Jesus Christ

Undignified Dignity

Undignified Dignity on March 16, 2013

A reader has argued in favour of the Vatican II teaching on religious liberty. Even if the subject has often come up in “Eleison Comments,” her arguments are surely worth going through, because it is vital for Catholics today to grasp thoroughly the falsehood of that teaching. What the Council taught in paragraph #2 of its Declaration on Religious Liberty (Dignitatis Humanae), is that all men are to be free from all coercion by any other men or group of men when it comes to acting in private or in public in accordance with their beliefs. Moreover every human State must make this natural right into a constitutional or civil right.

On the contrary, all the way up to Vatican II the Catholic Church consistently taught that every State, as embodying God’s civil authority over God’s human creatures, is obliged as such to use that authority to protect and favour God’s one true Church, the Catholic Church of the Incarnate God, Our Lord Jesus Christ. Obviously, non-Catholic States will be condemned rather for their lack of faith than for not giving civil protection to that faith. Likewise Catholic States may refrain from prohibiting the public practice of false religions where such prohibition will do more harm than good for the salvation of the citizens’ souls. But the principle remains intact: God’s States must protect God’s true religion.

In fact the Conciliar teaching implies either that States are not from God, or that there is no one true religion of God. Either way it is implicitly liberating the State from God, and so putting the liberty of man above the rights of God, or, simply, man above God. That is why Archbishop Lefebvre said that the Conciliar teaching was blasphemy. And it is no use saying that the other paragraphs of DH contain good Catholic teaching. One gash by the iceberg was enough to sink the Titanic. DH#2 alone is enough to sink Catholic doctrine. But let us see the arguments in defence of the Council’s teaching.

1 DH is part of the Church’s Ordinary Magisterium, which must be taken seriously. DH came from the Church’s Magisters, or masters, yes, but not from the infallible Ordinary Magisterium, because DH contradicts the Church’s traditional teaching, as shown above. 2 DH merely makes clear human rights that are granted by natural law.Natural law puts the rights of man below, and not above, the rights of God. 3 DH does not negate the Catholic model for Church-State relations.It most certainly does! Paragraph #2 liberates the State from its intrinsic obligation to the one true Church. 4 DH is written in the context of the modern world where everybody believes in human rights. Since when must the Church be adapted to the world, and not the world to the Church? 5 DH does not teach that man has a right to error. If God’s State must grant a civil right to practise, in public, false religions, then God is being made to grant a right to error. 6 DH is a plea to modern governments to grant half a loaf, which is better than no bread.True Catholic doctrine is so logical and so coherent that to give away any of it is to give away all of it. And what sheep saved itself by offering itself to the wolf? 7 Catholics must not retreat from the modern world into a doctrinal ghetto.Catholics must do whatever they have to do, go wherever they have to go, in order not to give away the rights of God or compromise his honour. If that means martyrdom, so be it!

Kyrie eleison.

GREC – II

GREC – II on March 9, 2013

Before we continue with the story of GREC, namely the Parisian group of laity and clergy meeting from the late 1990’s onwards in pursuit of reconciliation between Vatican II and Catholic Tradition, we must consider the basic attitude of GREC participants. The Church’s future depends on those Catholics who will understand GREC’s error, i.e. how modern minds lose their grip on truth. To illustrate that attitude let us take at random four quotes, typical of dozens and dozens in the book For the Necessary Reconciliationby the Newchurch priest, Fr Michel Lelong, one of the founders of GREC. In a letter he wrote to the Pope in July of 2008 are to be found the first two quotes:—

“We also wish that the excommunications(of the four SSPX bishops in 1988) be lifted and that the SSPX recover its place within the Church to which it has so much to give. That is why we ask the authorities of the SSPX to put an end to the polemical statements and articles criticizing the Holy See.”Comment: (Has that not happened over the last 10 years?) But if polemics are so bad, why were a number of Church Fathers – and Archbishop Lefebvre – so polemical? Polemics are only that bad if unity is that good. But unity is only as good as that around which it unites.

“In our society so tempted by materialism, indifferentism and sectarisms, we think that in response to your request, Holy Father, all Catholics must strive together to be faithful to Christ’s recommendation, ‘Be united so that the whole world may believe’.”Comment: “United” around what? Around Catholic truth, or around the lie that Catholic truth is reconcilable with Vatican II? Then the primary and crucial question for Catholic unity is where Catholic truth is to be found. But GREC leaves questions of truth to the “theologians.” So non-theologians can be saved by lies!?

This letter of Fr Lelong was so well received by Benedict XVI that GREC leaders and sympathisers wrote again a few months later. Here are two more quotes from the second letter to the Pope:—

“For sure we were saddened that the Holy See’s recent proposals were not accepted by the SSPX authorities, but we know that to heal wounds amongst Catholics always requires generosity and patience to restore confidence on both sides and to make reconciliation possible.”Comment: Are wounds only ever to be healed, and never inflicted? Did Our Lord not twice use a lash across the backs of the money-lenders in the Temple? There is a God, his honour is to be defended above all things, and men can be wicked enough to understand nothing but the lash, be it physical or verbal.

“We think that lifting the excommunications would set in motion an irresistible process of drawing closer, with a view to an agreement between the Holy See and the SSPX, or at least an agreement with a large part of the SSPX priests and faithful.”Comment: indeed the friendly contacts between Rome and the SSPX were setting such a motion in process in January of 2009, and only an outburst from within the SSPX of the most horrible heresy of modern times – “anti-semitism” – stopped that process. But either Catholic reconciliation with Vatican II is no problem, or one has to say that that outburst was providential, because it also stopped, at least for a while, the false reconciliation.

In conclusion, GREC, like millions of modern Catholics, above all else seeks unity, non-polemics, reconciliation, agreement, etc. But where does the God of truth figure amongst all these sweet sentiments? Is he a sugar-daddy who blesses all men’s lies, just so long as they lie in unison?

Kyrie eleison.

Di Noia, Annoyer

Di Noia, Annoyer on February 16, 2013

Two months ago the Vice-president of Rome’s Pontifical Commission Ecclesia Dei addressed to the Superior General of the Society of St Pius X and to all its priests a letter of several pages, accessible on the Internet, which Fr. Lombardi as spokesman for the Holy See called a “personal appeal.” The letter has been raising comments ever since. It is clearly the latest move in Rome’s campaign to bring the SSPX to heel, and put an end to its 40-year resistance to the Conciliar Revolution. As Bishop de Galarreta said in October of 2011, even if the SSPX turns down Rome’s offers, still Rome will keep coming back. Sure enough. But let us see briefly what Archbishop Di Noia has to say to “Your Excellency and dear Priestly Brothers of the Society of St Pius X”:—

He begins by admonishing Society leaders, notably Fr Schmidberger, Fr Pfluger and Bishop Fellay (in that order) for giving interviews so critical of Rome as to call in question whether the SSPX really wants reconciliation with Rome. Moreover, doctrinal differences are as intractable as ever between the SSPX and Rome. So he calls for a new approach, focusing on unity instead.

Church unity is hindered by four vices and promoted by the four opposing virtues of humility, mildness, patience and charity. Dividers of the Church are enemies of God. All we need is love. Away then with “harsh and unproductive rhetoric.” Let the SSPX fulfil its charism of forming priests, but priests who will be docile to the official Magisterium, who will preach the Faith and not polemics, and who will treat theological problems not in front of untrained layfolk but with the competent authorities in Rome. The Pope is the supreme judge of such difficult questions. In conclusion, Benedict XVI does want reconciliation. Bitterness must be healed. In Our Lord’s words, “Let them be one.” (End of the Archbishop’s letter.)

Notice in passing how, typically for modern man and for modernists, the Archbishop brackets out the essential question of doctrine, but this letter’s main interest lies elsewhere: how could the Archbishop have dared to address it to all SSPX priests without prior collusion with SSPX HQ? It served him by forwarding the letter to all SSPX priests! Here is one indication amongst many others that there are contacts between Rome and SSPX HQ that are kept from public view. But the question then arises, what motive can SSPX HQ have had to give to the modernist Archbishop such privileged and dangerous access to all SSPX priests? Does it want them to become modernists also? Surely not! But it may well want to help Rome towards “reconciliation.”

By transmitting the Archbishop’s loving appeal, SSPX HQ gets the sweet message through to all SSPX priests without anybody being able to accuse HQ itself of going soft. On the contrary, the Roman letter makes them all see how nice the Romans are. True, there is a gentle rebuke to the SSPX leaders for not being nice, but that will serve to show how these are standing firm in defence of the Faith! Above all, the letter will have served as a trial balloon, to test the priests’ reactions. What are they thinking? Both Rome and Menzingen need to calculate at what point to go ahead with a “reconciliation” such as will carry with it a large majority of the priests, and not alienate so many that organized resistance to the New World Order religion will continue.

Dear SSPX priests, if you do not want to be swallowed alive by New Order Rome, I gently advise you to react. Let your Superiors know, as discretely as you like but in no uncertainterms, that you want nothing, but nothing, to do with Conciliar Rome, until it clearly abandons the Council.

Kyrie eleison.

Fourth Trial

Fourth Trial on February 9, 2013

A reader asks about my latest trial and condemnation for “Holocaust denial” by the Regional Court of Regensburg in South Germany on January 16. Readers will remember that my original offence was on November 1, 2008, to have told a Swedish interviewer for Swedish TV in the privacy of the sacristy of the German Seminary of the Society of St Pius X, but on German soil, that I believed neither that “Six Million Jews” died under Hitler’s rule in the Second World War, nor that one single Jew died in a “gas-chamber.”

For expressing these beliefs in Germany, where “holocaust denial” is a statutory crime, I was tried and condemned by the Regensburg Regional Court in 2010, and the punishment was to be a fine of

Theresa’s Prayer

Theresa’s Prayer on February 2, 2013

It is extraordinary how far God is lost to the great number of souls around us today. It is in him that every one of us “lives and moves and has his being” (Acts, XVII, 28). Without him we cannot lift a finger, think a thought or do any naturally good action, let alone any supernaturally good action. All that we can do by ourselves, without him, is to sin, and even then the sinful action as action comes from God, only its sinfulness comes from ourselves, because the sinfulness is in itself something not positive but defective.

Yet the mass of souls around us treat God as though he does not exist, or, if he does exist, as though he is of no importance. It is a truly incredible state of affairs. It is getting worse day by day. It cannot last. It can only be compared with the state of mankind in the time of Noah. Men’s corruption at that time was such (Gen. VI, 11–12) that unless God took away from them the use of their most precious endowment, their free-will – just see how most men react when one tries to force them to do something! – then the only way they left for him to save any significant number of them was to inflict a universal chastisement in which they would nevertheless have time to repent. That was the Flood, a historical event proved by a mass of geological evidence.

Similarly today, a worldwide chastisement is surely, before God, the only way that mankind has left for him to save still any large number of souls from the horror of their damning themselves for eternity. As in Noah’s time, the mercy of God makes it virtually certain that the huge number of souls will be given the time and knowledge necessary to save themselves if they wish. And afterwards many of the large number that will be saved (alas, not the majority) will recognize that only that chastisement saved them from drifting with today’s corruption all the way down to Hell.

Still, it will be easy to be frightened by the explosion of the just anger of a majestic God. From miles and miles away the Israelites were terrified by a demonstration of his power on the top of Mount Sinai (Exod. XX, 18). In our own times it will be well to recall the famous prayer of St Theresa of Avila (given here with a rhyming translation into English to facilitate memorisation):—

Nada te turbe, Let nothing fret you, Nada te espante, Nothing upset you. Todo se pasa, Everything falters, Dios no se muda. God never alters. La paciencia Patience withal Todo lo alcanza. Will obtain all. Quien a Dios tiene Who to God will cling Nada le falta. Can lack for no thing. Solo Dios basta. God alone is enough.

Sacred Heart of Jesus, I put in you all the trust I can lay my hands on. But help my lack of trust!

Kyrie eleison.

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.