Tag: resistance

REASON for the “RESISTANCE”

REASON for the “RESISTANCE” posted in Eleison Comments 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 posted in Eleison Comments 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 posted in Eleison Comments 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 posted in Eleison Comments 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.

“Resistance” Acting?

“Resistance” Acting? posted in Eleison Comments on October 20, 2018

This time it is a grandmother who writes to “Eleison Comments” with a concern which is widely shared among readers and friends who sympathise in general with the aims of the “Resistance” movement, but wonder what it is actually doing today to help their situation. Here is her plea, slightly summarised:—

I am very disappointed in the lack of leadership which is being shown today in the Society and the Resistance. We support the Resistance but we hear nothing about what it is doing. You have recently consecrated three Bishops but what is their function? What are they doing to give some comfort and hope to the faithful? We don’t hear anything about them either. Can they not form some sort of opposition to the Society, together with some very solid priests that have left the Society? Surely God is looking for something more than just prayers. Years ago He raised up the Archbishop to protect His Church. Is He now going to leave us faithful followers in the lurch? I think many Traditional Catholics are desperately looking for some strong leadership today, whether in the Society or in the Resistance.

Dear Grandmother,

Let me begin to answer with a famous episode from Roman history before Christ. In 216 BC the Roman army, normally unbeatable, went to fight the Carthaginians led by Hannibal who had invaded Italy and were threatening the very city of Rome. But at the battle of Cannae in south Italy the Romans allowed themselves to be out-manoeuvred and surrounded by Hannibal, so that they were slaughtered by the Carthaginians. There was consternation in Rome. What should they do? Some Romans wanted to raise another army and go after Hannibal again, but the advice of the Consul Fabius was to avoid battle if possible, and instead, while keeping a close watch on the enemy, nevertheless to wait until he would go home on his own. The advice was good, and it was followed. Eventually the Carthaginians went home, where their army was crushed by the Romans fourteen years later. “Fabius the Delayer” had won.

No comparisons work perfectly. So after the Church’s crushing defeat at Vatican II (1962-1965), would anybody say that Archbishop Lefebvre was wrong to have raised a few years later what army he could to go on fighting the modernists? Surely not. But Vatican II was a major battle which left enough good soldiers scattered around for the Archbishop to be able to rally them together in a small army in the 1970’s. On the contrary, the defeat of that army from 2012 onwards was a numerically small defeat, leaving far fewer scattered soldiers to fight. Could the strategy be the same as in the 1970’s and 1980’s? Surely not. For one thing, the soldiers this time round, often children of the revolutionary 1960’s or later, had that much less sense of obedience or of an ordered Church or world than the scattered Catholics had had after the Council. For who can deny that the 2010’s are far more disordered and undisciplined even than the 1970’s? One may wonder if the Archbishop, with all his gifts, could or would have put together a “counter-Society” today. Perhaps, perhaps not…

As it is, the four bishops of the “Resistance” movement do what they can, each in his own part of the world, to provide the few Catholics wishing to keep the Faith with iron rations of sane doctrine and guidance available to all interested, together with the episcopal sacraments. That is a minimal achievement, neither glamorous nor sensational, but it may be the essential necessary. If it is, may God keep us faithful.

Kyrie eleison.

Whither, “Resistance” ? – II

Whither, “Resistance” ? – II posted in Eleison Comments on September 8, 2018

When John-Paul II became Pope in 1978, a number of Catholics were genuinely hopeful that the situation in the Church would get better than it had been under Paul VI, but I can remember Archbishop Lefebvre saying that if John-Paul II did not clean house in Rome within the first six months of his pontificate, he would not be able to break with the policies established in Rome by Paul VI. Similarly, if Fr. Pagliarani does not clean house soon at the top of the Society, the followers around him of Bishop Fellay are liable to hinder him from making any significant change in the disastrous policies of his predecessor. The rot that started with GREC in the 1990’s has had time to put down some deep roots.

Therefore if anyone is concerned about the future of the “Resistance,” on the grounds that the Society is coming back on track with the new Superior General so that the “Resistance” will no longer be necessary, the first part of the answer is that it is not yet certain that the Society is coming back on track. We must wait and see. Fr Pagliarani is a good man, he surely means well, and we pray for him, but if he chooses first and foremost to unite liberals and anti-liberals within the Society by means of human and political compromises, he will never save the Society from its present downward slide. Our faith is our victory over the world, says St John (I Jn. V, 4), and not our politics. Therefore the “Resistance,” that small and scattered group of bishops, priests and laity doing what they can to resist disastrous politics of Rome and Menzingen, cannot yet give up resisting, however disorganised they are, however ineffective they may seem. Somebody in the Church must fight for what Archbishop Lefebvre fought for.

For indeed, secondly, imagine a convert being led by the grace of God, even today, to the Catholic Faith. By its very principles it must be incarnate somewhere. He may well not find it in the antics of the Novus Ordo. He turns away from the Conciliar Church towards Tradition. He finds the Society of St Pius X, but then discovers that it is going Conciliar. Where does he turn to next? If there is no “Resistance,” he risks giving up on the Incarnate Christ. Somebody in the Church must be living by the logic of the true Faith of 20 centuries, otherwise there risk being souls that conclude that that Faith is obsolete in today’s world.

Likewise souls letting go of the Society’s high trapeze need a Catholic safety-net to fall into, with or without the name of the “Resistance.”

And thirdly, there is any number of ways of mixing whisky with water, but they all depend on somebody producing pure whisky. Similarly, there is an even greater variety of ways of mixing Our Lord with the world, but they all depend upon some people upholding in their lives, and not only in their words, an example for all to see of true Catholic living. This function always used to be served by the Church’s religious Orders and Congregations. Hence their importance. After the Council which ruined them, that function was served especially by the Archbishop and his Society. Today from all over the world the reports come in of the fellayised Society giving a weaker and weaker example of Catholic life and morals. Somebody in the Church must give witness by at least striving to live up to the high standards of doctrine and morals demanded of souls by Our Lord Himself (Mt. V, 48).

And a fourth reason for the “Resistance” not to resign or go out of business or give up the wearisome fight for the Truth, is that it cannot do so, because if it did, then as Our Lord says (Lk XIX, 40), the stones of the street would have to cry out. In other words, the Truth may be smothered by all mankind, but it is not men, it is God who is in charge of the world, and God will never allow the Truth to be completely silenced, because that would frustrate His purpose in creating the world, which is to populate Heaven.

Therefore the “Resistance” may tomorrow, or the day after, change form – and in this respect its present formlessness will actually help! – but in some form or other God will make it continue (cf. Is. VI, 9–11).

We carry on.

Kyrie eleison.