resistance

Fifteen Countries

Fifteen Countries on December 31, 2016

The last day of the year may be a good time to take a survey of the battle for the Catholic Faith in 15 different countries visited in the course of calendar year 2016 by the author of these “Comments.” It is a battle being fought in very difficult conditions, because of course the Catholic Church depends like any organisation on its head, and Pope Francis has been giving all year long the impression of wanting to destroy the Church as it has been for 2,000 years, and to replace it with anything that will please the modern crowds, which means the media, which means the enemies of God. Truly “the Shepherd is struck and the sheep are scattered,” which includes the Society of St Pius X, but let us tell rather how all over the world God is raising up children of Abraham from stones (Mt.III, 9), who if they were to keep quiet, the very stones would have to cry out (Lk. XIX, 40).

In India, a former Society priest and Society seminarian, now a priest, are maintaining the only priory and parish of the Resistance as such on the whole sub-continent. May God be with them. In Brazil, it does seem that the episcopal consecration of Bishop Thomas Aquinas has strengthened the defence of the Faith around his Monastery. Thanks be to God. Mexico has always been strong in the Faith, and it is now the base of the excellent website in Spanish, Non Possumus. In Switzerland a small group of layfolk is happy in the shadow of Écône to learn some of the things that can no longer be so firmly taught in the Seminary itself, as when Archbishop Lefebvre gave so much to so many of us. In the United States where the Society had succeeded in replanting the Church’s anti-liberal doctrine all over the continent, liberalism is regaining lost ground, thanks to the Society’s disastrous change of direction since the Archbishop died. However, the US priests have not yet said their last word, and Fr Zendejas, who was one of them, is bravely rebuilding in their midst.

Two more former Society priests, Fr Chazal and Fr Picot, range all over the Far East and down to Australia and New Zealand. In Korea, a Resistance chapel is maintained in the capital, Seoul, by a courageous medical doctor. In Japan Catholics have been decimated by World War II, Vatican II and now the slide of the Society, but there remain a few Resistance contacts, including one veteran Japanese priest. On the other hand in Asia’s most Catholic country, the Philippines, Fr Chazal has dozens of Mass centres and a seminary which it will become easier to serve with the recent priestly ordination of Fr John, a native Philippino.

Back in Europe, Ireland has a new Resistance priory near Cork in the South, and Poland has a group of Catholics waking up to the Society’s dangerous slide towards Rome, but they have for the moment only one aged Polish priest. Patience. In the Czech Republic there is a parallel group of ardent Catholics, looking towards priestly conversions to Tradition from the mainstream Church. Their faith is strong. In Belgium there is also a strong group in one provincial city, going back to one good priest who many years ago left behind him a legacy of Catholic conviction and piety. In Germany the Resistance is proving slow to take shape because of Germans’ instinctive obedience to authority, but there are stirrings. In Italy also the Resistance is slow off the mark, because the conservatism of Catholics made the Conciliar Revolution tame compared with how it raged in some countries, but Pope Francis may change all that!

And last but not least there is France, which is always a leader in the Church, for good or ill (e.g. either Archbishop Lefebvre, or Teilhard de Chardin). French priests have always predominated within the Society, and they are now predominating in the Resistance, and hundreds of French laity come to regular conferences on the classic anti-liberal Encyclicals of pre-Conciliar Popes. But France as a country is for the moment disintegrating, because the Catholics have no true Pope to unite them, and the citizens want no Catholic King to rally them to the cause of God. However, let us have patience, because God will raise up France again, and he will lift us all up with it.

Kyrie eleison.

Churchmen Aware? – II

Churchmen Aware? – II on November 12, 2016

Last week these “Comments” raised the question whether the Superior General of the Society of St Pius X (SG for short) knows what he is doing when he constantly makes contradictory statements, now in favour of Catholic Tradition, now in line with the Romans and their Conciliar Revolution. At best the SG would be merely a confused and confusing liberal, torn between Catholicism and Conciliarism. At worst he could be a true wolf in sheep’s clothing, using words merely as political instruments to enable the Romans to absorb Archbishop Lefebvre’s once Catholic Society into their Conciliar Newchurch. The Faith is at stake. It is important for many priests and laity alike to see clearly whether the SG is shepherd or wolf, or somewhere in between. See the latest issue of the French bi-monthly magazine, “Sous la Bannière,” for a very clear answer by a Resistant French priest, Fr Olivier Rioult.

He starts out from the SG’s June 29 communiqué which followed on the SSPX Superiors’ meeting held just previously near Écône, and he quotes from it sentences which might re-assure some Catholics that the SSPX is coming back on Traditional track. But, says Fr Rioult, the SG has in the past so often said one thing and done another that his words are of no value so far as truth is concerned. They are, as for countless modern politicians, merely instruments of policy to be used or abused as the occasion requires, in this case to make the SSPX submit to Newchurch authorities without its even realizing what is happening. The proof is in the SG’s actions. Actions speak always louder than words. What the SG really means is best judged by his actions, which work steadily in favour of Conciliar Rome.

Here are some of them – the acceptance of the “excommunications” being “lifted” in 2009; the acceptance of official jurisdiction for confessions, and of official jurisdiction for the SG to deliver first instance judgments of cases within the SSPX; the submission to quoting of names for priestly ordinands in the USA, and acceptance of diocesan toleration for priestly ordinations in Germany. Going in the same direction within the SSPX is his steady demotion or purging of opponents to his Roman policy, and his promotion of docile substitutes, often youngsters relatively unfit for the heavier responsibilities. And Fr Rioult points out that this series of actions is clearly in line with the joint statement of the SG and Rome’s Number Two, Cardinal Müller, issued after their meeting in September of 2014, that they would “proceed in stages . . . taking the time necessary to iron out difficulties . . . with a view to achieving full reconciliation.”

This step-by-step procedure, says Fr Rioult, has the great advantage for both parties of avoiding any clear-cut moment such as the joint signing of a public document which would risk alerting followers of Tradition to what was going on. As it is, the SG’s contradictions create confusion, and if only they are “subtle” or “delicate” enough, put Catholics to sleep who are not watching and praying. Thus the SG’s words are merely laid down as a smokescreen to disguise especially from SSPX priests what he is really up to, because if enough of them were awake and aware, it would be that much more difficult for him to persuade Rome that he could bring the whole Society into the Newchurch, which is what Rome wants, to put an end to the main body of resistance to their New World Order religion. Already in 2012 the SG had the bitter experience of setting up everything, as he thought, for the sell-out, only to have Rome refuse the agreement because at that moment in time his three fellow-bishops in the SSPX were all against it, as Rome well knew. The Newchurch needs to cripple Tradition, once and for all.

Pray for SSPX priests, that they see through the Menzingen mafia, block it, and finally get rid of it.

Kyrie eleison.

Disintegration

Disintegration on October 29, 2016

Things fall apart, the centre cannot hold,
Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world.
The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere
The ceremony of innocence is drowned.
The best lack all conviction, while the worst
Are full of a passionate intensity.

These famous lines from The Second Coming, a poem written in 1919 in the wake of the First World War by the Anglo-Irish poet, W.B.Yeats (1865–1939), come to mind as a possible explanation of how the movement of resistance to the 2012 betrayal of Archbishop Lefebvre’s Society of St Pius X can be so strong in truth and yet weak in unity and numbers. 1919 is nearly a hundred years ago, and Yeats was neither Catholic nor particularly concerned with the condition of the Catholic Church, which did then seem to be flourishing. But poets can be visionaries, and Yeats caught in these lines an essential truth about Western civilisation as it emerged from that war that was “putting out the lights all over Europe” (Earl Grey): the Western nations were spiritually disintegrating in a process uninterrupted ever since.

Nevertheless many Catholics today who wish the Faith to survive are upset by the apparent weakness of the “Resistance” of Archbishop Lefebvre’s own priests in particular to the obvious betrayal of his principles by their present leaders, and they look for an explanation. Some think that the SSPX priests do not take a public stand against the false conciliation of Tradition with Vatican II because they are scared of being thrown out of the Society with nowhere to sleep and nothing to eat. But the priests have to know that there are layfolk who would be glad to support them. A deeper explanation might be that the priests are scared of cutting themselves out of that Society which is both their human family and the framework by which they belong to the structural Church. But again with a strong enough faith they would know that Providence can supply for both needs.

On the other hand if we set the 2012 sell-out of the Society in the context of the double disintegration of the two World Wars, followed by the far more terrible disintegration of the Catholic Church at Vatican II (1962–1965), then we must admire the heroic feat of Archbishop Lefebvre in gathering together flying fragments from that unprecedented explosion, but we can hardly be surprised if the Society of St Pius X should in turn explode from within, or if refugees from its disintegration should have difficulty in re-integrating without. Things have fallen apart, and minds and hearts with them. I think that there is not enough integrity or integration left in hearts and minds for us to be able to think of repeating the Archbishop’s feat. We are nearly 50 years downhill from 1970 when the Archbishop founded the SSPX.

What that means is not that there is nothing to be done, but that what is to be done must be worked out more from God’s point of view and less from man’s. At the very end of the world, God will allow the Faith almost to disappear (Lk XVIII, 8), but there will still be a few souls believing, hoping and loving. In 2016 he is giving us a foretaste of that disappearance, but souls should be able to recognize that they still have considerable freedom to believe, hope and love. And they should be able to foresee that even the most powerful of police states will not have the power to stop them from doing so. Moreover, the more heavily circumstances are made to weigh upon that freedom, the more glorious in Heaven will be the persevering devotion of any soul to God, to his divine Son and to the Blessed Virgin, and the greater will be the merits of that soul. Above all, the greater will be its unstoppable contribution to the welfare of the Church. All is by no means lost, and it can never be lost. God’s Church is not a merely human affair.

Kyrie eleison.

Iron Rations

Iron Rations on October 22, 2016

In military affairs, it is normal for generals and soldiers alike to have in mind rather the last war than the one they are now fighting. Who imagined trench warfare before World War I? Yet by World War II the inter-war development of tanks had made trenches obsolete. Similarly in religious affairs. The 21st is no longer the 20th century. Surely Resistant Catholics since 2012 are unwise to be hoping for anything like the establishment and expansion of the Society of St Pius X in the last century. For example, from two admirable Resistants of today come a general and a particular lament, neither perhaps altogether wise . . .

The general lament is that the “Resistance” is falling apart rather than making headway. These “Comments” often put inverted commas around the word “Resistance,” precisely to suggest that the Catholic resistance to the Conciliarisation of the SSPX is not yet any kind of organisation but rather a vague movement with a precise aim, to save the Catholic Faith, but with as yet little structure to help it to do so. However, let Resistants take heart, because while man proposes, God disposes, so that what can look like a human failure may not be a failure from the standpoint of Almighty God.

Thus in the 1970’s Archbishop Lefebvre proposed to rally half a dozen Catholic bishops so as to throw up a real roadblock in the way of the Conciliarists then destroying the Church, but God disposed differently. In this purpose of his the Archbishop would fail, but in trying he would succeed in building a worldwide treasure-house to safeguard the treasures of the Church’s doctrine, Mass and priesthood for better times. Similarly now there are Resistants proposing to build a replacement for the endangered SSPX, and their apparent weakness (at least up till now) may suggest that any such large-scale replacement is not in the plans or dispositions of Almighty God. However, in trying, Resistants are ensuring (at least for now) the survival of the Catholic Faith, which is certainly a disposition of Providence.

The particular lament is that if only the “Resistance” had schools, many SSPX parents would swell the ranks of the “Resistance” as they cannot now do, because their children would immediately be thrown out of the SSPX schools to which there is presently no decent alternative. But again, we are fighting for the Faith in the 21st, not in the 20th century. Back in the 1980’s there were still enough like-minded Catholic parents and teachers and priests to form that triangular frame within which the children almost have to grow up straight. But today? Today one learns of an SSPX boys’ school that has been in serious difficulties because of an outbreak within its walls of that sin against nature which cries to Heaven for vengeance. But what walls can stop adolescents from getting to know of that sin’s glorification among the mass of their country’s male adults, and of a new word invented to condemn the new vice of its condemnation – “homophobia”? And since when are adolescents not to imitate their adults? In fact, how can anyone run a boys’ school since the invention of the Internet, with pocket access to it? Are Catholic institutions still possible?

In today’s religious war, surely the order of the day is iron rations, meaning the soldiers’ strict necessary for survival, here to keep the Faith. This war must be won in the home, or it will be lost. God gives to parents a natural power to form their children that overwhelms by, say, five to two the power of any institution to deform them, but only as long as parents take hold of their power. A small rudder can steer a big ship, but not if the steersman lets go of it. If parents let go of their children, they cannot blame the world for steering them to Hell. And if any parents have wanted SSPX schools to qualify their children for the world rather than for Heaven, may not here be one important reason why the SSPX has slidden?

Kyrie eleison.

“Normalisation” Illusions

“Normalisation” Illusions on May 28, 2016

Let all SSPX Superiors taking part in their upcoming meeting to consider Rome’s latest offer towards reconciliation ponder well Fr Girouard’s comments on Fr Schmidberger’s recent statement (see EC 457):—

A) In paragragh IV, Fr. Schmidberger says that Abp Lefebvre was seeking recognition even after the 1988 consecrations. He fails to mention that the Archbishop laid down conditions: a total return by Rome to the anti-liberal and anti-modernist documents of Traditional Popes. The same paragraph states that the SSPX did not seek a rapprochement with Rome. That Rome started it in 2000. Fr. S. fails to mention that the GREC meetings, seeking to “normalize” the Society, started in 1997, with the blessing of Bishop Fellay.

B) In paragraph V, the letter states that Rome has greatly lowered her conditions for a normalization, and that it is therefore the right time for us to accept. Fr. S. fails to understand that the lowering of the demands by Rome is because: 1-The SSPX has already been re-branded and is therefore more agreable to Rome; 2-Rome knows that more liberalization of the SSPX will happen naturally after the normalization.

C) In paragraph VI (Answers to objections) # 3, Fr. S. says the SSPX will not keep silent after the normalization. But in fact, they already are doing so! And they have been for years! The SSPX reactions to Assisi 3, to the World Youth Days, to the “canonizations/beatifications” of Popes J.XXIII, JPII, and Paul VI, to the Synods on the Family and the latest encyclical of Pope Francis (Amoris Laetitiae), and other scandals, have been nothing more than subdued and soft “slaps on the wrist.” So it will be worse after the normalization, as the SSPX will fear to lose what it will have taken such pains to acquire.

D) In Par. VI, #4, Fr. S. says we have to make ourselves as useful as possible to the Church, which means the SSPX needs to be normalised, to make the Church better by the SSPX being inside. My answer to this is the same as above in B and C: Once absorbed into the official modernist structure, the SSPX, which has already lost its “saltiness,” will be overwhelmed by bad influences, and its message and actions will have steadily less effect.

E) In Par. VI, # 5, Fr. S. says that the whole point of the situation is: “Who will convert whom?” And that we need to be strong, and we will be the ones converting the modernists once we are inside. This is the same kind of reasoning as somebody who would rent a room in a brothel in order to convert the prostitutes and their clients! It is a sin of presumption.

F) In Par. VI, #6, Fr. S. says that we are not facing the same problems and temptations as the other Traditional communities who have rallied to Rome and then betrayed the fight, because often with guilt these communities started the process, whereas in the case of SSPX, it is Rome that started it in 2000. My answer to this is like in A: GREC started the process in 1997, with the blessing of Bishop Fellay.

G) In Par. VII (Conclusion), Fr. S says that we must not fear, because the Society has been consecrated to the BVM, and She will protect us. He fails to mention so many Congregations and persons consecrated to Her who have perished since Vatican II! Just think of the Oblates of Mary Immaculate, the Servites of Mary, and so forth and so on! The BVM is never going to help those who put themselves voluntarily into an occasion of sin and destruction! To believe the contrary is to mock Her and to mock God! Once again, a sin of presumption! This is not the best way, to say the least, to work at the conversion of Rome and the re-building of the Church!

All that will be left to say, once the Society is “normalised,” is: RIP SSPX, and God have mercy on us!

Kyrie eleison.

Bishops’ Declaration – I

Bishops’ Declaration – I on April 23, 2016

On March 19 a little over one month ago Dom Thomas Aquinas was quietly consecrated bishop for the benefit of souls all over the world wishing to keep the true Catholic faith. As when Bishop Faure was consecrated just one year before, the ceremony was beautifully organised by the monks of the Monastery of the Holy Cross in the mountains behind Rio de Janeiro, in the Monastery’s steel barn cathedral, handsomely decorated for the occasion as last year. The weather was dry and warm without being too warm. St Joseph made everything run smoothly. We owe him great thanks.

There were slightly more people attending than last year, but more of them were from nearby in Brazil. There were no journalists present and the event passed with barely a mention even in Traditional Catholic news sources. Was there a conspiracy of silence? Had a word gone out to pay no attention? It does not matter. What does matter is what Almighty God may be suggesting, namely the survival of the Faith is not right now calling for publicity or for making oneself known but rather perhaps for sliding into the shadows, from which the Church can gently lower itself into the catacombs to wait for its resurrection after the storm in the world, which promises to be humanly terrible, has played itself out.

In any case we have now another bishop, firmly in the line of Archbishop Lefebvre, and on the western side of the Atlantic. Like Bishop Faure he knew the Archbishop well and was a confidant of his. Bishop Thomas Aquinas never worked with the Archbishop directly from within the SSPX, but because he was not a member of the Society, the Archbishop may have felt that much more free to share his thoughts and ideas with him. Certainly he gave to the young monk invaluable advice on more than one occasion, which Bishop Thomas has never forgotten. Believing Catholics are not mistaken – there have been few exceptions to their overwhelmingly positive reaction to God’s gift of another true shepherd of souls.

At the time of the consecration the two consecrating bishops made a Declaration which has not yet had much publicity. It gives the in-depth background of the consecration, showing how such an apparently strange event is not really strange at all, but quite natural in the circumstances. Here is the first part of the Declaration. The second part will have to follow in next week’s “Eleison Comments.”

Our Lord Jesus Christ having warned us that at his Second Coming the faith will almost have disappeared from the face of the earth (Lk. XVIII, 8), it follows that from the Church’s triumph in the Middle Ages onwards it could only experience a long decline down to the end of the world. Three upheavals in particular marked out stages of this decline: Protestantism refusing the Church in the 16th century; Liberalism refusing Jesus Christ in the 18th century; and Communism refusing God altogether in the 20th century.

Worst of all, however, was when this Revolution by stages managed to penetrate inside the Church, thanks to the Second Vatican Council (1962–1965). Wishing to bring the Church back in contact with the modern world that had moved so far away from it, Paul VI succeeded in getting the Council Fathers to adopt “the values of 200 years of liberal culture” (Cardinal Ratzinger).

What the Fathers adopted was the triple ideal of the French Revolution in particular: liberty, equality and fraternity, in the triple form of religious liberty whose emphasis on human dignity implied lifting man above God; collegiality whose promotion of democracy undermined and levelled down all authority within the Church; and ecumenism whose praise of false religions implied the denial of the divinity of Our Lord Jesus Christ. And in the half-century following Vatican II the deadly consequences for the Church of adopting the Revolutionary “values” have become only more and more obvious, culminating in the appalling scandals disgracing almost day by day the pontificate of the reigning Pope.

Kyrie eleison.