resistance

CHARITY 2025

CHARITY 2025 on January 11, 2025

If Catholics practised charity, every foe 

Would be, without a drop of blood, struck low.

About one month ago a priest of the Catholic “Resistance” in France, Fr. Matthew Salenave, another refugee from the SSPX, penned a wise portrait of the state in which the Catholic Church finds itself today. Previously he had written in public somewhat critically of the state of the Newsociety of St Pius X as having slidden from what it used to be when it was founded and led by Archbishop Lefebvre. With the text that follows he wrote that he wished to add a few “more positive and encouraging considerations.” He continued –  

“. . . . If God allows for a priestly operation to slide, that does not mean He wishes to abandon His Church or the souls redeemed by His Precious Blood. That is why alongside the sad deterioration of the Society of St Pius X He has been raising up for at least the last 10 years a number of strongholds, a variety of little fortresses of the Faith. They do not necessarily all share the same point of view or show the same firmness in their positions, but for sure and certain they none of them want to go on following the Newsociety in its desire to go back under Roman authority.

Thus we have the Company of Mary with Fr Chazal, the Apostles of Jesus and Mary with Bishop Faure, the Priory of Villeneuve with Fr Pivert, the Dominicans of Avrille, the Benedictines of Bellaigue and various priestly confraternities under the authority of the “Resistance” bishops and different priories . . . all gathered together under the moral and spiritual authority of the seven bishops of the “Resistance.” Obviously, most important of all in this Catholic effort to resist is the Catholic Faith, with bishops in the front line of defence, for that is how the Church continues in its Faith, hierarchy, and sacraments. 

 Each stronghold will have its own characteristics and even weaknesses. One or the other stronghold may even fall to the enemy, as Fr Calmel said about them, but the fall of one or the other will not bring them all down together, as it would do if they were all united in one single organisation of Catholic Tradition. 

 Fr Calmel used to underline also the need for charity to bind these strongholds together. There may well be a certain autonomy to be respected in the case of each stronghold, but there is no less need for them to look after one another, and for them to avoid those ecclesiastical and religious jealousies which have always been a bane of Church life. This situation will not last for ever, but only until the Church regains a perfectly Catholic Pope. Let us so pray and act that God can give us one such as soon as possible!” 

 So why are these considerations of Fr Salenave worthy of recommendation?   In a few bullet-points –  

 * The prime perspective is of God (para 1), and of what He is doing to look after His Church. It is God who allowed the SSPX to flirt once more with the apostates in Rome, partly because their pride deserved it, partly because He needed a single worldwide congregation to re-establish the rights of Tradition, but once that was achieved, He no longer needed a single Congregation that might even seem to replace the official Church. 

 * Thus we have a diversity of Traditional groups (para 2), all centred on the Faith, not on their own glory nor even their survival, but relying on their own bishops for a minimal resemblance of Catholic authority. 

 * This diversity of these strongholds and the unofficial status of their bishops (para 3) are certainly not a normal way for the Catholic Church to function, but in today’s circumstances, of God cleansing His Church, the diversity prevents a joint fall (para 2), and the unofficiality leaves room for God to restore His Church officially and properly, in His own good time, by the Triumph of the Immaculate Heart of His Mother. 

 * Fr Salenave began with the Faith and he finishes with Charity (para 4). If strongholds claim to be serving the Church but have no charity, especially towards one another, they are, as St Paul strongly says ( I Cor. XIII, 1) “as a noisy gong or a clanging cymbal.” Let strongholds realise what example of charity they are giving! 

Kyrie eleison

SOME ANSWERS

SOME ANSWERS on November 16, 2024

The chaos of today is serving to purge

Mankind. Bad men will undergo the scourge.

60 years ago this writer was given by God a real sense of civilisation disintegrating. From there it was merely a matter of time (and grace) before the pursuit of Truth led him to the Catholic Church. The same pursuit of Truth led him at the end of 1972 to Archbishop Lefebvre and to his Seminary in Econe, Switzerland. At the same time he entered the Society of St Pius X which had been founded as a framework of the Church to surround and support the priests that the Archbishop would soon be ordaining. He foresaw difficulties with the official Church in a few years’ time. He was right.

If he was right, how could he envisage defying the official Church? Because the Faith is greater than obedience. Alas, even the successors of Archbishop Lefebvre at the head of the Society that he founded, failed, like the churchmen of Vatican II, to have his grasp of the necessity to “disobey” when the Faith is at stake. Better to obey God than men, says St Peter (Acts IV, 19). The drama of our poor age is that the mass of men have lost their grip on objective truth. As man is taken to be above God, so the subject is supposedly above the object (Emmanuel Kant). This error “liberates” from any objective truth or faith.

What about the Priestly Union of Marcel Lefebvre? It became defunct and was dissolved soon after its founding in 2013, because of serious dissension among its first members. Since then the so-called “Resistance” has not been structured in any way. It is merely a loose association of priests who all over the world see the crisis of the Church in the same way, namely that neither the Newchurch of Vatican II, nor the “sedevacantists” against Vatican II (at least the dogmatic ones), nor the Newsociety following a different orientation from that of its Founder, Archbishop Lefebvre, have the right answer to the Church’s crisis. However, only the true Church’s proper Authority can impose what is God’s own answer, so the loose association of resistant priests waits for Almighty God to restore His stricken Papacy. Meanwhile, “The Shepherd is struck and the sheep are scattered.” Because this “Resistance” is not structured or even organised, it is difficult to tell just how many priests might claim that they belong to it.

As for the Newchurch, “renewed” by Vatican II in the 1960’s, it is surely much further down the path of total destruction than it was in the 1970’s or 80’s. The downhill slide is inexorable, until the churchmen abandon these disastrous principles of the French Revolution and of the modern world which were designed from the beginning by Judeo-masonry to do away with God, with Jesus Christ and with His Catholic Church. It looks very much as though only a severe Chastisement from God will bring the Conciliar churchmen to their Catholic senses. Alas, numbers of churchmen still refuse to understand that the Faith is greater than obedience, because Catholic obedience is only for the Faith. Authority exists in the Church only to protect the Truth from human beings, who all suffer from original sin. “Obedience is not the servant of obedience” – Spanish proverb. Obedience is the servant of Truth, and not its master.

True Catholic obedience presupposes a truly Catholic Pope at the top of the pyramid of the Church’s hierarchy. For such a Pope, God wants us to wait and to pray. We will have him, in God’s good time. If Catholics do see at last the need to return to Tradition, it is understandable if they wish to go further back than the liturgical reform of 1962, but it is not essential. Patience. The liturgy will be properly restored.

Catholics who in the 2020’s realise that they risk losing the Faith if they obey their Conciliar clergy need to do two things. Firstly, pray every day all 15 Mysteries of the Holy Rosary, and not just five. Secondly, to make sure of saving their souls for eternity, they need to find out all about the Five First Saturdays of Our Lady of Fatima, and do them. She will then look after them and protect them from the world, the flesh and the Devil, as only She can. And they will help towards the Consecration of Russia, essential for the restoration of the Catholic Church.

Kyrie eleison.

REASON for the “RESISTANCE”

REASON for the “RESISTANCE” on February 10, 2024

God gave us the wise old Saint He knew we need –

How could a youngster think that he could lead?

Less than one month ago, on January 24, the Brazilian Prior of the Traditional Benedictine Monastery of Santa Cruz, nestling in high hills of Brazil behind Rio de Janeiro, Bishop Thomas Aquinas, published a severe denunciation of a prominent leader who is active worldwide in the Traditional Catholic movement. But surely Traditionalists have enough problems from outside of Tradition without having to fight among themselves as well? Normally that is Catholic common sense, but not if the very basis of Catholicism, the Catholic Faith, is at stake. Now in the struggle between Rome and the Society of St Pius X, never has it not been at stake. Let readers judge for themselves if, as a shepherd of Our Lord’s flock, Bishop Thomas has done anything other than his bounden duty by denouncing this wolf in sheep’s clothing – 

The reason for the existence of the Resistance is none other than Dom Fellay, with his words and actions. His words minimized the gravity of the crisis and of the Council. His actions exposed Tradition to suffer the same fate as the Ecclesia Dei communities. 

Dom Fellay did not speak like Dom Lefebvre. Dom Lefebvre strongly denounced the Council’s mistakes, as well as the churchmen who were the cause of those mistakes. He warned virtually all the popes about their responsibilities. He told John Paul II that if he continued on the path of ecumenism he would no longer be the good shepherd, and in the drawing about Assisi he said, with images and words, that John Paul II would go to hell if he continued to be an ecumenist. He told Cardinal Ratzinger that he, Ratzinger, was against the Christianization of society. The Archbishop denounced the apostasy of Vatican II. ( . . . ) He defended priests and faithful from modernist contagion. He exposed himself to an invalid but degrading excommunication. In defence of France he did not back down in the face of the Muslim danger. He protected us against Dom Gérard’s Roman temptation. He was, in short, like bishops of old: the defender of Christianity and of its basis, which is the faith. He was the man of theological virtues, who sustained our faith and all virtues. 

And Dom Fellay? Did he continue Dom Lefebvre’s actions? No. Both in word and in deed, Dom Fellay distanced himself from Dom Lefebvre. Regarding the heresy of Religious Freedom, he minimized the seriousness of what the Council had said. He did not react to the mistakes like Dom Lefebvre. He did not talk about the two churches, as did Dom Lefebvre. He did not clearly distinguish the official Church from the Catholic Church, but spoke of a “Concrete Church,” confusing the faithful and even priests. What specific church is this? Do we have to be in this church? We are in the Catholic Church. We recognize the Pope, but not the Conciliar Church that Cardinal Benelli spoke of. We recognize the Pope, but not his doctrine or his actions contrary to Tradition. These acts are not Catholic, but anti-Catholic. 

It was under the influence of Dom Fellay that the 2012 Chapter modified the principle enunciated by the 2006 Chapter: there can be no practical agreement without doctrinal agreement. This did not please Dom Fellay, and it was changed. Under certain conditions, the Fraternity can now reach a practical agreement without a doctrinal agreement. It is a legal loophole, opening the way to lead the Fraternity down the path of the Ecclesia Dei communities. He did not go that far, but he lowered his guard, and Rome took advantage of that. Opposition from within the Fraternity Dom Fellay repressed by expelling Dom Williamson and other priests; then he punished others, such as the seven deans who rightly protested against Rome’s marriage document. Dom Fellay disorganized Tradition, walked away from Dom Lefebvre’s line, and made others also depart from it. To resist this departure was the reason for the “Resistance” coming into existence. 

We want to follow Dom Lefebvre in everything, in doctrine and also in practical solutions, because, as Aristotle and St.Thomas teach, the examples of the ancients serve as principles of action. We follow Dom Lefebvre in doctrine and action, especially in relation to modernist Rome, and we do this to be faithful to Eternal Rome, teacher of truth and holiness. 

Kyrie eleison 

World Sliding

World Sliding on November 23, 2019

It is not just the Society of St Pius X which is sliding, it is a whole world that is sliding, within men’s souls. And just as “you cannot make silk purses out of sows’ ears,” and “you cannot make bricks without straw,” so it is hopeless to expect yesterday’s institutions not to be emptied out by today’s human beings, like so many collapsed balloons in which the air has been let out. Here is the interesting answer of somebody who is still thinking, when he was asked what he saw in the future for the “Resistance,” for the SSPX, for the Church and for the world –

As for the “Resistance” there will be no great increase in numbers, no large harvest of souls, because the suitable material is simply not there. How can you make anything Catholic out of people who have little or no idea any longer of true and false, of right and wrong, of what truly needs to be resisted? Truth and right have been undermined, and more and more people have given up believing that they are of any importance, both because man is a social animal that takes his colouring from those around him who have today massively given up on truth and right, and secondly because life is so much less demanding if truth and right are insignificant. I can then go with the flow, and there is nothing I still need to resist.

As for the SSPX, if Bishop Fellay is fearful, his fear will spread to the rest of the Society and from there to the rest of the Church, insofar as the Archbishop’s Society was in its heyday the stiffening in the backbone of the Church. Without that stiffening a soft Conciliarism will prevail, with a hybrid Missal blending the Tridentine Mass with the New Mass, with a “hermeneutic of continuity” blending Catholic doctrine with Vatican II, with doubtful priests and rites making possible an illusory re-run of the 1950’s. And so the Church will end up with nobody still telling the Truth, and the “light of the world” will give out only a dim and optional glow, and the “salt of the earth” will be powerless to hinder the universal corruption.

The world will consequently become more and more degenerate, more and more wilfully artificial, because the Church was the supernatural protector, by grace in men’s souls, of everything natural in God’s creation. And in this New World Order even the remains of the true Church will continue to be persecuted by today’s passive-aggressive intimidation. Beneath an appearance of passive toleration, the reality is one of relentless pressure to conform – “You had better be ‘politically correct,’ like everyone else, or we will make you an outcast.” To this pressure from without corresponds a mysterious weakness within the modern mind which cannot hold on to any truth. The Devil then gets inside at the natural level, and swings minds to the left, away from God, making Catholics doubt themselves – ‘Who am I to say that Archbishop Lefebvre was right? Were his enemies really evil? Who am I to judge?’ And in this state of mind, it is easy to betray . . .

It was the Council of the 1960’s which let loose the confusion in the 1970’s, and it has had another half-century to spread since then, with the SSPX secretly working for the enemy for the last 20 years . . .

This vision of the future is dark, but it is a realistic forecast on the merely human level. Fortunately God is God, He does indeed exist, and His thoughts are not our thoughts, nor are our ways His ways, “for as the heavens are higher than the earth, so are My ways higher than your ways and My thoughts than your thoughts” (Isaiah LV, 8–9). Nor will this God be frustrated by the machinations of men: “The word that goes forth from My mouth shall not return to Me empty, but it shall accomplish that which I intend, and prosper in the thing for which I sent it. For you shall go out in joy, and be led forth in peace; the mountains and hills before you shall break forth into singing and all the trees of the field shall clap their hands. Instead of the thorn shall come up the cypress; instead of the briar shall come up the myrtle; and it shall be to the Lord for a memorial, for an everlasting sign which shall not be cut off.” (Is. LV, 11–13).

Kyrie eleison.

Modern Convert

Modern Convert on October 19, 2019

If anybody is tempted today to think that Almighty God has resigned from governing His Church or the world, there are testimonials reaching the office of these “Comments” which show clearly – at least in this Commentator’s opinion – that the Holy Ghost is still at work. A fallen away Catholic tells below how he came back to the Church, how he then found Catholic Tradition and soon after that the “Resistance,” and what sense he makes of it all. Amidst the confusion and discouragement which we all know, he writes with a remarkable breadth and serenity, surely a sign that he is being led by God.

I am a married man with two girls, one nearly adolescent and the other a baby. It is to my grandmother that I owe my return to the Faith. One day five years ago I was just passing by a church when out of the blue I thought of her praying the Rosary, and I was impelled to enter the church to pray. From then on I began to pray once more and to attend Mass. Of course it was the New Mass at first, until about three years ago when I discovered the existence of Catholic Tradition.

From then my family and I have been attending the local chapel of the Society of St Pius X, where we were welcomed with great joy by the priest and congregation. But I soon discovered that there were many divisions in the chapel, and so you can imagine the difficulty I had in sorting out what was going on. Having so recently arrived in Tradition, I needed a good deal of patience, courage and perseverance in order to hang on and not just run away in the first six months! But our thirst for truth and our search for roots overcame our fear, and so we stayed, thanks be to God.

I understood that the SSPX is truly a holy part of the true Catholic Church of Christ, and that is why I am staying at least for the moment inside the Society, with my family. But I am listening all the time to what the sedevacantists and “Resistants” have to say, in order to continue making up my mind. I have an enormous admiration for Archbishop Lefebvre, a true man of God, a holy successor of the Apostles. To see his Society vacillating under the world’s infernal pressure is very difficult to bear, and it requires of us to pray even more.

Certainly the Society still has a great deal to do, because it can still do much good. So can the so-called “Resistance” which plays, and is right to play, the part of a guard-rail whenever the Society strays off course and totters under the attacks of the modern world and the temptations held out to it by the Conciliar churchmen. I am convinced that the “Resistance” has a vital part to play, and that Our Lord enables it to exist for a great good, even inside the Society although it appears to be outside. Personally I count myself as a firm resistant to anybody who does not clearly attack, head on, the Second Vatican Council which was inspired by the Devil. After all, how can one live as a true Catholic today without resisting everywhere and all the time? So is not being a Catholic here below the hardest and most beautiful thing that there is? Thank you, granny, for praying to Jesus and Mary for me!

In this life we never see God Himself, but we do see Him at work: a grandmother’s prayers; prayer of a soul as its first and most important step; attending Mass as a next step: the New Mass still carrying grace, however strangled the grace may be; the Catholic soul being somehow shown Tradition by God, and gravitating towards it; the refuge in a local chapel of the Society, and the welcome there, only for the next severe trial to begin! Trial overcome by the need for roots and the love and pursuit of truth, which settles down in the mind staying open amidst all the confusion, but anchored in respect for the Archbishop and in hatred of Vatican II, profiting by both the Society and the “Resistance” for what each has had to give him, without excluding either; the recognition that any Catholic must swim against the current, and finally gratitude for how God has led him. Many lessons in not too many words. May God bless the writer, and keep him and his family faithful until death. He stands a good chance.

Kyrie eleison.

“Resistance” Unity

“Resistance” Unity on August 3, 2019

With the purpose of aiming a fire-extinguisher at pride, these “Comments” choose rarely to highlight any achievement of the priests and lay-folk labouring since 2012 to ensure the survival of Catholic principles and practice, especially but not exclusively within the Newsociety of St Pius X, i.e. that Society which is sliding into the arms of Rome. Newsociety leaders naturally condemn the so-called “Resistance” or “Fidelity” movement, pointing out in particular the divisions that have arisen between its various priests. But the time has come to highlight the contrasting unity of the Catholic “Resistance.”

For instance a long-standing observer of the “Resistance” scene makes the following pertinent remarks: The main argument of the Superiors of the Newsociety against the “Resistance” is to point out the divisions between Resistant priests. But while various Resistant priests have a variety of vocational gifts, giving rise to a variety of Resistant works (e.g. a Friary, a Seminary, a Monastery, a Priory, a Mission, etc.), there reigns amongst them all a remarkable unity as to the end being pursued – the survival of the Catholic Faith. On the contrary, the Newsociety is a giant with feet of clay, held together only by disciplinary measures, the fear of sanctions and personal interests, but as to the end being pursued it is highly divided: an Agreement with Rome, or not; marriages under official authority, or not; flirting with Conciliar bishops, or not – the Newsociety is cracking in all directions.

Once again, what we are seeing today is how all Catholics without exception are undermined by the split between Catholic Truth and Catholic Authority which resulted from the conscious or unconscious betrayal of the 2000 bishops and two Popes who engineered Vatican II. Thus in 2019 on the one hand the “Resistance” holding to the Truth suffers outward divisions from the lack of Authority, because the need for authority cannot from below create its reality, because authority can by definition only come from above. On the other hand the Newsociety holding to Roman Authority suffers inward division from the lack of Truth, because that Roman Authority is clinging to the lies of Vatican II.

But Truth is the purpose of Authority, and not the other way round. “Peter, when you have turned again, strengthen your brethren” (Lk. XXII, 32). In other words, firstly recover your own shaken faith in the Truth, then secondly exercise your Authority over the other Apostles. This is because in a fallen world, the inward Truth needs outward Authority to defend it, but if the outward Authority is no longer defending that inward Truth then it has lost its true reason for being, and it becomes an end in itself, ultimately a tyranny to serve personal positions, as with Paul VI and the Archbishop’s successors.

Thus however plentiful be the personal miseries of individual Resistants, so long as they are faithful to the Truth, the “Resistance” will outlive the Newsociety, just as the Archbishop’s Society, as long as it was faithful to the Truth, dominated, and will ultimately outlive, the Conciliar Romans. The ultimate problem is not one of persons or Authority, but of doctrines and Truth. Thus when in the early 2000’s the successor of the Archbishop at that time appealed to Authority to solve divisions inside the Society, he was already well down the Conciliar path of preferring Authority to Truth, of preferring will to reason. As a result, the Archbishop’s Society has been turned into a tyranny, and although the tyrant was apparently dismissed from the seat of power by the election of a year ago, really he is back there. Such is our modern world. Reality gives the lie to appearances.

Kyrie eleison.