modernism

SILENT MAJOR

SILENT MAJOR on December 7, 2024

In all things modern, Luther led the way?

Then heeding modern man must lead astray.

What on earth is a silent Major? Is it an army officer who does not talk much? Actually, no. It is a way of naming perhaps the most interesting feature of the book written by Archbishop Georg Gänswein, published last year, entitled “Who believes is not alone. My life beside Benedict XVI.” Gänswein was Pope Benedict’s choice to be his private secretary from 2003 to the Pope’s death on the last day of 2022. As secretary to the Pope for all those years, Gänswein was closely involved in affairs of the Catholic Church at the very top, and his book naturally relates interesting details of many of these affairs. However, from the standpoint of Catholic Tradition, what is of greatest interest is the Silent Major.

In logic, “Silent Major” names that essential part of a syllogism when it goes unmentioned, as one way of abbreviating a syllogism expressed in full, because the content of the Silent Major is supposedly too obvious to need mentioning. A syllogism is an argument consisting of three connected propositions, two Premisses, Major and Minor, and the Conclusion which can be deduced from the two Premisses when linked together. The Major might be compared to an expectant mother, the Minor to a mid-wife, and the Conclusion to the baby. Thus the Major implicitly includes the Conclusion, but the Minor is needed to make that Conclusion explicit by showing that is included in the Major.

Thus the most famous syllogism of all runs – Major: “All men are rational,” Minor: “Socrates is a man,” Conclusion: “Therefore Socrates is rational.” With the Silent Major the syllogism might be abbreviated as, “Socrates is a man, so he is bound to be rational,” or shorter still, “Being a man, Socrates is rational.” In daily life we are all the time syllogising, or deducing one thing from another two things, but it is rare for us to lay out the syllogisms in full. Frequently we leave out the Major or the Minor, but more frequently the Major, and then we have a case of the Silent Major. Here are two more examples – “Football is a sport, so it’s a waste of good time.” And “Catholic Tradition does not get through to modern man, it’s a waste of time.” The Silent Majors here are that “All sport is a waste of time,” and “Any religion is useless which does not get through to modern man.”

Thus in his book Gänswein paints a basically sympathetic portrait of life inside the Vatican and especially of Pope Ratzinger himself as a brilliant but humble man, basically an academic who never had any desire to be Pope because he would have preferred to retire somewhere calm where he could read and write books. In fact he wrote 66 of them, and they are no doubt full of many wise and traditional insights, as was his daily life, as Gänswein relates. This why many Traditionalists at that time put their hope and trust in him. Yet ultimately the Pope disappointed them. Why? Because of the Silent Major.

For indeed Ratzinger, like all modernists, was obsessed with getting through to modern man. Therefore for him the unchanging Truth of Catholic Tradition which he knew, always had to be at least expressed anew in a way that would fit modern man. But Luther, said a famous German “philosopher,” Johann Fichte (1762–1814) was “the first modern man.” And read “Three Reformers” of Jacques Maritain to see how today’s world is marinated in the revolt of Luther against the Catholic Church, in fact against God. So how is any modernist going to adapt godly Truth to godless modern man without resorting to ambiguity, on the way to outright heresy, which can also be found in the writings of Joseph Ratzinger?

And what weight can there be behind the best insights of Archbishop, Cardinal or Pope Ratzinger? If he believes in the Silent Major – “Catholicism must get through to modern man” – then at best he can only half believe in Catholic Truth. But Catholic Truth is all or nothing. If I believe in just one heresy, I have lost the Catholic Faith. Archbishop Lefebvre was not exaggerating when he said in 1990 that Rome had lost the Faith. Yet Gänswein portrays apostate Rome and Romans as though they are quite normal. He can only be himself a victim of the Silent Major.

Kyrie eleison.

CORPORAL PUNISHMENT

CORPORAL PUNISHMENT on November 30, 2024

‘Tis God Who designed, created every child.

Neglect His own instructions – they go wild.

“Spare the rod and spoil the child” is an old proverb, going back certainly before our own time, going back at least to the Old Testament, in surprisingly many places. Eight of them are quoted here below, with comments, and there might easily be even be more. What matters is to realise that if Scripture is so insistent, then the principle comes not only from natural common sense, but ultimately from God Himself to instruct us on how human nature, specially of boys, is to be formed. Of course modern circumstances must be taken into account, for instance fundamentally wicked legislation by which a government’s so-called “social services” can take my children away from me and my wife if we dare to lay a finger on them. But the series of Scripture quotes tells us at least what to think of such “social services.”

Let us begin with Proverbs XIII, 24, an almost literal version of our familiar proverb –

He that spareth the rod hateth his son: but he that loveth him correcteth him betimes.

Proverbs XIX, 18 is an appeal to common sense. Corporal punishment is to be used justly, without excess –

Chastise thy son, despair not: but to the killing of him set not thy soul.

Proverbs XXII, 15 evokes the original sin which is the great truth behind the need for corporal punishment –

Folly is bound up in the heart of a child, and the rod of correction shall drive it away.

Proverbs XXIII, 13 is another appeal to common sense: it will not kill the child to warm his backside –

Withhold not correction from a child: for if thou strike him with the rod, he shall not die.

Proverbs XXV, 20 declares how unwise it is to spoil a bad person (or naughty child) with being too nice – As vinegar upon nitre, so is he that singeth songs to a very evil heart.

Proverbs XXIX, 15, 17 declare the good/bad effect on parents of punishing/ not punishing children –

15 The rod and reproof instil wisdom, but the child that is left to his own will bringeth his mother to shame.

17 Instruct thy son, and he shall refresh thee, and shall give delight to thy soul.

Ecclesiasticus XXII, 6 repeats the teaching of Proverbs on the value of corporal punishment -–

 . . . the stripes and instruction of wisdom are never out of time (“stripes” here means “beatings”).

Ecclesiasticus XXX, 1–12 is a little treatise on the value of taking care in bringing up one’s sons –

He that loveth his son, frequently chastiseth him, that he may rejoice in his latter end, and not grope after the doors of his neighbours. 2 He that instructeth his son shall be praised in him, and shall glory in him in the midst of them of his household. 3 He that teacheth his son, maketh his enemy jealous, and in the midst of his friends shall glory in him . . . 6 For he left behind him a defender of his house against his enemies, and one that will repay kindness to his friends . . .

9 Give thy son his way, and he shall make thee afraid: play with him, and he shall make thee sorrowful. 10 Laugh not with him, lest thou have sorrow, and at the last thy teeth be set on edge. 11 Give him not liberty in his youth, and wink not at his devices. 12 Bow down his neck while he is young, and beat his sides while he is a child, lest he grow stubborn, and regard thee not, and so be a sorrow of heart to thee.

Do not the “child psychologists” of today teach parents rather the opposite of the Old Testament? Do not many parents of today tend to give up on disciplining or instructing their own children, rather handing them over, or letting them be taken in hand, by their godless States? And are the boys any the better for it? Judging by a mass of today’s young men . . .

Kyrie eleison.

DAILY SATAN

DAILY SATAN on November 2, 2024

The Devil works hard to make us lose our souls.

Our Lord works just as hard – at the controls!

“Ab inimico disce” is another of those pithy Latin sayings – “Learn from your enemy.” The text quoted in italics below is a classic illustration of the principle. It comes from a video-clip accessible in French on the Internet at crowdbunker.com/v/CPpx2RTFm7 It shows a senior Freemason giving practical instructions to some of his juniors on how to keep souls away from Christ by promoting features of daily living which will make it more and more difficult to have any spiritual life at all.

Freemasonry is a powerful enemy of Christ, launched in London in 1717, and – what many Freemasons do not know – designed to wreck the Catholic Church. It spread rapidly to France and America, and has played an important part in de-christianising the entire world ever since. All that Catholics need do to profit greatly by the text is to throw all of its advice exactly into reverse. For instance, it says to keep away from nature. On the contrary, St Ignatius said to a little flower, “Be quiet, I know Who you are talking to me about.” And England’s famous poet, William Wordsworth (1770–1850), wrote similarly,

“To me the meanest flower that blows can give

Thoughts that do often lie too deep for tears.”

But Satan does not want souls reaching for God through His creatures, and so he has his Freemasonry cutting off any contact of people with nature, if it can. The text is properly satanic (freely translated) –

“. . . so that they have no time to develop any intimate relationship with Christ. Here is what I want you to do. Distract people from their attachment to Jesus Christ, and keep them away from Him all day long. You will ask, how are we to do that? Keep them occupied with the non-essential things of life, and invent all kinds of devices to occupy their minds. Tempt them to spend and spend, to borrow and borrow, convince the young wives that they must go to work, the husbands that they must work six days a week, anything from eight to twelve hours a day, so that they can keep up their standard of living. Stop parents from spending time with their children. While the family is being broken up, soon the home will offer no escape from the pressure of work. Overstimulate their minds, so that they can no longer hear the quiet little voice speaking inside them. Get them to listen to the stereo while they are driving. Get them to keep the television set, videos or CDs constantly switched on in the home. Get all the restaurants and shops in the area to be constantly playing music. That will upset their minds and cut off any union with Christ. Fill their minds with news and the weather, 24 hours a day. Invade their time in the car with brightly lit advertisements. Flood their email inboxes and their letter-boxes with filth and undesirable emails to make them fall into mortal sin. Even on holiday let them go too far. Make them come back from their holidays exhausted, upset and quite unready to go back to work the following week. Don’t let them return to nature to relax, let them rather resort to amusement parks, sporting events, concerts, cinemas and shopping centres, and whenever they get together for a spiritual meeting, let there be no talk of anything profound, or of any spiritual combat. Discourage them from enjoying Christ’s company. When they get together, fill their time instead with chatter, silly laughter and gossip, so that they go away with troubled consciences and feelings awash . . .

Do we not find here the very programme for living of countless modern families, what we would call the “rat-race”? Are we still puzzled why the world is all the time further away from God? If on the contrary parents want to bring up their children close to Our Lord and Our Lady, these “Comments” strongly recommend family readings every night from Maria Valtorta’s Poem of the Man-God. Surely Jesus gave this treasure to the post-war world, amongst other things, as an alternative to so many poisoned screens, so soon to fill people’s homes.

Kyrie eleison.

VATICAN II SHORT – SIGHTED

VATICAN II SHORT – SIGHTED on October 19, 2024

Poor modern man, so drastically short-sighted,

His whole life being, by that short sight, blighted!

If we want to save our souls for eternity, as God wants all of us to do (I Tim. II,4), then the world now surrounding us is a dangerous environment for that purpose because, broadly speaking, for seven centuries mankind has been slowly but surely demoting God in order to take His place. It is a foolish attempt, doomed to fail, but in the meantime it has brought mankind to the brink of nuclear suicide. Now, on that road to ruin, from the Incarnation onwards, the greatest obstacle to the folly of man was God’s own Church instituted by God’s own Son, Our Lord Jesus Christ, to be the continuation of His Incarnation amongst men, as the Light of the World to dispel men’s confusion, and the Salt of the Earth to prevent men’s corruption. Alas, Vatican II in the 1960’s was the summit of men’s attempts to serve the Devil by crippling that Church, so as to send all men’s souls to Hell instead of Heaven. From here came the confusion and corruption all around us.

But Vatican II had to be subtle, because by the 20th century Mother Church had already analysed and refuted the great errors leading up to Vatican II, especially Protestantism (1517) and its progeny, Liberalism (1717) and Communism (1917). Among the host of errors accompanying these three, surely the most dangerous was Modernism (1907), because it was led by priests from inside the Church, wishing to update God’s Church by adapting it to godless modern man. Therefore subtlety was needed to deceive Catholics alerted to Protestantism in all its forms (and for the same reason, even more subtlety will be needed by the Antichrist to fool a mankind alerted by the divine Chastisement occurring between now and then).

When Archbishop Lefebvre died in 1991, one of his hopes was that the Society of priests which he had founded in 1970 would work on the subtle errors of Vatican II to analyse and denounce them. This is precious work for the salvation of souls, and one book is outstanding in this respect, Prometheus, the Religion of Man, by Fr Alvaro Calderon, translated into French and published last May by the Society’s printing-house in France, accessible at www.clovis-diffusion.com The book is not an easy read, but it is highly to be recommended for its masterly thomistic breakdown of Vatican II. Here for instance is, in very brief form, the first major error of Vatican II, denounced by Fr Calderon:

Man must be the centre of religion, because he is, amongst all other material creatures, the only creature that is also spiritual. Therefore he is superior to all of them, he is the main purpose of all of them, and he is the main purpose of all material creation, being the only creature created for himself, all other material creatures having been created only for him. Therefore he must be at the centre of any true religion of that creation.

But all of this argument leaves out the Creator. If we start out from God and not from man, then we know that the one and only ultimate cause of the creation of man must be the essence of God Himself, because the one and only object possible of God’s willing anything at all is His own goodness, because that infinite goodness alone can fulfil His infinite willing. Any creature and everything that He chooses freely to create, He can only will in and through His willing of His own uncreated Self.

Therefore it can only be Himself, and not man, who is the ultimate purpose of creation, and He alone who can be at the centre of any true religion of that creation. All of the arguments in the documents of Vatican II which attempt to put man instead of God at the centre of creation around us, fail, for ignorance, witting or unwitting, wilful or unwilful, of Catholic Tradition’s supreme treasures of philosophy and theology. Thus one of the last and worst of all the Vatican II documents, Gaudium et Spes, is, says Fr Calderon, shot through with the very inadequate modern philosophy of Personalism, by which the human person is at the centre of everything. No, he is not. It is God who is at the centre of everything.

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 900th 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

EMERGENCY ADVICE – II

EMERGENCY ADVICE – II on February 24, 2024

The greater the horror of World War Three,

The greater God’s glory – for eyes that see!

No reader of these “Comments” has sent in theoretical questions comparable to the series of practical questions on today’s unprecedented Church crisis sent in last week (see EC 866 of February 17), but it is worth inventing such a series, and offering answers to the theoretical questions, in case just a handful of readers can get a better handle on the confusion let loose by Vatican II, as slippery as it is dangerous.

1 Then what is at the heart of that confusion? Is it what they call “modernism”? What is modernism?

Answer: modernism is the great error of modern times, by which even educated churchmen can come to believe that the Church of the past need no longer lift mankind to spiritual heights which mankind is no longer capable of reaching. Rather, mankind is so different in modern times that in order to reach it in its materialism, the Church must up-date its doctrine, morals, liturgy, everything. If men can no longer rise to the spiritual level of the Church, the Church must come down to the material level of men. Or so they say.

2 But is it not the function of the Church to reach out to men, wherever they are to be found?

Yes, but not on whatever conditions! All firemen want to put out fires, but not any liquid will do. What fireman ever used gasoline instead of water? Water and gasoline each have their unchanging nature, which is independent of the will of men. Water puts out fire (surprise, surprise!), while gasoline makes it blaze (well, whaddaya know?). In a similar way, Gregorian chant and Rock music each have their unchanging and opposed natures, with opposed and unchanging effects. Chant will draw souls to Church, Rock to the dance-hall, but Rock will not draw to Church. Some modernists mean well, but they are foolish if they think music functions differently today from how it functioned yesterday. To be drawn at any rate to God, souls need a music which is calm, not agitating.

3 But all modern life is agitating, compared with life yesterday. So how will any soul today reach God?

You said it! After 6000 years of world history one would think that men had learned by now what things have what natures, effects and consequences, but no. Our own times are, as it were, based on the principle that man can will for natures to have what effects he likes. Everything has become so denatured and so destabilised that life turns into one continual agitation, and the youngsters cannot stand any music that is too calm. But that does not mean that natures have so changed that Rock will bring them back to Church. It will not. It is not in its nature to do so. It was designed by the Devil to create ever more agitation.

4 But if that is true, how will any modern youngster – or modern soul – ever get to Heaven?

Good question! In modern times many a Saint has asked himself that question, but he has never despaired of the answer because he has known that the grace of God is always there for the asking. “Where there’s a will, there’s a way,” is a human way of saying it. “To whoever does what lies in him, God does not refuse His grace” is a more divine way that the Church has of saying it. In any case, when a soul, through no major fault of its own, finds itself in a situation where the odds against its salvation are to all appearances overwhelming, God can always intervene – for example in Genesis 19, the case of Lot.

5 But if God is all-powerful, why does he not eliminate all evil from the Creation which He controls?

Because His purpose in creating was to give the greatest bliss possible to souls freely accepting. Now a bliss in no way deserved by the recipient cannot possibly be as blissful as a bliss at least partly deserved by the soul itself despite all the evil by which it was surrounded in its brief life in this “valley of tears.” It would follow that the more generous God wishes to be with His gift of bliss, the more evil He will allow, but only up to the point where the evil risks swamping the good being freely chosen. That point once came to the whole world in the time of Noah. It is coming again today. God will intervene again soon. If we have the Catholic faith, let us do our part by praying His Mother’s Rosary for the salvation of souls.

Kyrie eleison