Tag: modernism

Modernism’s Malice – III

Modernism’s Malice – III posted in Eleison Comments on March 21, 2020

If there is any one thing that a Catholic priest needs to know and to understand thoroughly today, it is the one key sentence at the heart of St Pius X’s great Encyclical letter, Pascendi, written in 1907 to defend the Church and mankind from the deadly threat of modernism. Modernism is that movement of thought and action by which men give up changing the world to fit Christ and His Church, and work instead on changing Christ and His Church to fit the modern world. And what is the key sentence from Pascendi by which this is to be done? Here it is, from paragraph 6 (or thereabouts) of the Encyclical:

“Human reason is confined entirely within the field of phenomena, i.e. things perceptible to the senses and in the manner in which they are perceptible; it has no right and no power to go beyond these limits.”

In other words the human mind, which in fact is all day long reading behind what appears to the senses, is finally declared by modern man to be incapable of reading behind the appearances! In other words what looks to me like a door might be a wall, what looks to me like a wall might in fact be the door. From which it would follow that I might better try to walk through the wall than through the door! Of course this is such utter stupidity that nobody will be surprised to know that even modern followers of Immanuel Kant (1732–1804) who invented the stupidity, rarely actually try to walk through walls. In other words they succeed in living by not taking their own philosophy seriously. Here is why modern philosophy has gotten for itself such a bad name. Yet the utterly stupid Kant reigns supreme in the philosophy department of almost all “universities” of our own time! How can that possibly be?

Because Kant is the great Liberator. It is he who once and for all liberated the mind from reality. It is he who decreed that the mind is free from external reality because it has no access to it! The mind cannot get to reality as it is in itself, the “Ding an sich,” because it cannot get behind what the senses show to it. No matter if I can only live by assuming 24/7 both that my senses are telling me what is real around me, and that my mind or intellect is capable of deciphering or of “intelliging” what my senses tell me. From Kant onwards, reality around me is of less and less interest. What matters is “transcendental philosophy” as he calls it, i.e. thinking which will climb the heights and plumb the depths of my fantasy quite independently of humdrum day-to-day reality such as doors and walls. My mind has taken off! My mind is free from reality! Henceforth anything I want is “true”! In fact the word “Truth” has taken on a quite different meaning. In fact all words take on a transcendental meaning. Liberty reigns in my head!

Yet if you insist on pulling me back to what you call the real world, then I can still choose to assume, like all poor non-universitarians, that to continue to survive (“ugh!”) in the humdrum world (“ugh!”), it is best not to try to walk through what look like walls, and best not to try eating stones. In other words my mind is transcendentally superior to, and free from, all your base “common sense” (“ugh!”), but I can still operate in accordance with it – when I choose to – for purposes of daily living (“ugh!”).

Now liberty is the real religion of modern man, and it is the apparent religion, that which has all the trappings but none of the substance of religion, in the lives of far too many Catholics. As St Paul says, “In the end times . . . men will be . . . holding the form of religion but denying the power of it” (II Tim. III, 1–5), in other words keeping the appearances but denying the substance. What are such Catholics? They are precisely Kantian Catholics, or modernists, because almost everybody today is Kantian, because almost everybody today worships liberty, and it is Kant who finally gave them the key to get out of the prison of God’s reality and to escape into clouds of transcendental modernity. I can always submit to God again for as long as I choose, but He can no longer keep me in bonds. I am free, I am free, I am free!

The incredible perversity, pride and perfidy of Kant should be coming into view. More than ever,

Lord, have mercy.

Pope Indispensable – I

Pope Indispensable – I posted in Eleison Comments on February 1, 2020

As the years slip by, one after another, without the insane situation of the Church seeming to improve, Catholics who follow Tradition keep asking themselves, why cannot at least our Traditional priests get together and stop fighting one another? They all believe in the same Tradition of the Church, they are all agreed that the Second Vatican Council was a disaster for the Church. They all know that fighting among priests is unedifying and discouraging for the followers of Tradition. Why then can they not forget their differences and concentrate on what unites all of them, that is, on what the Church teaches and does, and has always taught and done, to save souls? This question has an answer, and to help Catholics to persevere in the Faith, they may need to be reminded of it at regular intervals.

Always assuming that this crisis of the Church is nothing normal in Church history but is an integral part of the one and only lead-up to the one and only end of the world, then if there is in these “Comments” a pair of words most often chosen to pin down the structure of that crisis, it is “Truth” and “Authority.” The crisis had its origins much further back than Vatican II, notably in the “Reformation” let loose by Luther (1483–1546), but whereas up until Vatican II the Catholic Church fought to keep the Protestant poison out, at Vatican II the highest Catholic Authority, two Popes and 2,000 bishops, gave up the fight and let the poison in. This meant that the Council texts are characterised by ambiguity, because Catholic appearances had to be maintained, but underneath the appearances the real thrust of the texts, the “spirit of the Council,” is towards assimilation of the liberalism and modernism which followed on Protestantism, and which will empty out any remaining Catholicism as soon as it is allowed to do so.

This means that at the Council, Catholic Authority essentially abandoned Catholic Truth to adopt a doctrine more in tune with modern times. And since Catholic Authority and Catholic Truth had now parted company, then Catholics, to remain Catholic, had – and still have – to make a terrible choice: either they cleave to the Church authorities from the Pope downwards and let go of Catholic doctrine, or they cleave to the doctrine and let go of Catholic Authority, or they choose one of the many possible compromises anywhere between the two poles. In any case the sheep are scattered, through no fault of their own when compared with the fault of the two Shepherds and 2,000 shepherds who were responsible for Church Authority betraying Church Truth at the Council. In this split between Truth and Authority lies the heart of today’s half-century old crisis.

And since Truth is vital to the one true religion of the one true God, and His own authority is essential for the protection of that one Truth from all the effects in men of original sin, then the only possible solution for the crisis that will put an end to the schizophrenia and scattering of the sheep is when the Shepherd and shepherds, Pope and bishops, will return to the Catholic Truth. That is certainly not happening yet, in the Church or in the Society of St Pius X, which is still – to all appearances – striving to get back under the authority of the Conciliar churchmen. (And Archbishop Lefebvre? “He’s dead,” some will say!)

Therefore until Almighty God – nobody less can do it! – puts the Pope back on his feet, and the Pope in turn, “once converted, strengthens his brethren” (Lk.XXII, 32), in other words straightens out the world’s bishops, until then this crisis can only go on getting worse, until we have learned our lesson and God has mercy upon us. Until then, as the English proverb has it, “What can’t be cured, must be endured.”

Kyrie eleison.

Soul Attacked

Soul Attacked posted in Eleison Comments on September 22, 2018

Archbishop Viganò’s revelations of grave moral corruption among a number of the Church’s highest officials, not excluding Pope Francis himself, can be a severe trial for the faith of Catholics who have trusted the official churchmen for the last 50 years because they have not seen – or have not wanted to see – any essential problem in the Second Vatican Council (1962–1965). Three weeks ago these “Comments” quoted words of a Catholic brought to virtual despair, even before the publication of Viganò’s letter, by the Attorney General of the State of Pennsylvania revealing similar Newchurch scandals in that State. The threat now being real of an avalanche of such scandals, let these “Comments” this week show how the Devil is turning his heavy artillery on another such Catholic to make him lose his faith. Here are the Devil’s shells, as related by this soul, with brief answers offered by these “Comments,” in the hope of fortifying other souls whose faith will be shaken in the foreseeable future:—

* In my home city I attended a Newmass celebrated for Sisters by a local auxiliary bishop. His sermon on the Sacred Heart was doctrinally beyond reproach and highly edifying. Yet a friend of mine with his own eyes once saw the same bishop kissing a seminarian! This bishop sets an agonising problem for me – how can he believe in the Sacred Heart on whose love he preaches so well?

He is a modernist, like easily most churchmen in the Church “renewed” by Vatican II, or, as we can call it, the “Newchurch.” Now modernism means adapting the Catholic Church to the anti-Catholic modern world, and this it does by a process of making objective reality depend on subjective feeling. But the process of subjectivising reality can take time, so that a churchman falling for modernism need not immediately lose the objective Catholic faith, even if it is already subjectively undermined in his soul.

It can be God alone who knows exactly when such a churchman loses the faith. So if this bishop believes in Vatican II, he is certainly on his way to losing the faith, far enough to let himself commit grave sin against the Sixth Commandment, but not yet far enough to have lost all notion of the Sacred Heart.

* But in order to destroy Catholic Truth as successfully as the Roman impostors are now doing, they must have known it. If they knew it, they must have known its force. If they knew its force, how can they have ceased to believe in it, unless it is a fairy-tale, untrue like all other religions, with the Catholic Church being in no way superior, and with man having no access to the Truth of God?

To believe the Catholic Faith a man’s mind must accept many supernatural truths which are not unreasonable but which are beyond his mind’s natural reach. To accept and to submit to these truths his mind must be pushed by his will. If his will stops pushing, or pushes in a contrary direction, he can lose the faith. Now modernism is proud, because in the Newchurch man takes the place of God. Therefore the Roman impostors, as you rightly call them, may have been Freemasons or Communist infiltrators from the start, or they may have believed to begin with, like Judas Iscariot, but the pride of taking God’s place and of remaking His Church overcame their wills, and their minds lost the faith. God knows.

* Then might we not be deceived, fighting an endless war for a fragile promise of Heaven, unable to know anything about God? Would we not be better off if God did not exist? Amid today’s chaos, I cannot help thinking that the Church is a purely human affair, so that there are times when I cannot help envying the people who lead happy lives without God.

Dear friend, a happy life without God is an illusion, however “happy” godless people pretend to be. We human beings are all from God, our souls are all directly created by God for us to go to God, body and soul. Today’s world and Church are in chaos precisely because they are trying to live without Him.

* It would appear that we are predestined to Heaven or Hell, and free-will cannot do much about it.

“The poison is in the tail,” said the Latins. This heavyweight conclusion of yours, a horrible heresy, is the proof that the devil is throwing everything at you to shake your faith. Pray the Rosary to obtain the help of the Mother of God. I send you my blessing.

Kyrie eleison.

“Rigged Video-Game” – II

“Rigged Video-Game” – II posted in Eleison Comments on August 25, 2018

The story is told of the great Catholic monarch of Spain, Queen Isabella (1451–1504), that when asked once what she wanted to see in a painting, she replied “a priest saying Mass, a woman giving birth and a criminal being hanged.” In other words, everybody has a part to play in life, and they should play that part and not another. We can only imagine what she would have said about a world in which priests celebrate eucharistic picnics, women freely contraceive and abort, and criminals are sentenced to shorter and shorter sentences in prisons resembling luxury hotels. Today “Nothing is but what is not” (Macbeth, I, 3).

Today many people sense that modern life is false, but few can see why “nothing is but what is not,” or why “Nothing is real, And nothing to get hung about, Strawberry Fields for ever” (Beatles). They observe police oppressing, journalists lying, pharmacy poisoning, lawyers cheating, politicians betraying, women self-sterilising, youth suiciding, teachers corrupting, doctors killing, and so on and so on, and worst of all, priests apostatising. It is not difficult to see around us a disordered world which is the exact opposite of the right order that Queen Isabella had in mind for Spain. But the disorder is so disguised as to resemble in the present the right order of the past, so that few people can work out where the disorder comes from, and many give up the attempt to track it down, settling down instead among the material comforts that it has to offer. For instance many a Rock musician makes good money by screaming at the bad fruits of materialism, but few if any go after its roots, so that most end up as quite comfortable materialists, part and parcel of the falsity that they recognised correctly in their money-making days.

In the words of the old song, “Why, why, why, Delilah?” Because people have so gotten rid of the presence of God in their lives that they have no inkling that His absence is the problem. And if ever they do have an inkling, then for the same reason that they got rid of Him in the first place, they will now look anywhere rather than in His direction for the solution. Yet it was Christ who created, towards world’s end, that Christendom which lifted civilisation to unprecedented heights in the Middle Ages, and of which “Western civilisation” is the Christ-less successor. But, as readers of these “Comments” know, Christ-endom without Christ is “-endom,” better spelt as “end-doom.”

But “end-doom” has to compete with the Middle Ages, otherwise men will want to go back to Christ. Hence the appearances of Christian law, hospitals, parliaments, etc., must be maintained even while the substance is emptied out. Hence over the last 500 years a series of “conservatives” who conserve nothing but the last conquest by the liberals. Hence a long procession of hypocritical politicians outwardly right-wingers but in fact left-wingers, because that is what the peoples want – leaders who will appear to be rendering homage to the remnants of God and of Christ, but who in reality are serving the Devil by making way for ever more freedom from God and from Christ.

Hence the Church’s Second Vatican Council, maintaining the outward appearance of Catholicism even while replacing it with the reality of modernism. Hence the Society of St Pius X’s Chapter of six years ago, pretending to maintain Catholic Tradition even while preparing to subordinate it to Vatican II. Hence the Society’s Chapter of 2018, dethroning the architect of the 2012 Chapter only to reinstate him right next to the throne. Hence a Chapter representing not the reality of the situation of Church or Society, but that which risks turning into another video-game, rigged to tranquillise those resisting the Society’s march towards Conciliar Rome even while protecting that march. Please God, we are wrong.

And so, is there a solution if the whole world is rigging video-games? It is impossible that Heaven could have left us without one. Ever since the Middle Ages Our Lady has given to all of us the Rosary. More recently, She has given us the devotion of the First Saturdays. We neglect Her remedies at our peril.

Kyrie eleison.

How Discern? – II

How Discern? – II posted in Eleison Comments on November 25, 2017

After Joseph’s first question concerning confusion in the Church in general (cf. these “Comments” of last week), his second question concerned the Society of St Pius X in particular. Here it is:—

You wrote last week that judged by their fruits, Vatican II was not Catholic, while Archbishop Lefebvre was. However, in the Society of St Pius X which he founded, there seems to have arisen a new way of thinking which one might articulate in a series of propositions. For example –

1 However badly the Pope and bishops behave, they are still the valid authorities of the Church.

2 Pope Francis may be a modernist, but he still has the power to bring the SSPX back into the Church.

3 The Conciliar bishops are not all bad. They can have Christian reactions, show awareness of the Church crisis, defend Catholic morals in public, call for respect for God in the liturgy, show devotion to the Blessed Virgin Mary, and so on.

4 An agreement with Rome can be envisaged as long as we are “accepted as we are.”

5 We are at fault if we are systematically refusing any agreement whatsoever with Rome.

6 It is more useful to speak of Archbishop Lefebvre’s piety than of his opposition to the Council.

7 Better to be on good terms with the SSPX than to get on bad terms for the sake of fallible opinions.

8 Conciliarists are indisciplined and disobedient. SSPXers need to be disciplined and obedient.

In conclusion, given the complexity of the situation in which Catholics find themselves today, can members or followers of the Society be blamed for thinking along the lines of these propositions?

Answer, it all depends on how much those members or followers know. For instance, older SSPXers knew that the Council was a new religion, and that therefore the Archbishop’s opposition to it was a matter of Faith, intrinsically more important than piety, because how can there be piety without faith? Those veterans of the Society are much to blame (unless and until at last they react in public), because they are allowing what Joseph above calls “the new way of thinking” to take over the Archbishop’s Society, so that Society youngsters have that much less chance of grasping what is wrong with the eight propositions above. A new generation of Society priests is as pious as one could wish, but (always with exceptions) it is clueless as to the crisis now devastating the Church for more than half a century:—

1 True, the Pope and bishops, according to appearances, seem to be the valid authorities of the Church, but their behaviour as to the Faith is so bad that many serious Catholics call in question that validity.

2 Into what Church would the Pope bring the Newsociety? Into the Newchurch? “They have expelled me from the Newchurch?” said the “excommunicated” Archbishop – “So what? I never belonged to it!”

3 Indeed the Conciliar bishops are not all bad, but they are nearly all modernists, which means that many of them have lost their Catholic faith without even realising it. Modern man is so corrupt that when his Catholic religion is made to fit his modernity, he does not even realise that it is no longer Catholic.

4 “Accepted as we are” was for the SSPX one thing in, say, 1987. It is quite another thing in 2017!

5 If only Rome were to come back to the true Faith, there would be no further need for any agreement.

6 Thanks be to God for the Archbishop’s piety also, but by far his most important quality was his faith.

7 “Fallible opinions”? There is such a thing as truth! Has anybody of any importance in the Newsociety actually studied the documents of Vatican II? Do they deny it represents a new religion?

8 SSPXers must be disciplined and obedient to what? To the new Conciliar man-centred religion?

The problem with all of these propositions is that the SSPX was born in the thick of the great war being waged by the modern world on God, but since the Archbishop’s death in 1991, its leaders have lost all effective grip on who is waging that war, and how and why. Joseph, read “Pascendi,” again and again, until you fully grasp it!

Kyrie eleison.

How Discern? – I

How Discern? – I posted in Eleison Comments on November 18, 2017

A young man with a good mind is asking a good question about the crisis in the Church, and another good question about the crisis in the Society of St Pius X. Here is how Joseph frames his first question:—

On the one hand the Conciliar crisis was one is a series of crises afflicting the Church, such as Protestantism, Liberalism, and Revolutions, with two World Wars, and therefore errors made their way at the Council which were clearly condemned by the Church before Vatican II. And after the Council its novelties were applauded by classical enemies of the Church, such as Freemasons and Socialists, while the Church’s missionary spirit has clearly been extinguished. On the other hand the ideas of the Council are the work of highly intelligent and supposedly Catholic churchmen, and one cannot all the time say that the Pope is not Pope, or that the majority of modernist Bishops are invalidly consecrated. Therefore can one say that the Conciliar crisis involves shadowed areas which still make it difficult to see clear? And if we cannot arrive at definite conclusions, can we be sure we are holding onto the true Faith?

The best reply comes from Our Lord Himself, speaking in the Sermon on the Mount (Mt. VII, 15–20) – “By their fruits ye shall know them.” Obviously Our Lord knew that there would be constant attacks on His Church with repeated attempts of the Devil to sow confusion in His followers’ minds. The confusion that has followed on Vatican II is not different in kind from previous crises in Church history, even if by the defection of the churchmen at Vatican II the confusion today is unprecedented in degree – never before have the mass of Catholic shepherds been so lost, nor therefore the Catholic sheep.

Nevertheless, to find one’s way out of the confusion, the same infallible principle still applies: actions speak louder than words, and the fruits of a man’s actions are the surest guide to who he is and what he really intends. Especially in the case of modernism a man can be deceiving himself as to what he wants or intends, because nobody is so deeply detached from reality as a modernist. “The end of the world will be characterised by men doing evil while thinking they are doing good,” said Fr Faber in mid-19th century. In the 21st century we are at the wrong end of this centuries-long process of mankind deceiving itself as it has turned away from God. Then would God be leaving His sheep defenceless against such unprecedented wolves in sheep’s clothing as modernists are? No, because to judge by the fruits is something that anybody can do, with a minimum of common sense and upright will.

Therefore, Joseph, you observe that today’s Church authorities are highly intelligent men and supposedly Catholic, and you quite reasonably assume that they are the valid authorities of the Church, because even if you know that their fruits are so little Catholic as to make many a Catholic dispute that validity, notwithstanding who else is there who is authorised to speak and act for the Universal Church? But at the same time you observe that their ideas are in line with grave anti-Catholic errors from the past, and that they are now applauded by classic enemies of the Church, such as Freemasons. Arguments on one side and on the other. Doubts and shadows. How do you resolve the confusion?

Answer, by your own further observation that the missionary spirit has disappeared from the Church since Vatican II. Here are the fruits. The Council preached ecumenism ( Unitatis Redintegratio ), religious liberty ( Dignitatis Humanae ) and the relative acceptability of false religions such as Hinduism, Islam and Judaism ( Nostra Aetate ) – how could the Catholic missionary spirit not collapse after the Council? And have not countless monasteries, seminaries, convents, dioceses and parishes also emptied out and closed down since Vatican II? Did new ones open anywhere? Yes, under the leadership of the one Catholic bishop worldwide who from the beginning repudiated openly the Council and all its works, Archbishop Lefebvre. Here were the selfsame fruits of the selfsame Catholic principles, faithfully applied in defiance of Vatican II. Joseph, you need look no further.

Kyrie eleison.