Tag: modernism

Vocations Still?

Vocations Still? posted in Eleison Comments on October 10, 2020

Can there still be vocations of younger or older souls to the service of God in a seminary, convent, friary or monastery, amidst the distress of the Catholic Church today? The answer can only be in the positive because the fact is that God is still calling souls to His service, and “A fact is stronger than the Lord Mayor.” On the other hand Superiors of seminaries or religious houses need to take into consideration two circumstances special to the situation of the Church today which should render them more careful than ever in accepting vocations beneath their roof. These are firstly the ever increasing immaturity of souls growing up in the modern world, and secondly, the ever growing unreliability of Church leaders.

To begin with, let us remind ourselves that the Catholic Church comes directly from Jesus Christ who will preserve it until the end of the world (Mt. XXVIII, 20), and into eternity. He has with the Father and the Holy Ghost all the power needed, and much more, to provide it with all means necessary for its survival. Now those means necessarily include a priesthood, bishops and priests and in some sort of hierarchy, to ensure those sacraments which are essential to the life of supernatural grace of the Church’s members. Therefore until world’s end Our Lord will always be giving enough vocations to men to guarantee that the Church has the men it needs as ministers. As for the women into whose nature it is built by God to be the “helpers” or “helpmates” of man (Gen.II, 18), they are not to be priests nor as necessary to the Church as priests, but by the gifts which God gives to them and not to men, they can render to the Church such precious services that it one cannot imagine the Church being without feminine vocations. For instance, where would the Church’s apostolate be without the prayers of Sisters, grandmothers, etc.?

However God is God, and His ways are inscrutable by men. See the end of Romans XI, and all of the Book of Job, Chapters XXXVII to XLI. He reaches far beyond our human minds, and in the fallibility of the last six Popes inclusive, He is already reaching well beyond what many Catholic minds can bear. They need to read Job. Nor is the Almighty finished yet by any means. Our Lady has told us that fire will fall from the sky, eliminating a large part of mankind, and if sins do not slow down there will be no more forgiveness for them, a prediction easier to understand ever since the Covid scam recently made so many of the very churchmen shut down their confessionals. Let us pray and work for Our Lord to send workers into His vineyard, but let us not try to tell Him how many He needs. Only He knows that.

Meanwhile we human beings must confess that, as said above, we throw at least two serious obstacles in the way of His calling souls to serve Him. Firstly, the immaturity of souls leading a modern life. If there is one thing that makes a boy or girl grow up so as to become capable of enduring the discipline of religious life or the hardships of married life, it is suffering, but is not the illusion everywhere today that suffering can be blamed on somebody else, may be avoided, and need not be endured? Nor are the characters of children formed when parents less and less know how to bring them up. Nor are they given much responsibility to bear, which could also mature them. City and suburban life hardly favour vocations.

But secondly the disorder in the Church also discourages vocations. For as long as the Church was, despite all human failings, a doctrinal and structural rock of ages, I could as a young person entrust my life to it and be sure that several layers of Superiors above me would function on a basis of objective truth and justice overall. But ever since Vatican II changed Church doctrine and the basis on which it operates, how can I still be sure of an objective and stable framework within which to lead the rest of my life? One great lesson of this Church crisis is that the Catholic Church can no more do without the Pope than a puppet can do without its puppeteer – it becomes a jumbled heap of strings and bits of coloured wood.

Of course God can and will supply for the good of His Church, but we can hardly expect vocations to come forward tomorrow just like they did the day before yesterday.

Kyrie eleison.

Madiran’s Foreword

Madiran's Foreword posted in Eleison Comments on October 3, 2020

In the Foreword to his book on The Heresy of the 20th Century Jean Madiran begins with the direct statement that it is the Catholic bishops who are responsible for the heresy of the 20th century (p.17 in the 2018 re-edition of the book from via.romana@yahoo.fr). Knowing that he will be accused as a mere layman of speaking out of turn, he states defiantly (28) that when the shepherds or bishops have turned into wolves or destroyers of the Faith. he needed as a baptised Catholic neither to ask for, nor to be given, any mandate to defend the Faith

And he makes (26) a crucial distinction which announces the thesis of his whole book. Heresy in the strict sense of the word means the wilful denial of what one knows to be a defined proposition of the Faith, but in the broad sense it means the acceptance of a whole teaching radically alien to the Faith. The heresy he will be attacking is in this broad sense, going far beyond the contradiction of just any one proposition of the Faith. The “20th century heresy” is to be found rather “in the night, in emptiness, in nothingness.”

And how did the French bishops get emptied out? Madiran writes (20) that for 100 years, reaching back then to the middle of the 19th century, they had been out of touch with Rome, at that time the truly Catholic Rome of Pius IX and the Syllabus, because their whole mentality (21) had slipped away from Rome. Theirs was Catholic discipline without conviction, Catholic obedience without understanding of what the obedience was for. In a few words Madiran is hitting on the essence of the pre-conciliar Church: under the influence of the modern world, a progressive loss of Catholic faith had resulted in a Church where the appearances were still standing but the substance behind the appearances was gone. How the true Church needed to resist that new Revolutionary world the anti-liberal Popes did lay out, especially Popes Pius IX, Leo XIII and Pius X in their social teaching, but of their Encyclicals Madiran (23) says that the bishops in the 1950’s knew virtually nothing.

Graver still for Madiran, foreshadowing the whole Part VI of the book to come, the 20th century heresy of these bishops was their all-engulfing faithless mentality, which denies that there is any such thing as the natural law (24). Magnetised by the modern world, infected by its liberalism, they had long been mentally slipping away from Rome and rejecting its social doctrine, but in the 1950’s they were still mouthing certain formulae of the old catechism. However, in their hearts all sense of the natural law was being lost, and this meant that in the years immediately following the Council they were ready to lay hands on dogma and the catechism which they had left up till then outwardly intact. Thus their disagreement with Rome on social doctrine contained implicitly that total uprooting of the Christian religion from which the entire Church suffered in the aftermath of the Council (25).

For if there is no natural law or rational order embedded by God in all of Creation around us, then all reason and faith are shipwrecked, and while the formulae of the Gospel and the dogmatic definitions may for a while be accurately recited and repeated, their substance has been drained out and all religion has been radically subverted. Bishops without natural law have no more access to the Gospel or to dogmatic definitions. They can no longer preserve or hand down anything (26). They are ripe to swing left towards the substitute religion of modernity, which is Communism (26).

And to conclude the Foreword, Madiran appeals to a compatriot who foresaw this decadence in the clergy even before the First World War. Charles Péguy (1873–1914) wrote in 1909 that the clergy (30) were successfully destroying Christianity by wanting it to progress with the times. They were themselves losing the faith (32), accepting its disappearance as something natural.

Kyrie eleison.

Madiran Introduced

Madiran Introduced posted in Eleison Comments on September 19, 2020

As eldest daughter of the Church, France has always had thinkers and writers in the forefront of the defence of the Church, and modern times are no exception. In the confusion and disarray of Catholics arising immediately out of the end of the Second Vatican Council in 1965, an outstanding pioneer of what would come to be “Traditional” thinking was the Frenchman Jean Madiran (1920–2013), creator and editor of the right-wing and nationalist monthly magazine “Itinéraires” (Itineraries) from 1956 to 1996. Already a genuine defender of the Faith before the Council, he made his magazine a centre-piece of that defence after the Council, when it became essential reading for many Catholics trying not to lose their heads or their faith.

In the 1960’s Madiran certainly contributed to maintaining in France the literate public that would provide a basis of support in the 1970’s for Archbishop Lefebvre to be able to lead a “Traditional” movement in France to oppose the destruction of the Church from within by the Conciliar clergy. Madiran and his magazine may also have seriously helped the Archbishop himself to arrive at his momentous decision at the end of the 1960’s to found in French Switzerland the Society of St Pius X, destined to make its decisive contribution to the saving of Catholic Tradition over the next 40 years. The one time that this writer can remember having seen the Archbishop run was when Madiran was once visiting the seminary in Écône, and the Archbishop had to catch him just before he returned to Paris.

Alas, their collaboration came to an end when John-Paul II became Pope in 1978, and Madiran thought that he would rescue the Church, but as far as the Archbishop was concerned, Madiran had had his good influence, and “Tradition” was by now well established. We need today to remember just how unthinkable it was in the 1950’s and 1960’s for Catholics to doubt their clergy. Here is the enormous merit of Madiran: a true faith unshaken by an almost entire Catholic hierarchy gone astray, together with the courage to stand up and write in public against the mass of people either “faithfully” following that hierarchy out of “obedience,” or faithlessly rejoicing in its undermining of the Church by freemasonry. That Madiran let himself be subsequently misled by John-Paul II only testifies to the force of the magnetism of Rome which for a crucial period of time he himself had succeeded in overcoming in the service of Catholic Truth.

That something in him never wavered is suggested by the fact that among all the books that he wrote in a long and productive life, the one in which he himself said that he best said what he essentially wanted to say was the book we are going to look at in these “Eleison Comments” – L’hérésie du vingtième siècle, The Heresy of the 20th Century. It first appeared in 1968, in other words in the thick of the controversy swirling around Vatican II. It contains a Prologue and six Parts, making perhaps seven issues of these “Comments,” because the book is a classic, even if it has not had many – or any – translations.

It is a classic because it takes a thomistic philosopher to take modernism to the cleaners – how does one analyse a fog? – and Madiran was a thomistic philosopher. But not just any thomistic philosopher, because the mass of Vatican II bishops had been drilled at their seminary or Congregation in the principles of the philosophy of St Thomas Aquinas. But they had not learned or understood how those principles apply to reality. This is because it is relatively easy to teach that philosophy like a coherent telephone book. Catholic pupils are docile and they drink it all in, without necessarily grasping that it is the one and only possible account of the one and only reality around us. But who can teach reality to pupils born in central heating and suckled on television? Madiran was of an earlier generation, which helps, but even then, to see modernism as clearly as he did, he needed a special grace of realism, like Pius X de Corte, Calderón and a select few others.

Fasten your seat-belts. Madiran is worth it. Next week perhaps, his Foreword.

Kyrie eleison.

Drexel’s Bishops

Drexel’s Bishops posted in Eleison Comments on August 1, 2020

Having reminded ourselves last week (EC of July 18, 2020) of how well the Messages from the 1970’s of Fr. Drexel’s Faith is greater than Obedience still fit the situation of Catholics in the 2020’s, let us see what view these Messages took of the Church’s pivot between Pope and priests, namely the bishops. These Messages are very severe for the clergy that virtually abandoned their flocks in the wake of Vatican II, especially for the bishops who had handed over their God-given responsibilities to man-made Bishops’ Conferences (see July 5, 1974 below. Two years later Archbishop Lefebvre was “hated and ridiculed”) . . .

December 3, 71 But the greatest pain to My Heart was given by those who should be shepherding the faithful – and these are the bishops, who have become silent, indifferent and cowardly. Not only a few, but many of them, are afraid of men and are far from the fear of God. This is the reason why the wolves were able to break into the flock, bringing such confusion and devastation and destruction upon the Church. Indeed, they try to wreck and smash the rock of My Church, but millions of souls, of immortal souls, are being lost. For these souls, those apostate shepherds and tepid bishops must render an account before My eternal Judgment! Once I wept over Jerusalem and over the people of this city and over their priests and high-priests; and still their sin was not as great as the sin of those who, in the Church of today, instead of being leaders become seducers, instead of shepherds become mercenaries, instead of counsellors become traitors. But there are certainly also true shepherds of souls and vigilant bishops, who stand with firmness and charity alongside the successor of Peter.

August 4, 72 While My son Paul ( . . . ) receives with great sorrow the news about priests who abandon their flocks, their vocation, and their office, and he entreats these fugitives and faint-hearted ones, nevertheless his grief is greater over the many shepherds (bishops) who, by virtue of their office and vocation, are obliged to assist with clearness and firmness the head, leader, and father of all the faithful, and to respect his instructions. But instead they lead a comfortable life, and because of laziness and cowardice, they omit being vigilant in their parishes and omit taking care of the faith with great, rigorous attention for the maintenance of discipline and the preservation of the faith.

December 1, 72 So many of the faithful hunger for a good shepherd. Yes, the bishops have been called and appointed as shepherds. But they become mercenaries and wolves, because they have abandoned the road to loyalty. The souls entrusted to them will one day testify against them at the Judgment.

July 5, 74 The distress of souls cries to Heaven; in the meantime , unasked persons take power in the Church and in meetings, and all this is happening because of the bishops, who do not stop them, and who do not set up boundaries.

November 1, 74 Consider: A great confusion has pierced My one and true Church. Books filled with false statements and heresies are accepted by bishops, who are supposed to be shepherds, while writings that tell the truth are rejected by the Church’s representatives, so great has become the confusion!

February 7, 75 Some of the shepherds and guardians who have been anointed ( . . . ) have abandoned the faith and give freedom to heresies. ( . . . ) Oh, would that all of those shepherds might understand what responsibility they carry and how much this responsibility is increasing upon them, because those who still believe and pray do not find protection any more.

July 2, 76 Why are there not guards, who protect the faith any more, and consequently the faithful people, the youth and the children, from having their souls murdered? But those who stand up against the damaging of the faith are persecuted, and their serious and heavy sorrows are exposed to hate and ridicule.

Kyrie eleison.

Admirable Reorientation

Admirable Reorientation posted in Eleison Comments on June 20, 2020

Here is a summary of the June 9 public letter of Archbishop Viganò on the Second Vatican Council:—

Bravo, Bishop Schneider, for your recent essay on the Council and its false religious liberty. People talk of “the Spirit of the Council.” But when was there talk of “the Spirit of Trent,” or of any other Catholic Council? There never was, because all other Councils simply followed the spirit of the Church. However, the good Bishop should beware of exaggerating “errors” that needed “correcting” in past teachings of the Church, because whatever these may have been, they were nothing like what the Second Vatican Council did, which was comparable (even in content) with the Council of Pistoia (A.D. 1786), later condemned by the Church.

At Vatican II, many of us were fooled. In good faith, we made too many allowances for the supposed good intentions of those promoting an ecumenism which turned later into false teaching on the Church. Today many Catholics no longer believe that there is no salvation outside the Catholic Church, and it is in the texts of Vatican II that the ambiguities are to be found which opened the way to this undermining of the Faith. It began with inter-religious meetings, but it is due to end in some universal religion from which the one true God will have been banished. This was all planned long ago. Numerous errors of today have their roots in Vatican II, to the texts of which it is easy to trace back today’s multiple betrayals of truly Catholic belief and practice. Vatican II is now used to justify all aberrations, whereas its texts prove uniquely difficult to interpret, and they contradict previous Church Tradition in a way no other Church Council has ever done.

I confess serenely now that I was at the time too unconditionally obedient to the Church authorities. I think that many of us could not then imagine the Hierarchy being unfaithful to the Church, as we see now especially in the present Pontificate. With the election of Pope Francis, at last the conspirators’ mask came off. They were finally free from the philo-Tridentine Benedict XVI, free to create the Newchurch, to replace the old Church with a Masonic substitute for both the form and substance of Catholicism.

Democratisation, synodality, women priests, pan-ecumenism, dialogue, demythologising the Papacy, the politically correct, gender theory, sodomy, homosexual marriage, contraception, immigrationism, ecologism, – if we cannot recognise how all these have their roots in Vatican II, there will be no cure for them.

Such a recognition “requires a great humility, first of all in recognizing that for decades we have been led into error, in good faith, by people who, established in authority, have not known how to watch over and guard the flock of Christ.” Those shepherds who in bad faith or even with malicious intent betrayed the Church, must be identified and excommunicated . We have had far too many mercenaries, more concerned with pleasing Christ’s enemies than with being faithful to His Church.

“Just as I honestly and serenely obeyed questionable orders sixty years ago, believing that they represented the loving voice of the Church, so today with equal serenity and honesty I recognize that I have been deceived.” I cannot now persevere in my error. Nor can I claim that I saw clear from the start. We all knew that the Council was more or less a revolution, but none of us imagined just how devastating it would be. We could say that Benedict XVI slowed it down, but the Pontificate of Francis has proved beyond all possible doubt that among the shepherds at the top of the Church there is sheer apostasy, while the sheep below are abandoned and virtually scorned.

The Declaration of Abu Dhabi (“God is pleased with all religions”) was unforgivable for a Catholic. True charity does not compromise with error. And if one day Francis refuses any longer to play the game, he will be removed, just like Benedict XVI was removed, and replaced. But the Truth remains and will prevail: “Outside the Catholic Church there is no salvation.”

Kyrie eleison.

Modernism’s Malice – V

Modernism’s Malice – V posted in Eleison Comments on June 13, 2020

There is at least one more important consideration to be presented before we leave modernism alone (at least for the time being), and it is a prophecy of Fr Frederick Faber (1814–1863), concerning our own times, which has surely appeared already more than once in these “Comments.” He said words to the effect that the end of the world will be characterised by men doing evil while they think they are doing good.

It stands to reason. Even at world’s end men will still have their God-given nature, which as such is good, underlying their original and personal sins, however heavy these are in the last times – II Tim. III, 1–5. By this underlying nature which underlies even their inborn original sin, men have an underlying natural inclination to good. Yet the mass of men under the Antichrist and his predecessors will have gone along with his evil, actual or anticipated. How will this good and this evil have been compatible inside them?

The human will can want nothing that the human mind has not first presented to it. In front of every human desire must go a human thought. The desire of a non-object can only be a non-desire. Therefore the will depends on the mind to have grasped its object for it, and between every will and the object it wants must have come the mind, always assuming that the mind grasps its own object. But now comes Kant who says that the mind cannot grasp its own real object, it can only grasp what it itself fabricates. This means that the will and its real object are no longer properly connected. This means that a good will can will things in reality bad and a bad will can will something in reality good, but given men’s original sin the latter case will be less frequent. And so when Kant unhooks the mind from objective reality, he is making it that much easier for the will to want something bad while it appeared to be good. Thus in today’s whole world of minds unhooked from objective reality, it is that much easier for men still to be of good will even when they are wanting what is in reality not good, because the mind has been radically crippled.

Here is what Fr Faber is prophesying. He is saying that by the end of the world, the problem need not be so much bad hearts or ill-will as good hearts with crippled minds, in other words good hearts with bad principles. What does this mean in practice? It means that today there will be a large number of Catholics who can have the Faith and who mean well, but whose minds are malfunctioning because they follow, consciously but more often unconsciously, the teaching of Kant, so that their good will is correspondingly adrift. Then they can no longer see how the Newchurch is a gangrene upon the true Catholic Church, or how the Archbishop’s Society of St Pius X is being gangrened by his successors. But in many cases the blindness of such souls is not necessarily out of malice or a lack of good will.

It follows that in dealing with such souls in which the subjective has been split from the objective by a whole world crippled by Kant, a Catholic can easily make one of two opposed but connected errors. Either he can say that such souls are so innocent of heart that they cannot be mistaken in mind, so the Newchurch cannot be all that mistaken, and so he should rejoin it, Pachamama and all – thus behave today the Newsociety’s leaders and all those following them. Or he can say that the errors in the mind of the Newchurch and the Newsociety wishing to rejoin it are so grave that they cannot possibly be the true Church or the true Society, and both must be absolutely shunned – thus argue and behave those known as sedevacantists and those who may refuse the label of sedevacantism but take sedevacantist positions.

On the contrary, if I recognise how Kant began the split of subject from object, I will say neither that such souls are of good will and therefore their doctrine is good, nor that their doctrine is so false that they must be of bad will. Instead I will say that subjectively they may be of good will, but in any case they are objectively of such bad doctrine that for my eternal salvation I cannot follow them or keep them company. And with the Holy Rosary I will beg Our Lady to keep my heart and mind balanced in truth.

Kyrie eleison.