liberalism

Catholic Balance

Catholic Balance on June 26, 2010

When last week’s “Eleison Comments” began by seeming to sympathize with the “sedevacantists” who believe that the Popes since John XXIII have not been Popes at all, and ended by seeming to sympathize with Cardinal Kasper for making fun of the unauthoritative Society of St Pius X, I know that there was at least one reader that was confused, and I suspect that she was not alone. But everything drops into place if one assumes that from Vatican II onwards, Catholic Truth has been split from Catholic Authority.

Now the Catholic Authority of the churchmen should be welded to the Catholic Truth of Our Lord, because that human Authority only exists to protect and teach that divine Truth. But at that dreadful Council (1962–1965), centuries of Protestant heresy and Liberal dissolution of truth had at last so wormed their way into the hearts and minds of a large majority of the Council Fathers that they gave up on the purity of Catholic Truth, and to this day they have been using all their Catholic Authority to impose on Catholics the Council’s new and false religion of man.

Whereupon Catholics have been torn apart, both from one another and in themselves, as was inevitable. For either they have had to cling to Catholic Truth, and more or less abandon Catholic Authority, which is the solution of the “sedevacantists.” And when one looks primarily at Catholic Truth, one may well sympathize with them, so horrible has been the betrayal of Truth by the highest churchmen, ever since that Council began. Or Catholics have chosen to cling to Catholic Authority, and more or less abandon Catholic Truth, which is the solution of Cardinal Kasper. And when one looks primarily to Catholic Authority, one may well sympathize with his loyalty to Benedict XVI, and understand the Cardinal’s smile when he finds himself rebuked for not being Catholic by the wholly unauthoritative Society of St Pius X, still practically excommunicated.

Yet Archbishop Lefebvre chose a third way, in between the two extremes of either Truth or Authority. His way, in which he has been followed by that SSPX, was to cling to Catholic Truth, but with no disrespect towards Church Authority, nor any blanket disbelief in the status of its officials. It is a balance certainly not always easy to keep, but it has borne Catholic fruit all over the world, and it has sustained a faithful remnant of Catholics with true doctrine and the true sacraments for the 40 years we have so far spent in the Conciliar desert (1970–2010).

In that desert we Catholic sheep may have to be scattered for a while yet, as long as the Shepherd in Rome is struck (Zech.XIII,7, quoted by Our Lord in the Garden of Gethsemane –Mt.XXVI,31). In this Gethsemane of the Church, we do need compassion on our fellow sheep. That is why I can sympathize with “sedevacantists,” and even with liberals (up to a point!). But that no way means that the third way as traced out by Archbishop Lefebvre has ceased to be the right way.

May the Great Mother of God long protect the little Society!

Kyrie eleison.

Cardinal Smiles

Cardinal Smiles on June 19, 2010

A recent smile of Cardinal Kasper confirms my long-standing belief that despite the profound liberalism of the Conciliar Popes since John XXIII, still one need not doubt their really having been Popes. A number of serious and believing Catholics do doubt it because they cannot see how real Vicars of Christ can depart so far from the Catholic Faith and Church of Christ as these Popes have done. Indeed there is a problem, grave beyond all measure.

These “sedevacantists,” as they are usually called, argue that if anybody walks like a heretic, talks like a heretic and, as Americans say, quacks like a heretic, then he IS a heretic. But a heretic excludes himself from the Church. Therefore these Popes have excluded themselves from the Church and cannot possibly have been its Head – how can a non-member be a head?

The true answer, I believe, is that the heresy which automatically casts out of the one and only Ark of Salvation is so grave that to commit it, somebody must fully know and fully mean what he is doing. He must realize that he is denying Catholic truth that has been defined with God’s own authority by God’s Church, in other words that he is defying God. Without this realization, called “pertinacity” by the Church, he may be denying divine truths, but he is not yet defying God, or casting himself out of the Church.

Now “sedevacantists” find ridiculous the idea that Popes, profoundly educated in Church teaching, do not know what they are doing when they utter such enormities as does Benedict XVI, to take just one example amongst many, on the on-going validity of the Old Covenant. To make a heretic fully realize what he is doing, in olden days, when the Church was in her right mind, the Pope’s Inquisition (or Holy Office) would pull him over, confront him authoritatively with his error, and urge him to renounce it. If he refused, then his pertinacity was clear to all, and the wolf was cast out of the sheepfold. But such a confrontation requires authority, both to summon the heretic and to declare his error. What then if, since Vatican II, it is the highest Church authority which no longer discerns Catholic truth?

Enter Cardinal Kasper. At a press conference he held on May 4 in Paris (already referred to in EC 148), he is reported as saying, correctly, that the Society of St Pius X staunchly opposes the Catholic Church’s dialogue with other Christian churches for which he is responsible. “They’ve attacked me as a heretic,” he said with a smile.

Well might he smile. By what authority, if you please, does the mere SSPX condemn the ecumenical dialogue which has been the Universal Church’s principle and practice ever since Vatican II, which is preached everywhere by Benedict XVI, and for which he is the Pope’s prime agent? Surely it was only charity towards those misguided “Traditionalists” that prevented the good Cardinal from bursting into laughter!

Humanly speaking, the Church is finished. But not divinely.

Kyrie eleison.

Muslim Distress

Muslim Distress on February 27, 2010

A little example of a big problem came across my path last month when I met in London a Muslim born and living in France, being torn between his Mohammedan ancestry and his European environment. The clash for him between loyalty to his ancestral roots and loyalty to his land of birth was clearly agonising. Some Mohammedans might completely adopt French values, many others might completely reject them, but he could do neither.

His problem is of course much more than just cultural or political or even historical. It is religious. Islam began some 1400 years ago as a breakaway from Catholic Christendom in the Middle East. Rooted in the Monophysite heresy which holds that there is only one Person in God, it spread like wildfire through a dried out Christendom in the Middle East and North Africa, occupied Spain for many centuries and broke briefly into France. A simple and violent religion, it seeks to conquer the whole world by the sword. It is a scourge of God, which for a thousand years Christendom could only hold at bay by the sword.

However, now that the European Christians themselves are losing nearly all belief in Christ or in Christendom, they are allowing – and their anti-Christian governments are positively encouraging – Mohammedans to come back into Europe, not by the sword but by immigration, which is how this young man’s family have been in France for two or three generations. What is behind this immigration? The Globalists want it to help dissolve the once glorious Christian nations, and melt them down into the New World Order. Liberals want it to proclaim their folly that men’s differences of race or religion are insignificant. The Mohammedans want it to enable them to take over Europe.

Yet even though Europe is daily more rotten, still there are traces of its ancient glory, a glory which it owed to the Catholic Church. These traces are enough on the one hand to inspire in someone like this young man a loyalty of patriotism rivalling the loyalty of blood to his ancestors, on the other hand to rouse still in many Europeans such a love of their own way of life that they will defend it with a bloodbath if it seems or becomes too threatened from outside. Satan is no doubt planning for that bloodbath. God may allow it as a punishment. It is looking more and more likely.

Meanwhile what should this young man do? Ideally, he will go to the root of the problem, which is whether Jesus Christ is the Second of the three Persons of God, or just a Prophet, however sublime. Then if he is intelligent, he will connect the gifts of France he so admires with their giver, the same Incarnate God, and if he then became a true Catholic, not only for himself would he see how to combine all true good in his roots with all true good in his land of birth, but also for others he would be able to contribute, in however limited a way, to the avoidance of the looming bloodbath.

And what should the ancestral Europeans do to avoid it? Return to their ancestral Faith and to its practice, which alone has the power to unite all peoples and races in the Truth, in justice and in peace. This is their ancient responsibility and vocation from God, to give such an example as will draw the whole world to Our Lord Jesus Christ. If they continue to be unfaithful, the blood is sure to flow.

Kyrie eleison.

Papal Error – II

Papal Error – II on February 6, 2010

Just coming out in English (see truerestoration.blogspot.com) is the valuable 100-page treatise in French by Bishop Tissier de Mallerais of the Society of St Pius X on the doctrine of Pope Benedict XVI: “The Faith imperilled by Reason.” The title says it all. Bishop Tissier’s thesis is that Benedict XVI allows human reasoning to adulterate the Catholic Faith. Let me paraphrase a paragraph from the Bishop’s conclusion which goes to the heart of the matter:—

“Benedict XVI frequently calls for a “hermeneutic of continuity,” meaning an interpretation of Vatican II and of Catholic Tradition which shows that there is no break but continuity

between them. After studying the Pope’s teachings, I now realize that this “hermeneutic” goes further than I originally thought. It means not just a new reading of Faith and Reason, but a new birth of both, and it is of universal application. Firstly, each is to purify the other: Reason will stop Faith from sliding into intolerance, while Faith will heal Reason’s blind independence. Secondly, each is to regenerate the other: Reason will enrich the Faith with the liberal values of Enlightenment thinking, while Faith, suitably re-expressed for modern times, will win a hearing from Reason. And this process is to be applied across the board to all religions and all ways of reasoning. Without any one system of values being imposed on everybody, those values which keep the world going will be strengthened.”

Note here firstly how, on his own admission, Bishop Tissier originally under-estimated the breadth and depth of the Pope’s vision. Catholics following Tradition know that the Conciliar reconciling of the Faith with modernity (especially the sentence that I have underlined above) is wrong, and is destroying the Church, but they do need to recognize that it has been thought out with intelligence, however misguided, and it is held with conviction. Benedict XVI believes profoundly both in the old way of believing and in the new way of thinking, and he is confident that by his own way of solving any apparent problems between them, all men can be brought together. This “solution” drives his Papacy.

Alas, I cannot reconcile 2+2=4 with 2=2=5 by saying that four is “more or less than four and a half,” while five is “more or less than four and a half,” because four apples will remain obstinately four, while five oranges will persist in being five. Thus the true Faith may tolerate the person erring, but it cannot tolerate their error, whereas modern Reason may wish to see, but as long as it is modern it insists on putting its own eyes out, the eyes of the mind (Kant). At every turn Bishop Tissier demonstrates that the eternal Faith, revealed by God, cannot lie down with modern reasoning, fabricated by men, which is designed to exclude either God or at least his demands on men (Religious Liberty).

Thank you, your Excellency! For, however charming may be the Pope’s prospect of “peace in our time,” it is not charm but truth in charity that will get us to Heaven.

Kyrie eleison.

Undesired Celibacy

Undesired Celibacy on January 16, 2010

Last Sunday’s Feast of the Holy Family may be a suitable moment to quote a reader’s question arising from the pronouncement of “Eleison Comments” three weeks ago that, normally speaking, an unmarried man is a “zero” while an unmarried woman is “less than a zero”: what about a man or woman who might have liked to get married, but for whatever reason either could not or did not do so? Not everybody that does not marry has a religious vocation, the reader added.

I began by replying that unnatural loneliness is all too normal today. Modern life, especially big city life, causes not only marriages not to happen which should happen, but also many marriages which have happened to come apart. That is one punishment amongst many others of liberalism, which by glorifying individualism engenders an inaptitude to live in the married state. Liberalism also glorifies freedom from all ties, and the marriage bond is nothing if not a tie. “Hence the collapsing birth-rates of the Western nations and the suicide of once Catholic Europe. It is all immensely sad and immensely serious.”

I continued: “Obviously to call all men “zeros” is a colorful way of saying that, firstly, we are all before God minute creatures, and secondly, men are not nearly as great as they think they are. (Two Russian proverbs say that a man without a woman is like a garden without a hedge (to surround it), or like a man out in January (in Russia) without a fur cap!) To go on to call women “less than zeros” is a likewise provocative way of saying that firstly, contrary to the dreadful disparaging of their complementarity by the enemies of God everywhere today, women are not the same as men, and secondly, they are more profoundly dependent on men than men are on women – see Eve’s punishment in Genesis III, 16: “Thou shalt be under thy husband’s power, and he shall have dominion over thee.” But the “zero” and “less than zero” are not primarily to provoke but to be put together in an eight, to demonstrate graphically the natural power of the union of marriage.”

Alas, today many a priest comes across young women who would love to marry but can hardly find a young man that strikes them as fit to be a husband. The young men seem all too often virtual dishrags, washed out by a liberalism which dissolves their minds by which God meant them to lead. Liberalism does not so easily undo the instincts and emotions which God makes natural to woman, although when it does, the results can be even more terrible.

In conclusion, I referred to the Eighth Station of the Way of the Cross, where Our Lord consoled the weeping women of Jerusalem (Lk. XXIII, 27–31): such a punishment, he warned, would soon come down on deicide Jerusalem as would make them envy the women who had never had husband or family. In our own day that is not a reason not to marry, but it may be a consolation for anyone to whom Providence has not given to marry but who might have liked to do so, because coming down upon us in what cannot be the too far distant future is . . . tremendous reason to start putting now more trust than ever in God’s unfailing Providence . . .

Kyrie eleison.

Psalmist’s Perspective

Psalmist’s Perspective on January 2, 2010

Another year begins. What does it bring? If a global disaster in finance and economics is on its way, it has certainly not yet hit with full force. Will it hit in 2010? In any case it will draw closer. As the pressure mounts, it will become more and more important to see in that pressure the hand of God and not just the machinations of men. Here, with comments for the 21st century, is one of the 150 Psalms to help us see things as a soul close to God sees them. Psalm 27 has only nine verses:—! “Unto thee will I cry, O Lord” (and not to the media or governments): “O my God, be not thou silent to me: lest if thou be silent to me, I become like them that go down into the pit”

A powerful soft current is pulling all souls today towards the pit of eternal hellfire. God can easily help me, and he longs to do so, but I must turn to him and beg his help. The Psalmist will beg –

2 “Hear, O Lord, the voice of my supplication, when I pray to thee; when I lift up my hands to thy holy temple.

3 Draw me not away together with the wicked; and with the workers of iniquity destroy me not: who speak peace with their neighbour, but evils are in their hearts.”

The Psalmist is not a silly soft liberal who pretends that all men are nice and mean well. He knows that in many sweet-talking men God has wicked enemies who are powerful enough to have set up a whole environment, such as we have in 2010, that threatens to drag him down to Hell (verse 1). To deal with them, it is to God that the Psalmist will turn –

4 “Give them according to their works, and according to the wickedness of their inventions. According to the works of their hands give thou to them: render to them their reward.

5 Because they have not understood the works of the Lord, and the operations of his hands: thou shalt destroy them and not build them up.”

We need never worry that God will not deal with his (and our) enemies, even in our 21st century, when they may seem to have triumphed. They do not deceive him, nor will they escape him. What is more, God certainly looks after souls that turn to him –

6 “Blessed be the Lord, for he hath heard the voice of my supplication.

7 The Lord is my helper: in him hath my heart confided, and I have been helped. And my flesh hath flourished again, and with my will I will give praise to him.”

Note that the Psalmist is neither an idiotic angelist, pretending he is too perfect to have bodily interests – God has looked after him, “heart” and “flesh.” Nor is he a self-centred individualist, as is shown by his prayer for all of God’s people –

8 “The Lord is the strength of his people, and the protector of the salvation of his anointed (meaning, ever since the death of Our Lord upon the Cross, souls anointed with the Catholic sacraments). 9 “Save, O Lord, thy people, and bless thy inheritance: and rule them and exalt them for ever.”

Today we would say, save, O Lord, thy Catholic Church.

Kyrie eleison.