Tag: Rome

Archbishop’s Wisdom

Archbishop’s Wisdom posted in Eleison Comments on December 29, 2007

Working through the monthly letters from Winona Seminary between the years of the episcopal consecrations (1988) and the year of Archbishop Lefebvre’s death (1991), I have been reading through a number of the direct quotes from those last years of his life. What clarity of vision!

Here are a few samples from mid-June of 1988, in other words after he had taken the decision to consecrate, but before the consecrations actually took place:

“It is not true that between ourselves and Rome it is just a question of details to negotiate. The basic problem is always there – Rome’s liberalism and modernism. They [the Roman churchmen] mean to bring us and all our works round to the Council while leaving us a little Tradition . . .”

Cardinal Ratzinger [as he then was] “put before me a letter to the Pope that I should sign, apologizing for my errors! But it is we that should be questioning them on their faith! We should be demanding of them to pronounce the Anti-Modernist Oath . . . But whenever I bring up their liberalism and modernism, they never reply. They just persist in their errors.”

“The more you think about it, the more you realize their intentions are not good . . . We cannot put ourselves into their hands . . . We made an honest attempt to continue Tradition under Rome’s protection, but it did not work out . . . They never intended to secure a place for Tradition within the Church. I entered these negotiations” (of May, 1988) because of “a faint hope that these churchmen had changed. They have not changed, except for the worse.” In conclusion: “I do not think one can say that Rome has not lost the faith.”

And by 2007, 2008, have we seen anything coming out of Rome to persuade us to the contrary? If anyone thinks so, let him show us his evidence.

Kyrie eleison.

“Excommunications”

“Excommunications” posted in Eleison Comments on November 24, 2007

As rumors circulate that Rome may soon lift the “excommunication” of the four bishops of the Society of St. Pius X, declared by Cardinal Gantin on the occasion of their episcopal consecration by Archbishop Lefebvre back in 1988, it may be opportune to set the record straight on one or two points.

First and foremost, those “excommunications” were, from the moment they were declared, neither valid, nor to be taken seriously. A valid Church excommunication can only take place either positively (“ferendae sententiae”) or automatically (“latae sententiae”). It is positive, when Church authorities declare by a judicial sentence (in the good old times with a solemn ceremony of “bell, book and candle”) that the offender no longer belongs to the Church. It is automatic, when the offender so clearly breaks certain Church laws incurring excommunication that by his action alone (“ipso facto”) he has put himself out of the Church.

Now in 1988 there was no positive excommunication by judicial sentence or ceremonial expulsion. Nor was there, by Canon Law, any automatic excommunication, because the Archbishop acted for the good of the Church (New Code, canon 1323, number 4), and even if he was objectively mistaken in thinking so, he will still not have incurred the full rigour of the law, in this case excommunication, because he was certainly subjectively convinced in thinking that he acted for the good of the whole Church (New Code, canon 1324, §1, number 8). Therefore there was no excommunication at all.

What Rome did was to declare, without judicial sentence or ceremony, that the excommunications had been automatic, when by Church Law they were not. It follows that the Society for its part cannot ask for the “excommunications” to be lifted by any form of words which might imply that they have ever been valid.

On the other hand any unilateral lifting of the “excommunications” on the part of Pope Benedict XVI, whatever form it may take, would, in his circumstances, be a courageous act of justice. All the neo-modernists would hate him for it, unless they hoped it would help to dissolve Tradition’s resistance, but Almighty God would certainly reward him for his restoring of truth, especially if his intention was upright.

Lord Jesus Christ, have mercy on your Church!

Kyrie eleison.

Agreementitis – II

Agreementitis – II posted in Eleison Comments on November 10, 2007

The argument in favor of the SSPX “coming in from the cold” and “getting back into the Church” can also be expressed in this sort of double proposition: all great clashes in the Church have always finished in some sort of compromise – what other solution is possible for the long-standing discord between the SSPX and Conciliar Rome?

As to the first part of the proposition, one might agree to some compromise if it were not the Faith at the root of this discord. To help out the Pope, or to restore the good name or canonical status of the SSPX, some compromise might be conceivable, but not if the Faith is at stake, because the Catholic Faith is that body of objective supernatural truths without (an at least rudimentary) belief in which, no soul can be saved (Heb. XI, 6).

But is the very Faith involved in the so far 37-year struggle of the SSPX? Yes, says a distinguished German theologian, Professor Johannes Dörmann, who is quite independent of the SSPX. After prolonged and professional study of the complete speeches and writings of John-Paul II, he recognized and declared that “Lefebvrism” was not just about Latin or the liturgy, but about the very foundations of the Faith. Indeed. Being another form of subjectivism, Neo-modernism turns any rock of truth into plastic.

As to the second part of the proposition, there being no other solution possible than some kind of compromise, one may reply that there are problems which man can make and which God alone can solve. An elephant can fall into an elephant-trap, but not by himself climb out again. In Noah’s time, mankind had so “corrupted its way” (Gen. VI, 12) that the Lord God was driven to wash it out and virtually start all over again.

In the Sodom of today’s Church and world, have not merely human solutions been made similarly impossible? When in the troubles of the near future enough human beings get down on their knees to beg the Lord God to rescue them, then through his Mother he will do so. Meanwhile the bounden duty of all Catholics belonging to the “remnant chosen by grace” (underline the “by grace” – Rom. XI, 5), is not to let anything, love of Rome or family or life or whatever, take precedence over safeguarding the true Faith, which is an obedience to, and love of, the true God. Lord Jesus Christ, have mercy upon us!

Kyrie eleison.

Rome’s Mission

Rome’s Mission posted in Eleison Comments on October 20, 2007

It is moving to visit Rome, for its greatness ancient and modern. Of the ancient forum where Cicero spoke and Caesar triumphed, there remain only ruins scattered across an enclave around which swirls the modern city. Yet even the broken fragments are enough to call up Roman Virgil’s majestic lines:—

Tu regere imperio, populos, Romane, memento.

Hae tibi erunt artes, pacisque imponere morem,

Parcere subjectis, et debellare superbos.

Forget not, Roman, thy appointed way,

To hold and rule peoples beneath thy sway.

Here is thy skill, world order to impose,

On the proud, harsh war, but peace to conquered foes.

Virgil was no Christian, because he died 19 years before Our Lord was born. Yet every ancient Roman shared his sense of Rome’s great mission, to create a world order. Only little did those ancients know just what that world order would be.

Catholics know. Everywhere in Rome there are the relics, sanctuaries, churches and basilicas of the martyrs who, by redirecting their Roman virility towards dying for Christ, over the course of 250 years converted their city into the world centre of the one true religion, which it remains to this day. Mother Church has equally majestic lines to commemorate that change. For instance, from the Feast of Saints Peter and Paul –

O Roma felix! Quae duorum Principum

Es consecrata glorioso sanguine.

Horum cruore purpurata ceteras

Excellis orbis una pulchritudines.

O happy Rome! Both Princes of the Faith

Did consecrate thee with their glorious blood.

Raised above all fair cities of the earth

Art thou, the fairest by this crimson flood.

But where is the Roman virility to resist the anti-Christian New World Order which they are building today?

Kyrie eleison.

Agreementitis

Agreementitis posted in Eleison Comments on September 29, 2007

An argument often heard in favor of the Society of St. Pius X coming to some kind of agreement with the neo-modernists in Rome runs something like this: “You cannot expect Rome to come back to the true Faith overnight. Down all the history of the Church such returns have taken tens or hundreds of years. Do you want us to wait out our lives before we can be received back into the Church? You seem to like proverbs – how about ‘Half a loaf is better than no bread’? Souls without number are waiting for the Society to move.”

There are in fact several arguments here. Let us take them one by one:—

*What I expect Rome to do or not to do is of no importance. On the contrary the true Faith, complete, is as important as eternal salvation or damnation. The true Faith, because “Without the faith it is impossible to please God” (St. Paul to the Hebrews). Complete, because whoever denies one single Article of the Faith has lost the Faith altogether (Catholic doctrine), and Neo-modernism turns to mush every single Article of the Faith.

*It may have taken a long time for past heresies to be washed out of the Church’s system, but if Catholics faced with the Arian heresy had agreed to Semi-Arianism or even Quarter-Arianism, how would the Church have survived? The Church survived thanks to Catholics like St. Athanasius who insisted on the entire Arian heresy being washed out – see the Athanasian Creed.

*A wait of 30 or 50 years or even longer is of little importance compared with the purity of the Faith. As St. Athanasius famously said, “They have the buildings, we have the Faith.” It is for those who, by the grace of God, have the Faith to “receive back,” so to speak, those who have mushed it (nor does any SSPXer in his right mind presume that the SSPX has any kind of monopoly on that Faith).

*Half a loaf is still bread, and nothing but bread. On the contrary half a truth is necessarily accompanied by poisonous untruth, otherwise it would be nothing but truth.

*If the SSPX were ever to give souls a lead in mixing Catholic truth with error, it would be better if it had gone out of existence first. May it never come to that!

Kyrie eleison.