modernism

Fairy Tale?

Fairy Tale? on February 4, 2017

Once upon a time there was a young girl (SSPX) who had been very well brought up by her good father (Archbishop Lefebvre). He had warned her about Don Juan (Neo-modernist Popes). For a number of years the girl was serious and sensible, and she resisted Don Juan’s advances. Alas, one day her beloved father died, and the girl inherited his fortune. For a while she remained faithful to his commands. Surrounded by a group of other wise girls (anti-liberals of the SSPX) she continued to administer her fortune by looking after the orphans on her father’s estate (Traditional Catholics).

But time was passing. She was no longer so young. She began to fear growing too old to marry. She was afraid that to card her wool and work on her embroidery she would soon be on her own. Poor girl! She so wanted to be loved, to have her own legitimate children (Traditionalists recognized by Rome). She wanted to achieve more than just doing charity work for orphans. She was bored with her life. She was being mocked and insulted by neighbours who wanted her to get married (conservatives and Traditionalists gone over to Rome).

Now Don Juan had shown again and again how wicked he was, and he had ruined and dishonoured many a good girl (Communities gone over to Rome), but he was heir to the largest family in the Kingdom, with the title of Vice-Roy (Vicar of Christ). After a prolonged study of the girl’s character and virtue, he decided on a special way to seduce her – he would appeal to her highest feelings. So he began by admitting that he was far from perfect, that he had even made mistakes. He even asked the girl if they could meet to discuss things. She used the opportunity to tell him all that she thought of him and his friends (Discussions of 2009–2011). And during all this time (2006–2012) she repeated even in public that marriage with him was out of the question unless he mended his ways.

And then Don Juan had a brilliant idea! He told the girl that she was not like all the other girls he had known. That her stubborn resistance had opened his eyes. That she alone could heal his wounds (the post-Conciliar disasters), and make him change, and mend his ways for good! The girl decided

to get advice from her friends. She gathered them together on her father’s estate (Écône, 2012). Unfortunately for her, she had by now sent away from her the sensible girls that her dead father had chosen as companions for her (a bishop and priests of the Resistance). Her own choice of friends were foolish girls who were drunk with delight at the thought of their friend marrying the Vice-Roy. So they helped to convince her (General Chapter of 2012 and aftermath) that she could transform her future husband, like St Clothilde had transformed Clovis. They told her too that Don Juan’s desire to be helped by her showed that he was already mending his ways!

Meanwhile Don Juan kept the seduction going by maintaining contacts and discussions with the girl and her close friends. So despite the rebukes and repeated warnings from the sensible girls now living in the woods around her father’s stately home, she had made up her mind! She believed what Don Juan was telling her! She believed in the foolish girls’ arguments! Yes, she, and she alone, would succeed in saving Don Juan from himself! How could her dear old father not have given his approval!

Poor girl! She had lost her grip on reality. She could no longer see that the Vice-Roy’s very nature was corrupted, and so he was sure to corrupt her too, and all her future children, and all the orphans on her father’s estate. As for the sensible girls, they were shivering with cold in the woods around the estate where they had been cast out. They wept for the good old father, with lamentations fit to break one’s heart. If only he could come back! Oh dear! Oh woe is us! But the only answer to their mournful wailing was the whistling of the winter wind in the trees. It was night . . .

Kyrie eleison.

Bishop Fellay – III

Bishop Fellay – III on August 20, 2016

Reading the two recent issues of these “Comments” on the mindset which induces the Superior General of the Society of St Pius X to pursue implacably a merely practical agreement with Church authorities in Rome, a good friend reminded me that the ideas driving him were laid out four years ago in his Letter of April 14, 2012, in which he replied to the Society’s three other bishops, who warned him seriously against making any merely practical agreement with Rome. Many readers today of these “Comments” may have forgotten, or never known of, that warning, or Bishop Fellay’s reply. Indeed the exchange of letters tells a great deal that is worth recalling. Here they are, summarised as cruelly as usual, with brief comments:—

The three bishops’ main objection to any practical agreement with Rome being made without a doctrinal agreement was the depth of the doctrinal gulf between Conciliar Rome and the Traditional Catholic Society. Half a year before he died Archbishop Lefebvre said that the more one analyses the documents and aftermath of Vatican II, the more one comes to realise that the problem is less any classic errors in particular, even such as religious liberty, collegiality and ecumenism, than “a total perversion of mind” in general, underlying all the particular errors and proceeding from “a whole new philosophy founded on subjectivism.” To a key argument of Bishop Fellay that the Romans are no longer hostile but benevolent towards the Society, the three bishops replied with another quote from the Archbishop: such benevolence is just a “manoeuvre,” and nothing could be more dangerous for “our people” than to “put ourselves into the hands of Conciliar bishops and modernist Rome.” The three bishops concluded that a merely practical agreement would tear the Society apart, and destroy it.

To this deep objection, as deep as the gulf between subjectivism and objective truth, Bishop Fellay replied (google Bishop Fellay, April 14, 2012):— 1 that the bishops were “too human and fatalistic.” 2 The Church is guided by the Holy Ghost. 3 Behind Rome’s real benevolence towards the SSPX is God’s Providence. 4 To make the Council’s errors amount to a “super-heresy” is an inappropriate exaggeration, 5 which will logically lead Traditionalists into schism. 6 Not all Romans are modernists because fewer and fewer of them believe in Vatican II, 7 to the point that were the Archbishop alive today he would not have hesitated to accept what the SSPX is being offered. 8 In the Church there will always be wheat and chaff, so Conciliar chaff is no reason to back away. 9 How I wish I could have turned to the three of you for advice, but each of you in different ways “strongly and passionately failed to understand me,” and even threatened me in public. 10 To oppose Faith to Authority is “contrary to the priestly spirit.”

And finally, the briefest of comments on each of Bishop Fellay’s arguments:—

1 “Too human”? As the Archbishop said, the great gulf in question is philosophical (natural) rather than theological (supernatural). “Too fatalistic”? The three bishops were rather realistic than fatalistic. 2 Are Conciliar churchmen guided by the Holy Ghost when they destroy the Church? 3 Behind Rome’s real malevolence is its firm resolve to dissolve the SSPX’s resistance to the new Conciliar religion – as of how many Traditional Congregations before it! 4 Only subjectivists themselves cannot see the depth of the gulf between subjectivism and Truth. 5 Objectivist Catholics clinging to Truth are far from schism. 6 Freemasons hold the ring in Rome. Any non-modernists have no power there to speak of. 7 To believe that the Archbishop would have accepted Rome’s present offers is to mistake him completely. The basic problem has got only much worse since his day. 8 Bishop Fellay’s spoon is much too short for him to sup with the Roman devils (objectively speaking). 9 The three bishops understood Bishop Fellay only too well, but he did not want to hear what all three of them separately had to say. Does he take himself to be infallible? 10 St Paul for sure imagined that Authority could oppose Faith – Gal. I, 8–9, and II, 11. Did St Paul lack “priestly spirit”?

Kyrie eleison.

Bishop Fellay – II

Bishop Fellay – II on August 13, 2016

An error is never properly refuted until it is uprooted. In other words truly to overcome an error one needs to show not only that it is an error, but why it is an error. Let us suppose, with last week’s “Comments,” that the June 28 statement of the Superior General of the Society of St Pius X, by looking forward to the Society’s pious priesthood resolving the Church’s crisis of Faith, commits the error of putting the cart of the priesthood before the horse of the Faith. Then let us show that this error has its roots in our age’s almost universal undervaluing of the mind and overvaluing of the will, resulting even unconsciously in a scorn for doctrine (except for the Beatles’ doctrine of “All you need is luv”).

Already towards the beginning of the Statement there occurs a hint of this error when the Statement says that the central principle condemned in Pascendi, Pius X’s great condemnation of modernism, is that of “independence.” No. The principle he constantly condemns as being at the root of modernism is rather agnosticism, the doctrine that the mind can know nothing behind what appears to the senses. Upon that unknowing follows the independence of the mind from its object, followed in turn by the will’s declaration of independence from everything else on which it does not want to depend. It is in the nature of things that the mind must first be suicided before the will can declare its independence. So when the Statement puts independence before agnosticism at the heart of Pascendi, that is a hint that the Statement is a part rather of the Church’s problem than of its solution.

And where does this downgrading of the mind and doctrine in turn come from? Primarily from Luther who called human reason a “prostitute,” and who more than anybody else launched Chistendom on the sentimental path to its self-destruction today. But that took all of 500 years? Yes, because there was natural and Catholic resistance along the way. But Luther was right when he told the Pope that in the end he would destroy him – “Pestis eram vivus, functus tua mors ero, Papa” – A plague to you I was when I had breath, But once I’m dead, O Pope, I’ll be your death.

To this radical and gigantic error of the downgrading of mind and doctrine may be attributed two sub-errors in the case of the author of the June 28 Statement: firstly, his misunderstanding of Archbishop Lefebvre, and secondly his too great understanding of Madame Cornaz (pen-name Rossinière).

Like many of us seminarians in Écône when Archbishop Lefebvre himself presided there, Bernard Fellay was rightly enchanted and bewitched by the outstanding example before our very eyes of what a Catholic priest could and should be. But the backbone of his priesthood and of his heroic fight for the Faith was not his piety – many modernists are “pious” – but his doctrine, doctrine of the eternal priesthood, profoundly allergic to liberalism and modernism. Nor did the Archbishop ever say that his Society would save the Church. Rather its priests were to safeguard the Church’s priceless treasures for better days.

The person who did say that the Society’s priests would save the Church, as Fr Ortiz has reminded us, was Madame Cornaz, a family mother from Lausanne, Switzerland, whose life spanned most of the 20th century, and who between 1928 and 1969 received communications supposedly from Heaven on how married couples should sanctify the priesthood (!). The communications started again in 1995 (!) when she met a Society priest whom she persuaded, and through him Bishop Fellay, that it was the SSPX priests who were destined by Providence to save the Church by propagating her “Homes of Christ the Priest.” With all his authority the Superior General supported her project, but the negative reaction of Society priests made him rapidly renounce it in public. Inwardly however, did her mystical vision of the Society’s exalted future stay with him? It seems quite possible. Like Martin Luther King, the Superior General “has a dream.”

Kyrie eleison.

Academia Diagnosed

Academia Diagnosed on July 23, 2016

When your Excellency asked me as a student of history whether I agreed with you that the agnostic phenomenism condemned in Pascendi is the greatest single clue-in to the modern scene, I briefly concurred. Then I asked myself how men, especially learned men, could ever take seriously such nonsense as the mind knowing nothing beyond the phenomena, or appearances. And I recalled how, after sitting in University classrooms for the past 3 1/2 years, and listening carefully to some brilliant professors who seem to have a sense of reality, and to many who do not, I myself had begun to wonder why some have a great sense of reason and others with the same or similar Doctorate Degrees have adopted such wild and unreasonable ideas. Let me give you the answer of this long-time observer of the academic scene . . . .

It dawned on me after a little thought that the professors who were the most logical were Catholics, because they may be conservatives at best, but they have a realistic view of the world. The ideas and concepts they teach are, for the most part, sensible. On the other hand, the instructions of a majority of professors are muddled, confusing, and nonsensical. They profess bizarre and outlandish ideas and back them up with half-truths. They adopt almost any trendy notion, such as Global Warming or Climate Change ( the new “Evolution”), and present it as truth. Their reasoning behind these notions is pure nonsense and cannot stand up to close scrutiny. I began to wonder, how can such learned men be so ignorant? After much thought I came up with what I am sure is the true answer.

Since the professors who are more sensible are men at least striving to be Catholic, it would stand to reason that they possess something that the heathens do not. Before the revolt by Martin Luther, most scholars or learned men were Catholics who used their reason and possessed common sense, so that most taught and believed the same truth. When Luther ravaged the Church, he also ravaged many learned clerics and university professors. In particular, his new religion eliminated the Sacrament of Confirmation by which we know that Catholics receive the seven Gifts of the Holy Ghost, four of which are for the mind: Knowledge, Wisdom, Understanding, and Counsel. All four are now lacking to today’s agnostic professors. These may be well-educated, learned people, but they cannot use their learning in a reasonable way, or apply it to reality. As Pius X says, they develop fantasies and present them as truths, and furthermore convince themselves that they are brilliant, when in fact they are wallowing in ignorance. They are the 2+2=5 cult! And proud of it.

On this theory, today’s destruction of academia would go back to Luther’s abandoning of the Sacrament of Confirmation, and to Europe’s universities becoming less and less Catholic. Eventually thousands of professors were unleashed on the world of academia who were educated beyond their ability to reason. Lacking Wisdom, Understanding, Knowledge, and Counsel in their highest sense as Gifts from God, they developed in universities the panoply of today’s errors, or “isms.” For instance, to claim that Global Warming will destroy man and the world is sheer nonsense, yet it is taught and believed in modern Universities, as if it were 2+2 = 4. And these poisonous ideas are gobbled up by the wide-eyed youth in Universities, like biscuits at High Tea, especially the idea that Truth is merely what each of us believes it to be, and Reason be damned.

So it would follow that when Vatican II chose to follow in Luther’s footsteps by abandoning Tradition and by so “renewing” the sacrament of Confirmation as to threaten its validity, Catholics too imperilled the Gifts of the Holy Ghost, and lost correspondingly the ability to reason, because Newchurch Confirmation is now meant simply to make them “better Christians.”

Kyrie eleison.

Benedict’s Feelings

Benedict’s Feelings on May 7, 2016

When two months ago an interview given in October of last year by Benedict XVI to a Jesuit priest was published in Italy, some misguidedly “pious” Catholics took it to mean that the former Pope was returning to Traditional doctrine on the absolute need to belong to the Catholic Church for salvation. Alas, the interview shows in reality an unrepentant modernist measuring not modern man by Catholic Truth, but that Truth by what modern man can or cannot understand and accept. In fairness, the interviewer raised four serious questions, and Benedict did not dodge them. Here is another cruelly brief but not essentially unjust summary of the interview, with comments added in italics:—

Q: Does FAITH come through a community, which is in turn a gift of God?

A: Faith is a personal living contact with God, mediated through a living community, because in order to believe I need witnesses to God, i.e. the Church, which is not just a set of ideas (true, but a set of ideas is the very object of faith believed in. Benedict shares in modern subjectivism). Through the Church’s sacraments (in accordance with the Faith’s objective parameters) I enter into living contact with Christ .

Q: Can modern man understand Paul’s JUSTIFICATION by FAITH? (Notice modern man’s priority) A: For modern man, God cannot let most men suffer eternal damnation (same comment). The concern for personal salvation has mostly disappeared (so what? So the doctrine must change?). But modern man still perceives his own need of mercy, so he does know his own unworthiness. In fact he expects a saving love, which is God’s mercy, which justifies him (so man sins, expects God’s mercy, and that justifies him? This is sheer Protestantism!). On the contrary the classic idea of God the Father killing his own Son to satisfy his own justice is incomprehensible today. Rather, the Father and the Son had the same will (but Jesus as God and man had two wills!), and the mass of the world’s evil was overcome as it needed to be by God’s sharing in the world’s suffering, in which Father and Son shared alike (but the Father as God could not suffer, and only as man could Christ suffer! This new doctrine empties out the Incarnation, the Cross, mankind’s sin, God’s justice, our Redemption! What is left of Catholicism?).

Q: Has the Church’s teaching on HELL evolved in modern times?

A: “On this point we are faced with a profound evolution of dogma” (sic! But dogma cannot evolve. As a modern man, Benedict has no notion of a truth unchanging and unchangeable). “After Vatican II, the conviction that the unbaptised are forever lost was finally abandoned” (as though Vatican II could change Church teaching!). But then arises a problem – why still be a Christian (good question!)? Rahner’s solution of all men being anonymous Christians leaves out the drama of conversion (only “drama” – not “absolute necessity”?). The Pluralists’ solution whereby all religions suffice for salvation is inadequate (true). De Lubac’s solution is that Christ and the Church somehow stand in for all mankind, let us say by believing in, practising and suffering for the truth. At least a few souls are needed to do so.

Q: If evil must be repaired, does the sacrament of CONFESSION repair it?

A: Christ alone can repair evil, but Confession does always put us back on the side of Christ.

In view of such an interview, can any one still doubt that the Society of St Pius X leaders are seriously deluded who think the Society can safely put itself under these Romans? From humanism and Protestantism a false view of the Redemption has soaked into modern bones, and from modern bones finally into the Catholic churchmen. Vatican II teaches and preaches a Christianity without the Cross. It is highly popular, but utterly false. May God have mercy on these churchmen.

Kyrie eleison.

Chaos Returned

Chaos Returned on March 14, 2015

A fascinating paragraph from the book Iota Unum, written by the Italian layman Romano Amerio and much admired by Archbishop Lefebvre, has already been quoted in these “Comments.” In the book Amerio takes apart in masterly fashion all the doctrinal errors of Vatican II. In section #319 he writes: (1) If the present crisis is tending to overthrow the nature of the Church, and if (2) this tendency is internal to the Church rather than the result of an external assault as it has been on other occasions, then (3) we are headed for a formless darkness that will make analysis and forecast impossible, and (4) in the face of which there will be no alternative but to keep silence (English edition, p.713; Italian edition, p. 594).

This is strong meat, if one thinks about it. Amerio is saying we are on the brink of chaos, because of course (1) the present crisis is both tending to overthrow the nature of the Church and (2) it is internal to the Church, when the Pope himself is making statements like, “There is no Catholic God,” and “Homosexuals need to be evaluated,” statements whose deliberate ambiguity opens the door wide to the overthrow of all Catholic dogma and morals. But why should (3) Catholic analysis and forecast become impossible, and (4) how can there be nothing more to say? How can Amerio draw such a dark conclusion?

Because Our Lord says, “I am the light of the world. He that followeth me, walketh not in darkness” (Jn.VIII, 12), which strongly suggests that the mass of the world’s population that does not now follow him is already in darkness. He also says to those that do follow him, “You are the light of the world” (Mt.V, 14), which strongly suggests that if convinced Catholics are fewer by the day, then the darkness in Church and world is growing darker by the day. Alright, one might say, but darkness is only a metaphor. Why should Catholic analysis and forecast become impossible?

(3) Because more and more people today are unable to think. Because ever since Our Lord with his Incarnation brought supernatural grace to the rescue of wounded and struggling nature, that nature has no longer been able to stand upright without that grace. So when men turn their backs on Jesus Christ and God, they are undermining their own nature, and they repudiate that common sense with which they are endowed by nature to think, as to the content of their thinking in accordance with reality, and as to its procedure in accordance with logic. They want freedom from reality and logic in order to defy God, by remaking the world in accordance with their fantasy.

It follows that if Jesus Christ came to the rescue of mankind and of human nature through establishing his Catholic Church, and if at Vatican II the Gentiles too finally repudiated that Church, then the process of men tearing themselves and their nature and their thinking to pieces took at the Council such a huge step forward that it is virtually irreversible. Here is how Amerio can see, implicit in Vatican II, a “formless darkness” of which the belligerent chaos of opinions proudly today prancing on the Internet might serve as an example and a foretaste.

But (4) why not cry out in that darkness? Why should there be “no alternative but to keep silence”? Because in a chaotic din the truth simply cannot be heard, except, one might add, by a few souls whom God has preordained to hear it (Acts XIII, 48). These souls are chosen by God, not by men, and they can come from the most surprising backgrounds. They do not like “formless darkness,” and Our Lord leads them to the Father (Jn.XIV, 6). They will be an important help for the Church and a hope of the world.

Kyrie eleison.