Tag: modernism

Madiran – 6 Propositions

Madiran - 6 Propositions posted in Eleison Comments on November 28, 2020

From the Prologue of Jean Madiran’s book The Heresy of the 20th Century, presented briefly in #of these “Comments” eight weeks ago, readers may remember Madiran’s own dismissal of the heresy concerned as being “night, emptiness, and nothingness.” Nevertheless that heresy has had in the aftermath of Vatican II, and up till today, a devastating power to wreck the Catholic Faith, liturgy, Church and souls as they were before the Council, and so Madiran gives to his readers some account of the “nothingness.” This account he presents in Parts III, IV and V of his book, where he analyses seven main Propositions of the heresy, culled by himself from writings of Bishop Schmitt, whom Madiran credits with having brought into focus the devastating nothingness of the new Conciliar religion. Here in heavy type are all seven Propositions in order, followed by a brief summary of Madiran’s comments.

1 Today’s changing world imposes a change in the very concept of salvation brought by Christ,

2 and it shows that the Church’s idea of the plan of God was, up till now, not evangelical enough.

3 Faith listens to the world.

4 Socialisation is not only an ineluctable fact of world history. It is also a grace.

5 No age before ours has ever been able better to grasp the Gospel ideal of brotherhood practised.

6 In a world turned towards the future, Christian hope takes on its full meaning.

7 Natural law is the expression of the collective consciousness of mankind. (This seventh Proposition is so devastating that Madiran will reserve for it all of Part V.)

1 The first two Propositions have already been analysed by Madiran in the preceding Part of his book, so on the first (P1) he merely adds here that it is the necessary and sufficient principle of the whole new religion. One could sum up: just as Catholicism is “all Tradition,” so modernism is “all change.”

2 P2 begins to spell out P1, i.e. it begins to specify what change is needed. Like countless systems since Protestantism protesting against Catholicism, it appeals falsely to the Gospel against the Church.

3 P3 makes clear that P1 and P2 have changed what believers are henceforth to believe in: as Catholics used to believe in God because He is God, now they are to believe in the world because it is the world.

4 And believing in the modern world means believing in its great movement of socialisation or collectivism, i.e. Communism, because not only is the movement inevitable, it is also a religious grace (!).

5 In other words “Christ’s salvation” (P1) and “God’s plan” (P2) have become merely words, kept as relics of the past, but with all supernatural meaning and reality emptied out.

6 Similarly all supernatural hope and striving for God’s Heaven are emptied out and fulfilled – better – by modernity. For never before in all 20 centuries of Church history have Christians so well understood Christian hope as we men of today, all straining forward together to the Brave New World Order (!).

Madiran’s final comment is to observe how all six Propositions hang together which he culled from Bishop Schmitt. Thus P1 is the springboard of all six. But why this mania for change, which is so clear also in all modern politicians? Because before the modern age, everything used to be based on, and to turn around, God. But now man rejects God. Therefore everything must be changed, (P2) with man instead at the centre, and (P3) with man’s world as the complete horizon. This centring on man (P4) cannot be reversed, but (P4) it is as good as a religion, and (P5) never have men been better suited than today to centring on man, or (P6) to looking forward to the human future of mankind. The synchronisation of this system with Communism is clear, with its elimination of God and deification of man. It will be even more clear with (P7) the elimination of nature and of the natural law. The summer riots in the USA were all about the final elimination of Almighty God. Lord, have mercy on us!

Kyrie eleison.

Madiran; the Heresy

Madiran; the Heresy posted in Eleison Comments on November 14, 2020

In his book “The Heresy of the 20th Century” Jean Madiran (1920–2013) has presented the heresy’s gravity (Foreword); its underlying philosophy (Part I) and the bishops responsible for it (II); in Parts III, IV and V he comes to the heresy itself, which he analyses according to its seven Propositions. In Part III he presents the first two on their own because of their importance; in Part IV the first six in a little detail; in Part V the seventh Proposition, also on its own because of its overwhelming importance for Madiran. Part III, subject of this week’s “Comments,” sub-divides into six Chapters.

In Chapter One, Madiran declares that on the eve of Vatican II (1962–1965) the religious atmosphere was already pestilential in general, but the then Bishop of the city of Metz in Eastern France, Msgr. Schmitt, brought the whole vague pestilence into clear focus. Seven Propositions sum up what was in fact the new religion which he backed by all his episcopal authority. The first Proposition declares that today’s changing world imposes a change in the very concept of salvation brought by Jesus Christ. And the second declares that the Church’s idea of the plan of God was up till then not evangelical enough. In brief, (P1) the Church must promote “socialisation,” says the Bishop of Metz, because (P2) the old Church was not collective enough, but too merely personal in its practice of the Gospel. But what the Bishop is in fact promoting is Communism, says Madiran.

For indeed “socialisation,” argues Madiran in Chapter Two, rests upon a Marxist view of history, materialistic and determinist, which shows that the Bishop of Metz has lost the Christian faith, because how can the spiritual goals of Christianity coincide with the materialistic goals of Communism? Communism is a social system to be rejected for religious reasons, because as a social system it pretends to replace the Church’s social system and therewith Christianity.

In Chapter Three Madiran rejects Bishop Schmitt’s claim that men today best of all understand Gospel brotherhood (cf. Proposition II above). Such a down-grading of all the social works and achievements of the pre-Conciliar Church is ridiculous and for Catholics, says Madiran, it is an unseemly narcissism.

Thus by 1967, says Madiran in Chapter Four, it had become clear to the world that Bishop Schmitt was promoting no less than a new religion, or a heresy, vandalising centuries upon centuries of Catholic tradition. The French bishops are vandals without intelligence or character. Henceforth it is up to the laity to defend the Penny Catechism, in other words the very basics of the Faith!

In Chapter 5, against keeping up with the times (Prop. I), Madiran upholds the First Commandment, because it is the unchanging God and not the changing world that must hold first place in our hearts and minds. Nor will the times ever be with the Church, because the Church is with Jesus Christ. It is only worldly Catholics that the world admires. And against the Church not practising the Gospel enough (Prop. II), Madiran says that the Saints never invented anything in order to be “evangelical enough,” on the contrary they always strove to be as faithful as possible to tradition in order to put the Gospel into practice.

In conclusion, Chapter Six, Madiran denies that there is any truth to be salvaged from Propositions I and II, and he declares that Bishop Schmitt’s new religion wants the Church to gain the whole world by losing its own soul. The new religion has neither true authority nor true obedience, and Madiran has a prophetic vision of Catholic Tradition surviving Vatican II, because it makes free men kneel nobly before their God in accordance with a real authority and a real obedience. Such Catholics will never follow the false religion of poor bishops like the Bishop of Metz, just let him wait and see!

Kyrie eleison.

Next Covid?

Next Covid? posted in Eleison Comments on November 7, 2020

All over the world ever more people, observing the utter disproportion between on the one hand the huge Covid-propaganda of their vile media and governments, and on the other hand the scarce reality of Covid-deaths anywhere around them, are convinced that there is much more to Covid-19 than meets the eye. They are unquestionably right, but who the criminals are behind Covid, and what they are after is not so clear. Materialistic liberals can hardly imagine that anybody could be so evil, because they need to believe that everybody is nice, whereas believing Catholics have a chance of understanding, through their Faith.

What they understand through their Faith is that human life is a time and opportunity given by God to every human soul that He creates, to choose between eternal bliss in Heaven by serving and loving Him, or unending torments in Hell by spurning and refusing Him. Hosts of angels, created before men, were given the same choice, and perhaps a third of them fell, and were flung into Hell. These all now bitterly envy human beings their possibility of getting to the Heaven which they refused, and they do all they can to pull human souls down to Hell with them. Here is where the evil on this earth originates.

But if God is all-good and all-powerful, as He is, how can He allow any such free play of evil? Because He does not want any kind of robots in His Heaven. He wants with Him there only angels and souls that have been able to make an entirely free choice between Himself and the Devil, and who have chosen Himself against all possible allurements of the world, the flesh and the Devil. And if the Devil succeeds in blinding souls with error and seducing them for instance with his honey-traps, then God will often scourge those souls in this brief life in order for them to think again, to come back to Him and to save themselves for eternal life. “O God, punish me in this life” prayed St Augustine, “just so long as you need not punish me in the next.” And God often uses fallen angels and wicked men to do the scourging that He knows is necessary for the salvation of souls. And here is where much of the suffering of men on earth originates.

And here is why the great Covid-lie is likely to thrive for a while yet, because a mass of souls today are virtually trapped in atheistic materialism, which is the essence of Communism, and it is liable to take great suffering for souls to be shaken out of it. Deeply deceived by a false notion of liberty (freedom to choose between good and evil instead of between good and good – I have no inalienable right to choose evil), they are convinced and crusading liberals who insist on freedom for evil and, as we saw in the riots of this summer, on freedom for the destruction of the police, of all law and order, of their cities, of all feeble remains of Christian civilisation, in brief on freedom to make war against God. It took over 70 years of the full horrors of Communism for “Holy Russia” to begin to come back to God. What will it take to bring an entire apostate world to be ready to beg Our Lady to obtain Russia’s full Consecration?

Therefore expect in the rest of 2020, according to a recent source in Canada, the rolling in of secondary lock-down restrictions, with a new “surge” of Covid-related deaths, and the rushed acquisition or construction of “isolation facilities” throughout the country. Expect by the turn of the year much stricter lock-down measures, and in the New Year the introduction of a universal basic wage program alongside a new virus (Covid-21) due to overwhelm medical facilities. Planned for the Spring are a third lock-down, stricter still, imposition of the basic wage program, large economic disruption, and to offset an international economic collapse, a total debt relief program by which citizens will be offered, by the government, cancellation of all their debts in exchange for giving up for ever all ownership of any and all property and assets, and for accepting Covid-19 and Covid-21 vaccinations. And if any citizens refuse?

“They will be deemed a safety risk and re-located into isolation facilities, with their assets seized.”

We have been warned. God is not mocked (Galatians VI, 7). Let us pray!

Kyrie eleison.

Madiran; the Bishops

Madiran; the Bishops posted in Eleison Comments on October 31, 2020

It will be recalled that in the Prologue of his book The Heresy of the 20th century Jean Madiran placed the blame for that heresy fairly and squarely on the Catholic bishops who led up to and followed straight after the Second Vatican Council (1962–1965), notably on the bishops of France whom he best knew. Chapter I of his book showed, following St. Pius X’s great Encyclical Pascendi of 1907, how these bishops’ minds were rendered unfit for reality, let alone for Catholic doctrine, by the subjectivism of Kant’s philosophy, now reigning supreme in the philosophy departments of virtually all “universities.” In Chapter II Madiran tackles the French bishops themselves, in six loosely connected sections.

Firstly, he says that to follow these bishops we would have to throw away a veritable treasure trove of Catholic treasures, such as St. Pius X, Gregorian Chant, Thomism, Canon Law, Our Lady, patriotism, our Greco-Latin heritage, Marian piety and last but not least, the devotion of little old women praying. For our part, he says, we refuse to scorn any of these familiar features of the Catholic family. Behind all of them is the love of Christ, while behind all the talk of “recycling,” “renovations” and “renewal” is hate. And behind all achievements of “Western civilisation” is Christ, neither India nor Africa nor China.

Secondly, to all the world the Newchurch has proclaimed its apostasy: the Newbishops’ policy is no longer to convert anyone. Yet the basics of life and death remain exactly the same. Let the Church teach us how to live and die. We are all too full of the world. Let priests teach us how to get to Heaven!

Thirdly, these bishops say that “the change of civilisation” calls for “a more evangelical concept of salvation,” by which they mean not just “a new form of words,” which is what they say they mean, but a new content of the words, meaning a new religion. Your Excellences, our answer is “NO!” Moreover, as a baptised Catholic I am entitled to demand of you the true Faith, because your “new form of words” in pursuit of a new “concept of salvation” is bound to be heretical, not just clumsy, but a new religion, contradicting the true Faith.

Fourthly, up until 1966 these bishops had not yet defected from the Catholic Faith, but now they are claiming that theirs is at last the authentic Christianity, when in fact their “post-Conciliar mentality” is breaking with the true Faith. The truth is that we are in the middle of a war between two different religions. And actively or passively, all the bishops are supporting the new religion. Some Catholic bishop must speak up, because souls are perishing! Msgr. Lefebvre, are you listening?

We need no bishops to tell us to be modern. We are all too modern. But modern technology and modern philosophy are not the business of Catholic bishops! We know the moderns, and we scorn them. You do not know them and you love them. Marx, Nietzsche, Freud are mere fantasy-merchants. Wake up!

Fifthly, the Newchurch is now ruining all apprenticeship, teaching and education. By wanting to give to the youngsters only what is modern, which they already have, you give them nothing, while making them think they know everything. Thus abandoned, they will become tomorrow’s barbarians, so that you are betraying not only the Faith but all civilisation. Come back to Tradition! God, give us some true bishops!

Sixthly, the bishops’ authority is based only on truth, legitimacy and law. If these bishops were right, the Church of Tradition would no longer exist. But the Truth is primarily their business, so that they have no authority to change the Faith, and if they do so, they have no authority to be obeyed, nor will we leave them in peace. We expect from them the certainty, purity and sanctity of the unchanging Catholic Faith.

(In Section 4 above, Archbishop Lefebvre is not mentioned by name, but he was in Madiran’s mind. Two years later the Archbishop founded the Society of St Pius X, and the rest is history.)

Kyrie eleison.

Fortunate Family

Fortunate Family posted in Eleison Comments on October 24, 2020

When the horizon is, humanly speaking, so dark all around, and when demonic forces are intent on tearing the family apart because it is the means designed by God to start human beings out on the road to His Heaven, then it may be a good time to summarise for readers of these “Comments” an email sent to their editor by the father of a family of eight children in the United States, who is neither hopeless nor afraid. He lives in the middle of nowhere. He has Mass only once a month in a Traditional Chapel nearby. But sanity is still possible. Here is the essence of his email –

Spiritually and sacramentally, we continue to survive with monthly Mass at our Resistance chapel which we will need as long as we have need of Mass and the Sacraments. And I do not see that need (or the crisis in the Church) ending any time soon. The chapel is up and running, but there have been some poor turnouts at the last couple of Masses. For various reasons, a good number of Traditional Catholics seem to be giving in to the media-induced panic.

Our family is doing well; we have no complaints. We are expecting our ninth child soon. We had another boy recently. Everyone notices how different he is from the girls. He explores everything, gets into everything, is more interested in “things”, machines, equipment, etc., than people. Since we have several girls, we really notice the innate differences between boys and girls. Our children are all into music, because I am teaching them to love and appreciate music with melody, harmony, rhythm, and good lyrics. We listen to folk music, especially Irish, various instrumental music, classical, and chant. Any songs coming from a place of angst, despair, depression, hate, etc. are evil, ugly, and to be shunned.

I have been working full time from my home office for a Catholic operation which seems to be waking up more with every passing year, unlike the SSPX which once had the full package of truth, but is losing it year-by-year. If where I work continues to be faithful to the Truth as they have been, it will eventually have to become full Trad or change course/betray at some point. There are no other options. I also work manually in our gardens which we have just finished expanding, having learned about “Back to Eden” gardening a couple of years ago. Our soil is pure clay and very poor, but with mulch one can imitate God’s nature, letting rich soil form from organic material by rotting down. With a recently discovered source of free wood chips, I can make quantities of my own mulch. So the children are all helping me to use this new technique to treat our fruit trees and start garden beds. We hope we will soon be able to grow a decent amount of food here. Our two garden beds measure 1,500 square feet, so far.

We are especially concerned with the results of the election this year. My gut feeling is that 2020 will make 2016 look like child’s play. Then there’s the whole COVID madness and the nationwide riots over a black man who overdosed on Fentanyl. Maybe the fight is merely between the really bad guys (Deep State) and some lesser or rival bad guys (Trump and his associates). Maybe Trump is merely less evil, i.e. he hasn’t partaken in the child sacrifice, child torture, and other devilry that the rest of them have? My hopes are limited. Still, I do not think that Trump is on the side of the Deep State. I will be voting for him because of his unprecedented actions against abortion and in favour of freedom in general.

We are doing fine financially, thanks to many blessings from God. But the biggest blessing has been that I learned as a teenager the evils of the banksters’ usury. Without this grasp of economics, I might be blameless and sinless but still deep in debt and related miseries. Also my wife has always been frugal, so we have always lived within our means, giving up many luxuries and working hard, but now we are reaping the benefits. We are now completely debt-free, even with eight children and only one modest income. I point out to my children that it took years of frugality and hard work, but eventually it can be done.

As for the local chapel, alas, many souls come and do not come back, but today some are looking for a Tridentine Mass where they can continue to receive Holy Communion on the tongue, as forbidden by our official diocese for “Covid” reasons. So much for Tradition depending on the official Church! I often wonder why God is allowing so many setbacks for Tradition. Is He purifying the remnant, looking for more quality over quantity? Both among non-Catholics and in Traditional Catholic families, even when the parents seem solid, I do not see their children “fully taking their place” in the next generation. The tides of the World beat on them relentlessly, wearing them down, some slightly, some greatly, while some completely collapse. Truly, if these days are not shortened, even the Elect will not be saved.

Kyrie eleison.

Madiran’s Philosophy

Madiran's Philosophy posted in Eleison Comments on October 17, 2020

Like Pope Pius X in his great anti-modernist Encyclical of 1907, Pascendi, Jean Madiran in his book “The Heresy of the 20th Century” starts out from philosophy, because both of them see that the problem which makes it so difficult for modern minds really to grasp Catholicism is rather philosophical than theological. Thus the first of six Parts of Madiran’s book has for its title “Philosophical Preamble.”

Surprisingly, Madiran himself tells readers that they can skip the Preamble if they like, but that can only have been to spare many a modern reader who is rightly allergic to the delinquent nonsense which proceeds from the so-called “universities” of today. In fact, the argument of Madiran’s book is as dependent on true philosophy as it is independent of today’s “philosophistry,” or pseudo-philosophy.

But how and why can supernatural Faith be so dependent on philosophy, which is the rational study of all natural reality, the raising of (true) common sense, from an amateur to a professional level, so to speak? Answer, a good wine-maker does not depend on clean and uncracked glass bottles to make good wine, but he cannot run his wine business without such bottles, because if all the bottles are dirty inside, nobody is going to buy his wine, however good it is. The wine-maker presupposes that he will get automatically clean bottles. Compared with the wine, the glass bottle is worth next to nothing when it is empty of wine, but it is absolutely necessary without cracks or dirt for the wine-maker to contain his wine.

Now human reason is like the bottle. It is only a natural faculty but by the time it reaches death it is meant on pain of eternal condemnation to contain the supernatural wine of the Faith (Mk. XVI, 16). The Faith is a supreme gift of God by which a man’s reason is supernaturally elevated to believe , but if that faculty of reason is fouled up by human errors and misbeliefs, then like the dirty bottle it risks fouling up God’s wine of belief, however divine that belief is in itself. Now just a little dirt in the bottle will spoil the wine it contains, but modernism in the mind is such a radical error that it will spoil, or undermine, any Faith poured into that mind. And as wine poured into a dirty bottle cannot help being spoiled, so Catholic Faith poured into a modern mind can hardly help being undermined. So teach Pius X, de Corte, Calderón and Madiran, along with all others who have grasped the full objective malice of a modernist mind.

So how does Madiran in particular prove that the French bishops in the 1960’s were out of their Catholic minds? He starts out from an official declaration of theirs in December of 1966 (p. 40) where they affirm that “for a philosophical mind,” the words “person” and “nature,” crucial for Christology (Catholic theology of Christ) have changed their meaning since the time of Boethius (who hammered out the definition of “person”) and of Aquinas (who did similarly for “nature”). In other words, for the French bishops modern philosophy has left behind the Church’s classic philosophy embedded in unchanging Church doctrine, so that for them, thomism is obsolete “for a philosophical mind,” and to be discarded.

But in a Church whose doctrine always corresponded to what never changes in extra-mental reality, this perspective of the French bishops is absolutely revolutionary. It can only mean, says Madiran (43), that they are accepting the Copernican revolution in philosophy of Immanuel Kant (1724–1804), who placed “reality”no longer outside but inside the mind. However (45, 46), there is no obligation, except in Kantian philosophy, to accept this internalising of reality. Only on its own premisses must one arrive at its unreal conclusions. By their moral choice of Kant over Aquinas, the French bishops were in fact demonstrating their implicit apostasy (50) and their anti-natural religion. They were declaring their independence from God’s Truth by their rejection of God’s reality, and of the Order which He implanted in Nature (60–63).

Madiran concludes his Part I by saying that whereas Thomism corresponds to the human experience of all times and all places (66), Kantism has cut the French bishops mentally adrift, like the modern age they so seek to please (67).

Kyrie eleison.