God’s Providence

AMERICAN ELECTION

AMERICAN ELECTION on December 21, 2024

God is supremely generous. His bliss

Is something I shall be quite mad to miss.

The re-election at the beginning of last month of Donald Trump as President of the United States of America for the next four years can be seen from a religious or a political point of view. If God did not exist, then the religious point of view would be of little or no interest, and that election might be taken as encouraging proof that the American people have not lost all good sense, because that election showed the people rising up against the extreme left-wing folly of the last four years’ government under President Biden and the Democrats. On the other hand if God does exist, then that election is not so encouraging, because so many democratic elections in modern times show the right-wing conservatives to be conserving relatively little, while the revolutionaries are all the time gaining ground on the left. This election was no exception.

For instance, the valiant Catholic editor of the Remnant magazine and website in the United States, Michael Matt, compared Trump’s 2016 Republican Manifesto when he was elected President for the first time, with the Manifesto for his second successful election in 2024. In 2016 he stood against abortion, often mentioned. In 2024 pro-life is hardly mentioned, as he had made known that he was no longer against abortion. In 2016 the Manifesto mentioned God 16 times. In 2024 God was mentioned twice. And leading up to the election of 2024, he gave several extra indications of his deference to those anti-Christian people who rule the USA, to the point that one wonders if they are not confident that they can control him for the next four years. In 2016 they may have feared Trump’s heading up a popular reaction against them, but hardly in 2024. In 2016 he was a man with decent values of family, country and God. Is he still the man he was in 2016? Or has he slidden to the left, like the large part of his fellow-countrymen?

Of course this slide to the left, despite some right-wing appearances as in this election of 2024, is not only in the United States, it is in all countries of the post-Christian West. Why? Because religion underlies politics as God the First Cause underlies the being and action of all secondary causes. When men chase God out of their lives, of course they lose all sense of any importance of religion, and to attain the good life they rely on themselves alone, and they make substitute religions out of a variety of alternatives to God, notably out of politics. Ever since Henry VIII, Englishmen have worshipped their government instead of God, with disastrous results for England and for the eternal salvation of English souls at their Judgment before God.

But He does not cease to exist, nor does He cease to do all He can, short of taking away men’s free-will, to save their souls. That is why they may vote democratically to be rid of Him and of His Ten Commandments, but as a result their lives will become more and more unbearable, as a punishment by His absence of their refusing His presence (to paraphrase Cardinal Pie). Of course men are aware that their godless lives are becoming more and more murderous – the food that does not nourish, schools that do not teach, doctors that no longer cure, hospitals that kill all ages of patients, politicians that betray – the list goes on and on – but does the mass of people even dream of turning back to God, or to Our Lord Jesus Christ? These make up the one solution which is excluded in advance. These may be mentioned neither in polite conversation, nor in politics.

Here is how and why we have the politicians and politics that we have. Politics are not a substitute religion. They are merely the arrangement of human society between men and men. Religion is far deeper and higher than politics, concerning the arrangement of eternal salvation, between men and God, notably the Ten Commandments, notably the first: I am the Lord your God, it is I who designed your human nature for you to go to Heaven, and if you co-operate, that is such a supreme gift for all eternity, and I surround you in your life on earth with so many creatures to help you to Heaven, that it is no more than just for Me to demand of you love and obedience in return. But I am a jealous God, and for your own good I will have no other gods before Me. Heed what I say, pay no attention to the liars who contradict Me, obey My Commandments, and then a bliss that you cannot remotely imagine will be yours, without interruption, for ever and ever. Heed My Mother, who will never lie to you, and She will show you the sure way to My Heaven, through My Catholic Church.

Kyrie eleison.

900th “COMMENTS”

900th “COMMENTS” on October 12, 2024

Where is the true Church? Wait. It will revive,

Wherever the true faith has remained alive.

As we draw towards the close of 2024, there appears the 900^th issue of these “Comments” which have appeared once a week since 2007. Amidst the confusion in Church and State which grows worse with each passing year, let the occasion be celebrated with another attempt to take the error of modernism to pieces, which has done so much damage to souls, especially since the 1960s, when it succeeded in deceiving so many high-placed Catholic churchmen at the disastrous Second Vatican Council.

Modernism inside the Catholic Church is the error of wanting to bring the Church in line with the modern world instead of bringing the modern world in line with the Church. Just before Our Lord Jesus Christ ascended into Heaven at the end of His personal ministry on earth, in the course of which he had founded His Catholic Church to be the continuation of His Incarnation among men, he gave, as His last words to His Apostles, highly important instructions: “All power is given to Me in heaven and in earth. Going therefore, teach ye all nations; baptising them in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost. Teaching them to observe all things whatsoever I have commanded you: and behold I am with you all days, even to the consummation of the world” (Mt. XXVIII, 18–20).

“All power in heaven and earth” belongs to all three persons of the Omnipotent God, but it has also been entrusted by the Father to the Son in His human nature. So Jesus has a divine authority to be telling the Apostles what they must do. What He tells them is to “Teach all nations”: to teach, not to dialogue; “all nations,” including Israel and Saudi Arabia, and not just some nations: And “nations,” not just sacristies, which means that politics are to serve the Church with their considerable influence, in order to help save souls. And after souls have been taught the truths of salvation, then they are to be given the supernatural sacraments of salvation, and they are to “observe all things whatsoever I have commanded you,” in other words they are to obey the commands of Jesus, not just consent to His suggestions. And if that programme seems daunting, then they have the assurance that if they fulfil His commands, they will always have His support and presence with them – even in 2024. But they must do what He says, and that is what the Church has always said and done, which is Catholic Tradition.

Just a glance at these last lines of the Gospel of St Matthew is enough to show us how well Our Lord designed and built His Catholic Church. What happened then? For three of its Seven Ages, of the Apostles, Martyrs and Doctors respectively, it thrived, building up to the approximately one thousand years of the Fourth Age, the Middle Ages stretching from the end of the ancient world to the beginning of the modern world, from around 500 to 1517, when Luther is reputed to have nailed his 95 theses to the door of the Church in Wittenberg. In any case he was primarily responsible for launching Protestantism, the father and mother of a series of revolutions, creating the modern world: naturalism, rationalism, LIBERALISM; ecumenism, communism, MODERNISM, and a host of other “isms,” all attempting to put together again what Luther had broken apart, the Catholic Church’s God-given wholeness of man, but failing to do because they refused to return to the true Church of Catholic Tradition.

The neo-modernism of Vatican II, as Fr Calderon clearly presents it in his admirable book Prometheus, is merely the latest in the long line of these sub-protestantisms, upgrading man at the expense of God. The clever excuse was that all the previous humanisms had merely resulted in two World Wars, but the Catholic Church itself was now going to create a new humanism which would upgrade man without downgrading God. Vain illusion! For the sake of “human dignity,” Jesus’ commands had to turn into men’s consents. God was no longer to be in command. What god was that? Millions upon millions of Catholics lost their faith in Him. Yet His true Church still lives, in the few souls keeping the true Faith.

Kyrie eleison

ROMANS, CHAPTERS IX – XI

ROMANS, CHAPTERS IX - XI on June 8, 2024

How can God allow such cruelty in Palestine?

His reasons will eventually shine!

The Jews are often mentioned in these “Comments” because of the important part which they play in world and Church affairs. In what is arguably the greatest of all fourteen Epistles of St Paul, he devotes three whole Chapters to them, IX, X and XI. This is because they had played such a central part in the rise and formation of the Catholic Church that early believers were scandalised by their having driven Pontius Pilate to crucify Christ, and from then on by their refusing to have anything to do with Christ, a refusal which, with few, but noble exceptions, continues to this day. In fact their accusers will say that ever since the crucifixion of Christ, they have wanted to dominate the world for the Antichrist, and that in our own time they are coming closer to their goal than ever, an unparallelled misfortune for the entire world. But the Jews will reply that all such accusations arise merely from hatred of the Jews, or “anti-semitism.”

Where is the truth? Jews were the main obstacle in the way of St. Paul’s mission to plant the Catholic Church wherever he could so as to save souls for eternity. Here is why they are so often mentioned in his Epistles, and not always favourably – see especially I Thess. II, 14–16. But every mention of them by St Paul is part of Holy Scripture, and therefore, as the Catholic Church teaches, these mentions are first and foremost the Word of God and only secondarily the word of their human author.

It follows that to accuse St Paul of “anti-semitism” is to accuse God Himself of being “anti-semitic.” Now whatever that word is taken to mean, the meaning is ugly. But God is Truth itself (Jn. XIV, 6), and He is in no possible way ugly. Therefore whatever St Paul says about the Jews is truthful, and not “anti-semitic.”

So if we want to know what to think about the Jews, and for that purpose we turn to Scripture to discover what God thinks of them, we cannot do better than turn to St Paul who had such direct experience of them in his apostolate. Turning to St Paul, we find his most complete presentation of the problem that they represent in these three Chapters of the Epistle to the Romans. Not that St Paul speaks mainly from any bitterness of his apostolic experience of them, on the contrary . . .

In the Epistle as a whole, the three Chapters are sandwiched between the dogmatic teaching of Chapters I to VIII, and the moral teaching of Chapters XII to XVI. In Ch.IX St Paul presents the True Israel, the spiritual Israel, consisting of those souls, Jew or Gentile, who are justified before God by their faith in Jesus Christ. It was merely prefigured by the Israel of the flesh, which included few souls that were not Jewish by race. From Moses onwards this Israel had for 1500 years the exclusive temple, priesthood and sacrifice of the one true God, but God’s ultimate purpose was the training of all mankind for the Catholic temple, priesthood and sacrifice, which would come with the spiritual Israel, the Catholic Church.

In Ch. X St Paul presents the false Israel, consisting of the Jews who have heard and understood the Gospel of Jesus Christ, but have rejected it. They are not interested in that spiritual Israel, open to all mankind, where they no will no longer have privileged and exclusive access to the true worship of the one true God. So they will hear the Gospel of Jesus Christ, but refuse it, and crucify Him instead.

Ch. XI, presents the threefold reasons of God’s Providence for allowing such infidelity of the Jews: it is firstly only partial because some Jews down the ages will be the best of Catholics, as God meant them to be; secondly, the infidelity will be useful to make the Jews jealous and to make the Gentiles humble; and thirdly the infidelity will be only temporary because the Jews will convert before the end of the world.

Ultimately, Jew (or Gentile) that spurns God is merely exercising his God-given free-will, but St Paul for his part terminates the three Chapters with a brief hymn to the mysterious and unfathomable ways of God.