Hell

Liberalism – Blasphemy

Liberalism – Blasphemy on January 26, 2013

Is liberalism really as horrible as it is made out to be? This or that person is accused of being a “liberal,” yet a number of those accused vigorously deny that the label attaches to them. Who is right? Accusers or accused? Since “liberalism” is one name for the all-embracing error of modern times, responsible for throwing souls without number into the fires of Hell, it surely deserves one more approach.

Now freedom relates either to what I am free from, i.e. some constraint or other, or it relates to what I am free for, i.e. some purpose or other. Of these two relatives of freedom, the negative freedom from constraint comes both before the positive purpose in time, but after it in importance. It comes before in time, because if I am constrained from achieving a purpose, my achieving that purpose is out of the question. On the other hand it comes after it in importance because the value of the non-constraint will depend on the value of the purpose for which it is used. Thus holding a knife frees me from being unarmed, but if I use that freedom-from for cutting up food to eat, the freedom-from is good, but if I use it for carving up my grandmother, the freedom-from becomes murderous.

Now what liberalism does is to make the freedom-from a – or the – supreme value in itself, regardless of the freedom-for, or the good or bad purpose for which it will be used. Thus liberty or freedom-from is made independent of a good or bad purpose, independent of right and wrong. But the difference between right and wrong is an essential part of God’s creation, designed from the forbidden fruit in the Garden of Eden onwards for man to make his choice between Heaven and Hell. Therefore to put man’s lack of constraint in front of God’s law is to put man before God.

Being then the implicit denial of God’s moral law, of right and wrong, liberalism implicitly makes war on God, putting man’s human “right” to choose in front of God’s divine right to command. Now as Archbishop Lefebvre used to say, liberals come in 36 different varieties, by no means all of which mean to make war on God. But war on God remains the logical conclusion of liberals giving supreme value to liberty, and it is the reason why for many of them, anything goes. God and his rules having been pushed to one side, then the adoration of liberty becomes for liberals their substitute religion, a religion with no rules except their own will. Being moreover a substitute religion, it must get rid of the true religion which blocks its way, and so liberals naturally become crusaders against God’s order in all corners of his Creation: marriages free of gender, families free of children, States free of a head, life free of morals, and so on, and so on. Such a war on God’s reality is completely insane, yet liberals, apparently so sweet to their fellow-men whom they are “liberating,” can in fact be utterly cruel to anybody who gets in the way of their crusade. It is in the logic of their substitute religion that they need observe no normal decency in trampling upon anti-liberals, who deserve no compassion.

For 20 centuries the Catholic Church condemned such insanity. Yet at Vatican II the official Church gave way to it, by for instance declaring (“Dignitatis Humanae”) that every State must protect rather its citizens’ freedom-from civil constraint in the practice of their choice of religion than their freedom-for the practice of the true religion. And now the leaders of a certain religious Society want to put it under the authority of the Vatican II Romans. For the true religion, such action is, as Archbishop Lefebvre called it, “Operation Suicide.” But then liberalism is intrinsically suicidal.

Kyrie eleison.

Two Journeys

Two Journeys on January 19, 2013

Journeys since mid-December, to North America and France, have enabled me to observe within the Society of St Pius X a dangerous state of indetermination. Where the District Superior is not blind, the danger is for the moment held back somewhat, so that resistance is puzzled. Where however the District Superior is a willing servant of SSPX headquarters, there the movement towards the Newchurch forges ahead, but also the Resistance is taking shape. What is at stake?

Ever since the breakout of Protestantism, the world has been sliding further and further away from God. Thanks to the Council of Trent (1545–1563), the Catholic Church held firm, but thanks to the Second Vatican Council (1962–1965) the official Catholic Church joined in the slide. Then thanks mainly (but not only!) to Archbishop Lefebvre (1905–1991), relics of the Church of Trent gathered themselves together to form amidst the desert of modernity a Catholic oasis, the SSPX. But where the mighty Church had not been able to resist, it was, sure enough, merely a matter of time before the puny SSPX would be tempted in its turn to join in the slide.

However, just as at Vatican II the Church’s official leadership was obliged to pretend that it was not breaking with the Tridentine Church (such is, for instance, Benedict XVI’s “hermeneutic of continuity”), so the SSPX’s official leadership is now obliged to pretend that it is not breaking with Archbishop Lefebvre. Thus, like most politicians of the last 500 years, these SSPX leaders are talking to the right while walking to the left, because that is what a large number of people want, namely the appearance of Christianity without its substance (cf. II Tim. III, 1–5, especially verse 5). Like Descartes, such leaders “advance behind a mask,” seeking to disguise their move to the left beneath words to the right, or words clearly ambiguous.

What happened in the SSPX last spring, as Fr Chazal says, is that the mask came off, because the SSPX leadership must have calculated that the time had come for it to make its open move back into the mainstream Church. Alas for these leaders, there emerged between March and June enough resistance to block at the SSPX General Chapter in July any immediate attempt to join the Newchurch. And so from that Chapter onwards, the mask has gone back on. But liberals do not convert, short of a miracle of grace, because leftwardness is their real religion. That is why the SSPX leaders are surely waiting for the modern world, flesh and devil to continue their work of pulling SSPX clergy and laity to the left so that within a few years at most there will no longer be any significant resistance, as there was last summer, to the SSPX rejoining the Newchurch.

This leaves the SSPX betwixt and between. However, as the common sense of Archbishop Lefebvre remarked, superiors mould subjects and not the other way round. That is why, unless the present SSPX leaders are displaced by a miracle, the SSPX is doomed to be dissolved within the Newchurch. One can hardly say the punishment would not have been deserved. But let us pray to the Mother of God for some miracles of her Divine Son’s mercy.

Kyrie eleison.

Doctrine Again

Doctrine Again on August 18, 2012

The scorn of “doctrine” is an immense problem today. The “best” of Catholics in our 21st century pay lip-service to the importance of “doctrine,” but in their modern bones they feel instinctively that even Catholic doctrine is some kind of prison for their minds, and minds must not be imprisoned. In Washington, D.C., around the interior dome of the Jefferson Memorial, that quasi-religious temple of the United States’ champion of liberty, runs his quasi-religious quotation: I have sworn upon the altar of God eternal hostility against every form of tyranny over the mind of man. Surely he had Catholic doctrine in mind, amongst others. Modern man’s quasi-religion excludes having any fixed doctrine.

However, a sentence from the “Eleison Comments” of two weeks ago (EC 263, July 28) gives a different angle on the nature and importance of “doctrine.” It ran: So long as Rome believes in its Conciliar doctrine, it is bound to use any such(“non-doctrinal”) agreement to pull the SSPX in the direction of the(Second Vatican) Council.In other words what drives Rome supposedly to discount “doctrine” and at all costs to conciliarize the SSPX is their own belief in their own Conciliar doctrine. As Traditional Catholic doctrine is – one hopes – the driving force of the SSPX, so Conciliar doctrine is the driving force of Rome. The two doctrines clash, but each of them is a driving force.

In other words, “doctrine” is not just a set of ideas in a man’s head, or a mental prison. Whatever ideas a man chooses to hold in his head, his real doctrine is that set of ideas that drives his life. Now a man may change that set of ideas, but he cannot not have one. Here is how Aristotle put it: “If you want to philosophize, then you have to philosophize. If you don’t want to philosophize, you still have to philosophize. In any case a man has to philosophize.” Similarly, liberals may scorn any set of ideas as a tyranny, but to hold any set of ideas to be a tyranny is still a major idea, and it is the one idea that drives the lives of zillions of liberals today, and of all too many Catholics. These should know better, but all of us moderns have the worship of liberty in our bloodstream.

Thus doctrine in its real sense is not just an imprisoning set of ideas, but that central notion of God, man and life that directs the life of every man alive. Even if a man is committing suicide, he is being driven by the idea that life is too miserable to be worth continuing. A notion of life centred on money may drive a man to become rich; on pleasure to become a rake; on recognition to become famous, and so on. But however a man centrally conceives life, that concept is his real doctrine.

Thus conciliar Romans are driven by Vatican II as being their central notion to undo the SSPX that rejects Vatican II, and until they either succeed or change that central notion, they will continue to be driven to dissolve Archbishop Lefebvre’s SSPX. On the contrary the central drive of clergy and laity of the SSPX should be to get to Heaven, the idea being that Heaven and Hell exist, and Jesus Christ and his true Church provide the one and only sure way of getting to Heaven. This driving doctrine they know to be no fanciful invention of their own, and that is why they do not want it to be undermined or subverted or corrupted by the wretched neo-modernists of the Newchurch, driven by their false conciliar notion of God, man and life. The clash is total.

Nor can it be avoided, as liberals dream it can. If falsehoods win, eventually even the stones of the street will cry out (Lk.XIX, 40). If Truth wins, still Satan will go on raising error after error, until the world ends. But “He that perseveres to the end will be saved,” says Our Lord (Mt.XXIV, 13).

Kyrie eleison.

Free-will Valued

Free-will Valued on August 11, 2012

Concerning the drama of souls falling into Hell (and many choose to do so – Mt.VII, 13; XXII, 14), a reader raises a classic problem which can be framed briefly as follows. Either God wants souls to be damned, or he doesn’t. If he does want it, he is cruel. If he does not want it, yet it still happens, then he is not omnipotent. Then is he cruel, or is he not omnipotent? Which?

Let us establish immediately that God sends no soul to Hell. Every one of the many souls damned sent itself to Hell by the series of choices that it made freely during its time on earth. God gave to it life, time and free-will, and also any number of natural helps and supernatural graces to persuade it to choose to go to Heaven, but if it refused, then God let it have what it wanted, namely an eternity without him. And that loss of God, for a soul made by God only to possess God, is by far its cruellest suffering in Hell. Thus God wished that the soul might choose Heaven (“He will have all men to be saved” – I Tim. II, 4), but he wanted to allow the evil of its choosing Hell in order to bring out of that evil a greater good.

Notice the use made here of the two English words, “wish” and “want.” To “want” something is more full-blooded than merely to “wish” it. Thus a family father may well not wish his son to suffer harsh experience in life, but in view of all the circumstances he can want to let him suffer because he knows that that is the only way his son will learn. Similarly in the parable of the Prodigal Son, the father did not wish to let his younger son leave home and squander his heritage, but he wanted to let him do so because that is what the father in fact did, and good did come of it – the return home of the son, now repentant, a sadder but wiser young man.

In the same way God wishes on the one hand all souls to be saved, because that is what he created them for, and that is why he died for all of them on the Cross, where one large part of his suffering lay precisely in his knowing how many souls would not choose to profit by their Redemption to be saved. Such a God can in no way be considered or called cruel! On the other hand God does not want all souls to be saved unless they also want it, because if he did, they would all be saved, because he is all-powerful, or omnipotent. But, given all the circumstances, that would mean in effect overriding the free choice of those who, left to themselves, would choose not to be saved, and that would mean trampling on their free-will. Now just see how passionately men themselves value their free-will, when you see how they dislike being given orders or like being independent. They know that their free-will is the proof that they are not just animals or robots. So God too prefers his Heaven to be populated with men and not just with animals or robots, and that is why he does not want all men to be saved unless they also want it.

Yet God does not want souls to be damned, because that again would be cruelty on his part. He only wants to allow them to be damned, in view of the circumstances that souls will thus have the eternity of their own choice, and he will have a Heaven of human beings and not just animals or robots.

Thus his wish to save all souls means that he is by no means cruel, while the damnation of many souls proves on his part not a lack of omnipotence, but a choice to value his creatures’ free-will, and the infinite delight that he takes in rewarding with Heaven souls that have chosen to love him on earth.

Mother of God, now and in the hour of my death, help me to love your Son and to choose Heaven!

Kyrie eleison.

Flowers Speak

Flowers Speak on June 2, 2012

God is infinite Being, infinite Truth, infinite Goodness, infinitely just and infinitely merciful. So teaches his Church, and the idea is grand and beautiful, so I have no objection. But then I learn that his Church also teaches that for just one mortal sin the soul can be damned for all eternity to sufferings harsh and cruel beyond all imagination, and that is not so nice. I begin to object.

For instance, I was never consulted before my parents decided to bring me into existence, nor was I consulted on the terms of the contract, so to speak, of my existence. Had I been consulted I might well have objected to such an extreme alternative between unimaginable bliss and unimaginable torment as the Church teaches, both without end. I might have accepted a rather more moderate “contract,” whereby in exchange for a shortened Heaven I would have faced the risk of only an abbreviated Hell, but I was not consulted. An endlessness of either seems to me to be out of all proportion to this brief life of mine on earth: 10, 20, 50 even 90 years are here today, gone tomorrow. All flesh is like grass – “In the morning man shall flourish . . . in the evening he shall fall, grow dry and wither” (Ps. LXXXIX, 6). Along this line of thought God seems so unjust that I seriously wonder if he really exists.

The problem obliges us to reflect. Let us suppose that God does exist; that he is as just as his Church says he is; that it is unjust to impose upon anybody a heavy burden without that person’s consent; that this life is brief, a mere puff of smoke compared with what eternity must be; that nobody can be in justice due for a terrible punishment if he has not been aware of committing a terrible crime. Then how can the supposed God be just? If he is just, then logically every soul reaching the age of reason must live long enough at least to know the choice for eternity that it is making, and the import of that choice. Yet how is that possible for instance in today’s world, where God is so universally neglected and unknown in the life of individuals, families and States?

The answer can only be that God comes before individuals, families and States, and that he “speaks” within every soul, prior to all human beings and independently of them all, so that even a soul whose religious education has been null and void is still aware that it is making a choice each day of its life, that it alone is making that choice for itself, and that the choice has enormous consequences. But once again, how is that possible, given the godlessness of a world all around us like ours today?

Because the “speaking” of God to souls is far deeper, more constant, more present and more appealing than the speaking of any human being or beings can ever be. He alone created our soul. He will continue to be creating it for every moment of its never ending existence. He is therefore closer to it at every single moment than even its parents who merely put together its body – out of material elements being sustained in existence by God alone. And the goodness of God is similarly behind and within and underneath every good thing that the soul will ever enjoy in this life, and the soul is deep down aware that all these good things are mere spin-offs from the infinite goodness of God. “Be quiet,” said St. Ignatius of Loyola to a tiny flower, “I know who you are speaking of.” The smile of a little child, the daily splendor of Nature at all times of day, music, every sky a masterpiece of art and so on – even loved with a deep love, these things tell the soul that there is something much more, or – Someone.

“In thee, O God, have I hoped, let me never be confounded” (Ps. XXX, 2).

Kyrie eleison.

Delinquent Finance – II

Delinquent Finance – II on February 4, 2012

Delinquent finance has today a religious significance because it is playing a major part in the enslaving of the entire world by the conscious or unconscious enemies of God, the smartest of whom have to be well aware that their ultimate purpose is to send every single soul down to Hell. However, before we present any other piece of their financial machinery, it is necessary to understand the full delinquency of fractional reserve banking, first introduced in the “Eleison Comments” of October 29, last year.

Fractional reserve banking means that a bank need only hold in reserve, ready to be paid out to customers, a small fraction of the money they put into circulation. It arose in Europe in the late Middle Ages when bankers observed that if they took in as deposits, say, 100 ounces of gold and gave out 100 slips of paper certifying that the owner of the certificate could claim so much gold from the bank, then almost never at any one time would more than, say, ten customers ever bring in a certificate to claim back a deposit of gold. And as long as the people had confidence that the bank could and would always have gold to give in return for certificates, then these pieces of paper could happily serve as money, and as such they would circulate amongst the people.

However, the bankers realized meanwhile that in the normal run of business, they needed to hold in reserve only ten ounces of gold for 100 certificates, or, if they held 100 ounces of gold deposited with the bank, then they could issue 1000 paper certificates. Of these, 900 would have nothing at the bank to back them. They would be “funny money,” created by the bank out of thin air, but that would not matter so long as not more than a proportion of one customer out of ten wanted to cash in his paper for a piece of gold.

If they did, then the bank would not have the gold for all the certificates, and either it rapidly borrowed some gold from elsewhere to hand out, or the people risked realizing what a confidence trick had been played on them. If their confidence in the bank then vanished, everybody would want their money back at once – bank runs are only made possible by fractional reserve banking – and large numbers of customers would be left holding in their hands nothing but worthless pieces of paper. The bank would of course be bankrupt, and one could hope it would disappear altogether.

Thus wherever there is fractional reserve banking, the bank is intrinsically fragile, and it is, ultimately, playing a confidence trick on its customers. Extrinsically, it may protect itself by having a guarantee of support in case of need from, often, a central bank, but that guarantee is only as sure as the guarantor, and in the meantime it gives a dangerous power to any central bank. Thereby hangs another tale of financial delinquency, but that of compound interest must come first.

Power is at stake, and ultimately souls. Let nobody say these questions have nothing to do with religion. Think of the Golden Calf.

Kyrie eleison.