Newchurch

New Ordinations – I

New Ordinations – I on May 10, 2014

Should priests ordained with the new rite of Ordination of 1972 be conditionally re-ordained with the old and certainly valid rite of Ordination? Catholic doctrine on the validity of sacraments is clear, but the sacramental rites of the Newchurch seem to have been designed to lead gradually to invalidity (see EC 121 of Oct 31, 2009). The « gradually » is the problem. How far along was that gradual process in any given case? Perhaps God alone knows for sure. But let us begin with the clear doctrine.

One can say a Catholic sacrament involves five elements: Minister, Intention, Matter and Form are essential for validity, the Rite surrounding the Form can be important for validity by its sudden or gradual bearing on the Minister’s Intention. For priestly Orders, the Minister has to be a validly consecrated bishop; the Intention is his sacramental (not moral) intention, in ordaining, to do what the Church does; theMatter is his laying of both hands on the head of the man to be ordained (women cannot be validly ordained to the priesthood of Christ); the Form is the crucial formula or series of words in the rite which express the conferring of the priesthood; the Rite is all the other words surrounding that Form, and prescribed in the ceremonial rite of Ordination.

In a new rite Ordination, if both hands are laid on the head, the Matter is no problem. The new Form in Latin is, if anything, stronger for validity than the old Form in Latin (by the « et » instead of an « ut »), but vernacular translations need to be checked to make sure that they clearly express the grace of the priesthood to be conferred. Most of them surely do. Where real problems of validity arise is with the Minister and the Intention, because of the gradual erosion of Catholic Intention by the uncatholic new Rites.

For, as to the Intention, any bishop today ordaining a priest surely intends to do what today’s Church does, well and good, but what is that in his mind? What is a priest in the Newchurch? Is not yesteryear’s renewer of the Sacrifice of Calvary by the Real Presence being slowly but steadily replaced by today’s co-ordinator of eucharistic picnics? How far along is this process in any given diocese of the world? Did this or that bishop have in mind a sacrificer or a picnicker as being what the Church does? The ordaining bishop’s outward behaviour will indicate his Intention, but God alone may know for sure. Certainly many new Rites of Mass incline towards the picnicker, and the new Rite of Ordination surrounding the Form can only help by its severely diminished catholic content to undermine gradually the sacramental Intention of an ordaining bishop.

And as to the Minister, if the ordaining bishop was himself consecrated bishop with the new rite of consecration, let us assume that the ambiguity of the new Form of consecration is lifted by the words immediately following, nevertheless doubts like those above as to the Intention of the bishop consecrating must arise: did he consider, and therefore have as his Intention, that today’s Church consecrates makers of the Sacrifice, or of picnics? Such questions can often lack clear answers.

In brief, were I Pope, I think I might require that all priests or bishops ordained or consecrated with the « renewed » rites should be conditionally re-ordained or re-consecrated, not because I would believe that none of them were true priests or bishops, on the contrary, but because when it comes to the sacraments all serious doubts must be removed, and that would be the simplest way of removing all possible doubts. Newchurch rot of the sacraments could not be left hanging around.

Kyrie eleison.

Transatlantic Resistance

Transatlantic Resistance on December 7, 2013

From a late autumn journey I made through centres of Catholic Resistance in Canada, the United States and Mexico, it seems as though the Resistance may be weak in numbers but it is strong in the Faith, which means that it certainly has a future. Once more the story of a faithful remnant is being repeated. With God it is quality and not quantity that counts.

Québec, once the most Catholic province of Canada, was devastated by Vatican II, but after the Council the Society of St Pius X built up important Traditional centres in Montreal and in Lévis, near the city of Québec. In Lévis now the Traditionalists are being divided, as souls strong in the Faith pick up on the Society’s dangerous change of course towards the Newchurch. The split amongst Traditionalists is a great shame, but the Faith must come first, as souls can see that are being given the grace to join the Resistance. It has the future that the Newchurch has not.

A major interest for the future of the Resistance in the USA is Fr Joseph Pfeiffer’s seminary initiative in Kentucky, which had six seminarians when I passed through in early November. I admire the fact that Fr Pfeiffer is envisaging a different kind of priestly formation for today’s insane circumstances. Since internment camps have been prepared all over the USA for any “rebels” who will seriously oppose the New World Order, it makes sense to me to be thinking of making future priests learn by heart a catechism and a Bible history, as written for children! For have the Society’s classical seminaries produced many priests strong enough in the Faith to see the need for Resistance? As after Vatican II, how many “good” priests are just following along.

In Texas I addressed a meeting of right-wing patriots who have for many years rallied around the Spotlightnewspaper, now the American Free Press, to defend their country from anti-patriots. By no means all of them are Catholics, but they do grasp that there is a serious problem in their nation’s politics. In any case they listened attentively to the argument that politics are merely a spill-over from religion, or from its lack, and that the only solution is a return to Catholicism.

In northern Mexico a former SSPX priest from Chile, Fr René Trincado, is building up thriving Resistance chapels which I visited in Chihuahua and Saltillo, and it looks as though another major Resistance centre will soon emerge in Guadalajara, a major city which was at the centre of the famous Catholic uprising of the Cristeros in the 1920’s. In fact the Resistance is an unorganised and spontaneous uprising of Traditional Catholics all over the world. Their sense of the Faith is reacting instinctively to the change of direction towards the mainstream Church being imposed from the top of the Society. Unity in a return to that Newchurch is unity in suicide of the Faith.

My last stop was Mexico City, scene of Hernan Cortes’ famous military conquest of Mexico in 1521 Even more deserving of fame is Our Lady’s miraculous spiritual conquest of the land by her apparitions in Guadalupe ten years later, creating a brand-new Catholic country. To this day her shrine attracts millions of pilgrims, and it is the same instinct of the Faith that is enabling another former SSPX priest, Fr Hugo Ruiz, to begin building up what will surely become an important Resistance centre in his nation’s capital city.

In brief, the world may be plunging into chaos and the mainstream SSPX may be giving up on the effort to resist that plunge, but a remnant of souls are realizing what is happening, and they are taking action to preserve the Faith. It may have to go into hiding, but it will not die.

Kyrie eleison.

Real Canonisations?

Real Canonisations? on August 10, 2013

“What do you think of Pope Francis’ intention to “canonise” John-Paul II and John XXIII next spring? Is it not a way of “canonising” Vatican II? And does that not raise the question of authority, given that all the manuals of theology prior to Vatican II teach that the Pope is infallible when he pronounces a canonisation?” Such was the serious question (slightly modified) put to me recently by a journalist of Rivarol. I answered along these lines:—

The determination shown by the heads of the Conciliar Church to canonise the Conciliar Popes demonstrates the firm will of the enemies (at least objective) of God to be done with the Catholic religion and to replace it with the new religion of the New World Order. Thus to a Newchurch correspond Newsaints to be fabricated by a process of canonisation which has been dismantled and “made new.” As is always the case with modernism, the words remain the same but the content of the words is quite different. Therefore Catholics who have the true Faith need not worry one little bit whether these Newcanonisations are infallible or not. They are proceeding from the Newchurch, which is a dummy of the Catholic Church.

But then what is this dummy? That is a delicate question, because one easily gets accused of being a “sedevacantist,” which is a word that nowadays frightens Traditionalists almost as much as the word “anti-semitic.” But what we need is to concentrate on reality by “judging just judgment and not according to the appearance,” as Our Lord says (Jn. VII, 24). We must not let ourselves be misled by appearances, by emotions or by words. Today for instance, are not schools becoming centres of unlearning instead of learning, hospitals places of killing instead of healing, police instruments of oppression instead of protection, and so on?

Thus by what Sister Lucy called a process of “diabolical disorientation,” the churchmen have become agents of lying instead of the Truth. They have allowed their minds and hearts to be taken over by the ideas and ideals of the Revolution, that radical and universal uprising of modern man against his God and Creator. Yet these objective traitors (they can still mean in their hearts to be serving God – Jn. XVI, 2) are still churchmen in the sense that nobody else than they is “sitting on the chair of Moses,” in Our Lord’s words (Mt.XXIII, 2). The Pope is sitting there.

In other words the dummy Church in question is the Church occupied not by men who are not churchmen, but by churchmen whose hearts and heads are occupied by more or less of a new religion which is absolutely not Catholic. But notice the “more or less.” Just as rot does not take over an apple all at once, so the dummy church, or the Newchurch, may be in the process of eclipsing the Catholic Church, but within it are still some bishops, many priests and a host of layfolk who can have kept the Catholic Faith up till now. They are on a slippery slope, highly dangerous for their faith, but one cannot say that they are outside of the true Church. God knows.

So when it comes to the authorities of the Newchurch, I would treat their authority as one does that of a family father who has gone temporarily mad. One pays no more attention to his madness than to be watching out for the moment when it comes to an end, but in the meantime one does not cease loving him or even respecting the authority intrinsic to his fatherhood. So help me God.

Kyrie eleison.

Asian Journey

Asian Journey on June 15, 2013

A number of readers complained at the “Eleison Comments” of two weeks ago on authority being crippled. From its argument that on this side of the “imminent Chastisement” no further Catholic Congregation can be founded on a normal Catholic basis, they concluded that I believe there is nothing more for a bishop to do than to wait for God to intervene. But in that case why did I just spend two weeks in Asia, and why am I now in Ireland? Likewise they conclude that I will never consecrate another bishop. I say – God willing – just wait.

In fact there is a great deal for a bishop to do to visit and encourage souls striving to keep the Faith when Headquarters of the Society of St Pius X is obviously still intent upon taking it into the arms of Conciliar Rome. On June 17 Bishop Fellay wrote to Benedict XVI, “I do intend to continue to make every effort to pursue this path (of reconciliation with Rome) in order to arrive at the necessary clarifications.” And in the same vein, “Unfortunately, in the present situation of the Society” Rome’s counter-proposal of June 13 to his Doctrinal Declaration of mid-April “will not be accepted.” Then it would have been fortunate if the Society had accepted Rome’s terms?

Against this written evidence (made public by Headquarters) of Bishop Fellay’s on-going determination to sell out the Archbishop’s Society, we have quotes of his to the French District Superior that the “unfortunately” he only wrote “for the sake of the Pope,” and to the Carmelite Mother Superior in Belgium that he “never intended to pursue a practical agreement with Rome.” Alas, Bishop Fellay has such a track-record for adapting his words to his audience that quotes like these by no means disprove his intention to sell out the Archbishop’s Society. His astonishing ability to move the mental furniture around in his mind deserves an “Eleison Comments” all on its own, but in the meantime is it any wonder if what is coming to be called the “Resistance” is rising spontaneously all over the world?

Between May 24 and June 6 I visited with Fr Chazal a good part of his flock of some 400 souls, and I gave over 50 Confirmations in South Korea, the Philippines and Singapore. Fr Chazal is a character. He has brilliant insights and is very funny into the bargain. If ever you meet him, ask him to do his imitation of an Indian politician (he says the Indians are tough, and “can take it”).

In South Korea the Society’s change of direction caused a harsh split, with the result that the donor of the original chapel merely donated another. I had the pleasure of performing the marriage of the donor’s daughter. In the Philippines, just as I arrived, an older priest who fled the Newchurch years ago to work with the Society was fleeing the Newsociety to work with the Resistance. He looks like being entrusted with the beginnings of a seminary which Fr Chazal wants to launch, and he will in addition have his work cut out for him in centres throughout the central Philippines. In Singapore, a show-case in the East of Western-style materialism, still a good Chinese family with their friends have a firm grip on the change from the Society to the Newsociety. Truth will undermine this ExSPX, as Fr Chazal calls it, just as truth is undermining the Newchurch of the Novus Ordo.

Here are many souls to sustain on their way to Heaven. Do I have any candidates offering themselves for consecration as bishops?

Kyrie eleison.

More Encouragement

More Encouragement on May 11, 2013

The news from a one-week visit to Germany, France and Switzerland is encouraging. Certain leaders might do well to remember the famous words of Abraham Lincoln: “You can fool some of the people all the time, all the people some of the time, but not all the people all the time.” Fewer people all the time are being fooled by what is happening within the Newsociety of St Pius X.

The journey began in Germany where some people feared I might run into difficulties, but for four days I was not troubled in any way. A good young layman picked me up at Frankfurt’s huge railway station and drove me north to Brilon Wald to meet the half dozen Carmelite Sisters who have become famous throughout the world of Catholic Tradition for having separated themselves, for all the right reasons, from the SSPX in its present state. They are clear in mind, resolute and cheerful. As Mother Superior told me, their greatest sorrow is that for over 20 years no novice has persevered with them. The Carmelite Sisters are not being expelled from their present convent, as has been feared, but they are hoping to move south for greater local support. May God be with them. Their prayers are precious to all of us.

Then I was driven back south of Frankfurt to address a private meeting of some two dozen adults, mostly men, in a countryside setting. They listened attentively in the afternoon to an in-depth analysis of the background crisis of the New World Order and the Newchurch, and on the following morning to a presentation of the foreground problems in the Newsociety. There were plenty of good questions and a good deal of hearty singing from the compatriots of Beethoven. The springtime birds in the German trees were given a good run for their money!

Further south, in Munich, I met with an old friend and the two lawyers who will be going to bat for me at my fifth trial for denying the “Holocaust,” due to take place in Regensburg in September. They are well aware that national politics make a just verdict at the regional level virtually impossible, but they will do their best. Precisely because the Six Million serve as a substitute Redeemer in millions of minds, I had no scruple in remunerating the lawyers from the St Marcel Initiative, but its funds are being depleted. Thank you for all and any help.

Then to the Black Forest in southwest Germany, where there is another community of half a dozen Sisters, likewise cheerful and resolved not to follow the present misdirection of the SSPX. Founded in 1988, they have recently finished building and decorating a beautiful chapel with some two dozen choir-stalls “as a sign of hope,” their chaplain told me. Girls, if you think you may have a vocation, here are two firmly anti-modern convents in Germany that you can try.

Lastly, one night in Switzerland, close but unknown to Écône, where they may have learned only afterwards that I passed by to meet a group of good layfolk. And one night in Paris where I learned to my delight that many SSPX priests in France have lost all trust in the present management of the SSPX. Let us be patient. Almighty God is fooled by none of us.

My next engagement is in London on May 19, when I should be addressing British Friends of Palestine on Hamlet. Why? In that play Shakespeare cries out with pain at the loss of England’s soul. Were England still Catholic, not only Palestine but the whole world would be better off.

Kyrie eleison.

Resistance Rising

Resistance Rising on April 20, 2013

Another three-week journey on the western side of the Atlantic Ocean has just given me to see that the resistance to the collapse of the Society of St Pius X into the embrace of apostate Rome is rising, more in quality than in quantity (but Catholic quantity follows Catholic quality, and not the other way round). Traditionalists have been deliberately kept in the dark as to what is going on between the Society and Rome, but as they find out just how the true Catholic religion is being endangered, so a number of good men are reacting with seriousness and resolution.

I visited first of all Fr Jahir’s community of some dozen religious in northern Brazil, behind the city of Salvador where Fr Jahir was a parish priest for many years. Having fled the Newchurch, he sees the situation of the Newsociety very clearly. He has founded his own community in the true Faith, and it is easy to imagine several of his men becoming in a few years’ time valiant priests who will hold that Faith. I gave to one of them Tonsure and the first two Minor Orders, and then headed south to visit another Brazilian priest becoming famous for his staunch adherence to Tradition, as Archbishop Lefebvre understood it.

The Benedictine Dom Thomas is Prior of the Monastery in the mountains near Nova Friburgo behind Rio de Janeiro. It was founded in the 1980’s by Dom Gérard as an offshoot from the Traditional Benedictine Monastery which Dom Gérard had also founded in France in the 1970’s, with the encouragement and support of Archbishop Lefebvre. However, when the Archbishop consecrated bishops in 1988, Dom Gérard broke with him, took his monastery into the Newchurch, and crossed the ocean to do the same with the Brazilian monastery.

Here he ran into the resistance of Dom Thomas, who was still only a young monk, but who before becoming a monk had learned in depth from a famous Brazilian lay Catholic, Gustavo Corçâo, the wrongness of the Newchurch. With help from good laymen and with the support of Archbishop Lefebvre, Dom Thomas stood up to Dom Gérard and saved the Monastery for Tradition. With such a clash behind him it is not surprising that Dom Thomas also sees very clearly the situation both of the Newchurch and of the Newsociety. In a tent set up outside the small Monastery church for the extra visitors to the Holy Week ceremonies, we celebrated with few priests but with all the essentials the Maundy Thursday Consecration of Holy Oils. These the Monastery can now supply for this year to priests in particular whose supply could be cut off by the Newsociety.

Then I flew north to visit three more centres of the Resistance being launched in the USA by the brave Frs Joseph Pfeiffer and David Hewko. Near Connecticut, in New Jersey and in Minnesota I was able to give Confirmations and conferences to Catholics suspicious of what is going on in the Newsociety. They had good questions, deserving of truthful answers.

Good news for benefactors in Euroland: the St Marcel Initiative has at last a RIB and an IBAN, based in France, to facilitate donations in euros to the St Marcel Initiative. To make a bank transfer from inside France use the following RIB: [write to letters@eleisoncomments.com for the number]; from outside France use the following IBAN: [write to letters@eleisoncomments.com for the number]. The St Marcel Initiative has just been able to give a little serious aid, much needed, to Dom Thomas’ Monastery. He thanks all of you who have contributed to the Initiative.

Kyrie eleison.