Jesus Christ

Flat Contradiction

Flat Contradiction on May 9, 2009

Ever since, with the Second Vatican Council, Catholic Authority and Catholic Truth substantially parted company, the Catholics who clung to Authority have had problems with the Truth, and the Catholics who clung to Truth have had problems with Catholic Authority. What could be more logical? Catholics on both sides long for a reunion. Especially amongst decent Conciliar Catholics, this takes the concrete form of the ardent wish that Pope Benedict XVI and the Society of St. Pius X come to an understanding.

Well and good. But there is a problem. Vatican II contradicts Catholic Truth, outside of which Catholic Authority dissolves, is now dissolving, because its Divine Master, Our Lord Jesus Christ, is “the Way, the Truth and the Life” (Jn. XIV,6). For proof of the contradiction, read for instance Michael Davies’ The Second Vatican Council and Religious Liberty, where he shows that while the Catholic Church has always taught that no man has a true right not to be prevented from propagating error, Vatican II (Dignitatis Humanae) taught that every man has a true right not to be prevented from propagating error (save public order – see Davies’ Chapter XXII in particular). The contradiction is direct.

At first sight it may seem unimportant, because what does it matter if a few crazy people more or a few crazy people less spout nonsense in public? But in fact the difference between the right and the non-right to propagate error is all the difference between Hollywood’s candy-on-a-leash deity, and the Lord God of Hosts, whose thunder and lightning struck terror into the hearts of the Israelites even miles distant from his flaming Mount Sinai (Exodus XX, 18–21).

For indeed all human action follows on some thought. But thought is uttered between men, or socialized, mainly with words. Thus the being and action of any human society hangs on exchanges of words. Therefore either truth and error in those exchanges are of no importance to the existence of any society or the direction it is taking, or any society must control public speech in its midst, at least sufficiently to check significant transmission of significant error.

Now the only limit set by Vatican II to public discourse is that it should not disturb “public order.” So for Vatican II, any heresy or blasphemy may be uttered in public so long as the police do not have to be called in, and any deity that may exist must bow down before this “freedom and dignity of the human person”! On the contrary the Lord God of Sinai, the Holy Trinity whose Second Person is Jesus Christ, tells us we will answer for every idle word (Mt. XII, 36), and even for sinful thoughts (Mt.V, 28). So in accordance with God’s Truth (and so long as it will do more good than harm), Catholic society checks the public propagation of error against Faith or morals.

Kyrie eleison.

Good Question

Good Question on April 25, 2009

On the blog-site of a certain Fr. John Zuhlsdorf appeared this week a number of comments provoked by “Difficult Discussions” appearing here a week ago. Many of these comments were relatively thoughtful – a compliment to Fr Zuhlsdorf. One went straight to the point: “Bishop Williamson is using terms without defining them. I’d really like to know if I am a Neo-modernist.” Joe Pinyan further wanted to know, “in order not to be in league with Baal,” whether he should be worshipping God rather at an SSPX Chapel than at a parish where both the “extraordinary” and “ordinary” forms of Mass are celebrated.

To offer Joe an answer, let me begin by defining Neo-modernism. It is the revival (“Neo-”), let loose within the Catholic Church by Vatican II (1962–1965), of the all-embracing heresy of Modernism. Modernism is the dreadful system of mind-rot, emerging over a century ago within the Church and solemnly condemned by St. Pius X in his Encyclical “Pascendi,” whereby the Catholic Church must be adapted to fit the modern world, as shaped by Protestantism and Liberalism. It is in fact the ultimate form of Liberalism, because by its Kantian principles it pretends to liberate man’s mind (and will) from any truth (or law) whatsoever.

Modernism is an especially hypocritical and dangerous error because it can leave intact the appearances of Catholicism even while emptying out its reality. Thus Jesus Christ is not really God, but I am free to make him God (for me) if I want to. Thus Catholic Truth and Law become whatever I care to make of them. Thus out of the Ten Commandments, I become free to obey none or all ten, because either way I am only obeying me. Neo-modernism is even more dangerous than Modernism, because by it the very highest of churchmen, instead of continuing like St.Pius X utterly to condemn Modernism, adopted it to establish it officially inside the Church!

Thus today Catholics have been made free to attend either the “extraordinary” or the “ordinary” form of Mass, according as they prefer the unchanging real God and his essentially unchanging true Mass, or both of them as suited to today’s world. Now this recent freeing of attendance at the true Mass may have proceeded from the best of intentions of Benedict XVI, but the real God imposes on all of us to worship him as he really is, and not as he has been downsized by modern man. So I hardly expect you to believe me against Rome, Joe, if I tell you to flee the “ordinary” form of Mass, but if you want nothing to do with the worship of Baal, then that is, objectively speaking, what you should do.

However, if you do wish to believe me, you must read! Alas, Pius X’s Pascendi makes for difficult reading. Start here on Dinoscopus with those “Eleison Comments” that treat of religion. Then graduate to the two books, soon to be four, advertised alongside. Then read anything written by Archbishop Lefebvre. Most important to obtain light, pray the Rosary to the Mother of the real God. And may God bless you.

Kyrie eleison.

Christ’s Suffering

Christ’s Suffering on April 4, 2009

The eve of Palm Sunday is surely a good moment to consider with St. Thomas Aquinas (IIIa, Q46, art.5,6) how Christ’s suffering surpassed all other sufferings. Of course Christ could not suffer in his impassible divine nature, but he had chosen his perfect human nature, conceived by the Holy Ghost and born of the Virgin Mary, to provide him with an incomparably sensitive instrument of suffering, in body and soul, to redeem us all and to save us from Hell if we wish.

As for Christ’s body, every part of it, from thorn-crowned head to nailed feet, was tormented in his Passion, culminating in the excruciating pains of death on the Cross, three hours racked between cramp from pushing up on nailed feet to breathe, and breathlessness or suffocation from slumping down on nailed hands to relieve the cramp. Crucifixion was positively designed to be excruciating – both words derive from the Latin for “cross” (crux, crucis).

As for Christ’s soul with its far greater range of perception than that of mere bodily senses, however perfect, St. Thomas names three heads of suffering. Firstly, by infused knowledge, Christ saw all sins of all men of all time, and chose to pay by his self-sacrifice for all those sins in general. In other words he used his superhuman gifts not to avoid suffering but to suffer the more. Yet at the same time he wished to suffer not just by a divine reckoning according to which a mere pin-prick of the Divine Person would have been payment infinite and more than enough, but by a human reckoning, as though he alone were to undergo umpteen executions to pay for umpteen criminals!

Secondly, by normal human knowledge, Christ suffered in his soul from observing all the kinds of people contributing to his Passion: Jew and Gentile, man and woman (e.g. the serving-girl mocking Peter), leaders and people, friend and foe. In particular, says St. Thomas, Christ suffered in his soul from being hated by his own people, then still God’s Chosen People, and – worst of all – from being abandoned and betrayed by his very own Apostles. Thirdly, like any man, Christ suffered in his soul from having to die, and the more innocent and perfect his life had been, the more keenly he suffered its loss and the injustice of its loss.

Now what other human being, or mass of human beings, have lived a perfect and innocent life; have chosen to lay it down by a death anything like as terrible as crucifixion; have been able to see all sins of all men and wish to pay for them; finally have observed abandonment all around them to the point of feeling deserted even by God (“lama, lama, sabactani”)? Were there six million such men, still they could not claim that their sacrifice was motivated by anything like the charity of Christ, with his overwhelming divine and human love for every one of us poor sinners. So their sacrifice would still not be remotely comparable to His.

Kyrie eleison.

False Anti-Semitism

False Anti-Semitism on March 1, 2008

When “Eleison Comments” last week argued that insofar as Pope Benedict XVI’s Good Friday prayer change worked against the eternal salvation of Jews, he had proved himself – no doubt unintentionally – to be a true anti-semite, ie enemy of Jews purely as Jews, a number of readers apparently agreed. I congratulate them, because they had to be thinking with their Catholic minds instead of merely emoting with their (objectively) vile media. Let us think a little further.

Obviously, the basic principles apply to all men and not just to Jews: to wish them eternal salvation is to love them truly, because it is to wish them the greatest good of all, namely everlasting happiness in Heaven, through and with Our Lord Jesus Christ. To wish them welfare or prosperity merely in this little life on earth is to love them much less, especially if that worldly success would get in the way of their eternal salvation, as it all too easily can do – Mt.XIX, 24.

But fewer and fewer people today believe in life everlasting or in Our Lord, and so naturally the perspective of such people is different. If I urge upon them eternal life, or if I do what I prudently can to obstruct their campaigning against Our Lord, then I will seem to them to be their enemy when I am in fact their best friend. It is all a question of perspective, but it is not a question of opinion: the eternal perspective is true, while the anti-Christian perspective is objectively and absolutely false.

Now ever since the Jews were responsible for the crucifying of Our Lord Jesus Christ – “His blood be upon us and upon our children,” Mt.XXVII,25 – they have as a race and as a religion, always with noble exceptions, continued to reject him down to our day. Thus St. Paul observed that they not only “killed the Lord Jesus and the prophets,” but they also prohibited St. Paul himself from “speaking to the Gentiles so as to save them.” In brief, their behavior was such that “they please not God and are adversaries to men” (I Thess. II, 14–16). Closer to our own time, it is a matter of historical record that the designing and launching of, for instance, Communism, to wrest mankind away from God and to replace his Heaven with a man-made paradise, was largely their achievement.

So they persecuted St. Paul at every turn (see Acts of the Apostles) as being one of their arch-enemies, when in fact nobody loved them more truly or laboured more for their real well-being than did St. Paul (cf. Rom. IX,1–5). Similarly today, they will call an “anti-semite” anybody who gets in the way of any godlessness of theirs, when in fact all people labouring for their salvation, as for the salvation of Gentiles, are their best friends.

St Paul, pray for us!

Kyrie eleison.

True Anti-Semitism

True Anti-Semitism on February 23, 2008

Most people seeing how Pope Benedict XVI has changed the Church’s Good Friday prayer for the Jews will think he has been their friend, because the change was in a direction demanded by spokesmen of theirs, who made themselves heard. However, for any Catholic who has the Catholic Faith, Benedict XVI has been in this not their friend but their enemy.

The difference is quite simply the difference between our brief life here below, and life everlasting: For purposes of this life, lasting for each of us, let us say, 70 years, he has been their friend, because by, for instance, taking out of the 1962 text the references to the Jews’ “blindness,” “darkness” and “the veil over their hearts,” he has softened the Church’s solemn criticism of their condition. On the other hand by the same softening he will also have diminished Catholics’ awareness of how especially Jews need the charity of Catholics’ prayers.

For indeed from Adam to world’s end, faith in the one and only Redeemer, to come or having come, can alone save any soul from eternal damnation, unless that soul lives without serious sin and is honestly ignorant of the Redeemer. But honest ignorance presents a particular difficulty for the Jews who had all the privileges of the Old Testament to prepare them for the coming of their Messiah, Jesus Christ, and who ever since have had to put “the veil over their hearts” in order not to recognize him in the multiple prophecies of their Old Testament, notably Isaiah, Chapter LIII.

Therefore the recent Good Friday liturgy change, by diminishing Catholics’ awareness of that real “veil,” etc, has done a disservice to Jews’ eternal salvation. In this respect of the Catholic Faith, Benedict XVI has, objectively, shown himself to be against the Jews purely as Jews. Is there any other possible true definition of the expression “anti-semite”?

Sacred Heart of Jesus, between now and world’s end, grant to your Church many martyrs to die for the eternal salvation of your racial kinsmen, beloved by you!

Kyrie eleison.