membership of that Church is by faith and is open to all men. If they believe, that is the indispensable start of their eternal salvation. If they refuse to believe, they are on their way to eternal damnation (Mk. XVI, 16).

Therefore if by their past and future Assisi events, Popes John-Paul II and Benedict XVI have encouraged souls to think that Catholicism is not the one and only way to a happy eternity, but merely one amongst many other promoters (even if it is the best) of mankind’s “peace and unity” in this life, it follows that both Popes have facilitated the dreadful damnation of countless souls in the next life. Rather than have any part in such a betrayal, Archbishop Lefebvre preferred to be scorned, rejected, despised, marginalized, silenced, “excommunicated,” you name it.

There is a price to be paid for holding to the Truth. How many Catholics are ready to pay it?

Kyrie eleison.