Rome

Yellow Light

Yellow Light on January 5, 2013

Not all of you readers of “Eleison Comments” may have come across the admirable letter of two months ago written by Fr. Ronald Ringrose to the US District Superior of the Society of St Pius X, Fr. Arnauld Rostand. Fr Ringrose has been for over 30 years the independent pastor of the Traditional parish of St Athanasius just outside Washington, D.C., and for all that time he has been the faithful friend, without being a member, of the SSPX. However in June of last year he hosted in his parish the first meeting in the USA of the nucleus of priests now forming a Resistance to that change of direction of the Society, long latent, but which became clear to all in the spring of last year. As Bishop Fellay’s faithful executive in the USA, Fr. Rostand wrote to him to propose a meeting where he might persuade Fr Ringrose that the change was no change. Here is Fr. Ringrose’s reply:—

“Thank you for your letter of October 12 in which you offer to meet to discuss the situation within the Society of St Pius X. While this is a very kind offer on your part and I appreciate it very much, I don’t think that such a meeting will serve any useful purpose, since the problems stem from the Society’s top leadership, and you are not in a position to change that.

It is true that I have been a strong supporter of the Society for many years. This support was based on the fact that my mission as a priest, and the Society’a mission were one and the same, to help souls hold onto the Catholic faith during this time when it seems to have been abandoned by post Vatican II Rome.

Now I have to be more cautious and reserved in that support. I am alarmed that the Superior General would say that 95% of Vatican II is acceptable. I am astounded that the Society’s leadership would respond to three of the Society’s bishops by suggesting that they are making the errors of Vatican II into a “super-heresy.” I am disappointed that the Society’s response to Assisi III was so weak and anemic. I am saddened by the Society’s unjust disciplining of priests who are following the example of Archbishop Lefebvre, and I am outraged at the treatment of Bishop Williamson – not just his recent expulsion, but the shabby treatment he has gotten over the past few years.

Prior to this year, when asked about the Society by an inquiring parishioner, I always gave the Society a green light. Given the Society’s recent actions, I do not yet give the Society a red light, but I do give it a yellow light of caution. The red light will come if and when the Society allows herself to be absorbed into the Conciliar Church that Archbishop Lefebvre so vigorously resisted.

It is with great sadness that I write these words. There are many good, zealous, faithful priests within the Society’s ranks. Many of them I know personally and admire. Many souls depend on them. It is out of love for the Society that I fear for her future. I fear that she is on a suicidal path. The leadership may think that a deal is off the table, but I fear that that is not the thinking of Rome.

I pray for the Society to return to the mission given to her by Archbishop Lefebvre without compromise or hedging. When she does, she will have my unreserved support.”

And Fr Ringrose’s letter concludes with fraternal greetings. It is truly a model of clear-mindedness and courtesy, firmness and charity. Long live Fr Ringrose to maintain an incomparable bastion of Catholicism right next to the United States’ capital city!

Kyrie eleison.

Culture Alert

Culture Alert on December 29, 2012

As the leadership of the Society of St Pius X seems to be faltering, so Catholics who love the Society because they have received so much from it in years gone by might be tempted to think that there is nothing much that they as simple faithful can do about it. They would be wrong. Let them read these reflections from a friend of mine, and they should be able to read between the lines that if God does not rescue the Society for them, as of course he could do, then it has at least in part depended on them. My friend’s letter is adapted here below:—

“A practical agreement would be ruinous to the cause of Catholic Tradition. One need only look at what has happened to the Traditional Redemptorists in Scotland . . . The two Masses cannot co-exist. One will always drive the other out . . . At a Novus Ordo Mass I attended recently, the whole church was pervaded by chatter and continual clapping . . . The two sides are simply too far apart for an agreement to work. No meeting of the minds is possible between modernity and Tradition.

“Then there is the profound revolution which has overwhelmed modern civilization, including the Traditional movement, and which has for the most part been missed by the leadership of Tradition . . . Electronic technology has wrought a cultural revolution in our lives, especially of the younger generation. If it is not managed properly, it certainly weakens the faith because it can take over people’s whole lives. Youngsters are liable to be captured by it. They hang on it all day long. People too engulfed in it become dysfunctional, unable to get up in the morning, or to maintain a live conversation, or to hold down a job.

“Now if a sports team is not admonished by its coach, its playing standards begin to fall. If Catholics are not admonished on cultural issues like music, women’s dress, or watching television, their cultural standards begin to fall, which has profound implications for their faith. Traditional parents are being left to struggle alone with their families to keep the worldliness of modern society out of their homes, because the leadership of the SSPX has either missed this cultural revolution, or it is not giving it the attention that it deserves. I have had many long discussions with Traditional families who are concerned about the way that the Traditional movement is going. Religious movements must take a stand on cultural issues if they are to flourish. Tradition was strengthened when it used to take a stand on television. But if a stand is not taken on cultural issues, the stand on doctrinal issues soon begins to weaken.

“The latest Chapter of the SSPX may have pulled the organization back from the brink, but I cannot take much comfort from it. It spent much attention on defining the parameters of any future discussions with Rome in making an agreement. Yet, Rome is basically unchanged from 1988. In my opinion, the SSPX needs to recover the prophetic role that it performed when Archbishop Lefebvre was still alive. The Traditional movement needs to strongly denounce the modernism and liberalism that is leading the Catholic Church to its destruction. These denunciations lately have been muted. Perhaps many Traditional priests are distracted by the comforts that they think an agreement with Rome would bring them.”

Over to you, dear readers. Away with trashy and valueless music in the home. Get rid of the television set. Reduce electronics to a minimum. Mothers, wear skirts whenever possible, which is most of the time. Otherwise do not complain if God does not rescue the Society. He forces his gifts upon nobody. Blessed be his name for ever.

Kyrie eleison.

Farewell, Wimbledon

Farewell, Wimbledon on December 15, 2012

So I have moved out of Wimbledon, which at least corresponds to the reality of my supposed “expulsion” from the Society of St Pius X. But the move is not without its sadness, because I spent there nearly four years after my real expulsion from Argentina, and they have been happy years, despite everything. Perhaps the main happiness has been the company of the priests in SSPX headquarters in England, St George’s House. They have been very good company. May God bless each of them.

However one thing I must say. People ask why I left the Society. I did not leave the Society. The Society left me, by abandoning the principles for which I joined it. Once again, the parallel with Vatican II is exact. Just as countless Catholic priests, religious and layfolk were abandoned by the churchmen who opted in the 1960’s for the Council, so a number of faithful priests and laity are being abandoned in the 2010’s by the leaders of the Society as these choose to head for peace with their “new friends in Rome” – quote of the Society’s First Assistant. The blindness is astonishing, for those who can see. It is all too natural for those who cannot see. May God have mercy on them. I do believe that these leaders have never understood what Archbishop Lefebvre was all about. They are children of their age.

The only substantial reason given for their “expelling” me was disobedience. But the only substantial disobedience on my part was the repeated refusal to close down these “Eleison Comments.” Yet when I asked the Superior General on two different occasions to specify which precise numbers of the “Comments” were so problematic, each time he did not give an answer, no doubt because he would have had to admit that the real problem was one of content, namely my resolute opposition to his suicidal approach to Conciliar Rome. Instead he continues to pretend, that the problem is one of discipline, thus diverting attention away from the real problem. And I am not the first priest and I will not be the last that he treats in this way. May God give him light. He risks chasing out many of his true friends in order to please his true enemies, just like Pope Paul VI did with Archbishop Lefebvre. The parallels never end. The Newchurch and the Newsociety are the same malady of our age.

So what now? I borrow a friend’s flat in the vicinity of London for a few weeks at best, for a few months at worst, until I can find suitable property to rent for 6 or 12 months. At this point I still do not believe in making any permanent arrangements. Alas, I shall not be easy to contact because my friend has to be discreet out of care for his neighbours. In any case snail mail will reach me through P.O. Box 423, Deal CT14 4BF, England. (but please don’t send Christmas cards. I send none). From December 13 to January 3 I plan to make an apostolic visit to Canada and the USA, Deo volente, and immediately after that a visit to France for the Feast of the Epiphany.

Also changing will be some aspects of how my spoken and written words are published. The format and method of delivery of “Eleison Comments” may change too, but what I hope will not change is their appearing every Saturday through December and into the New Year. . Thank you for all your contributions to the St Marcel Initiative. In case you were concerned, I can promise you that they have not gone astray. Happy Christmas.

Kyrie eleison.

An Explanation

An Explanation on December 8, 2012

An acquaintance sent to me recently a copy circularized to all SSPX priests by SSPX Headquarters (HQ) of an official explanation of five possibly troubling remarks of the SSPX’s Superior General (SG), and this person asked for my opinion. I honestly think that Superiors of the SSPX might be as troubled as before. Very briefly, here is why:—

Firstly, in Austria in May, the SG said that the SSPX needed to re-think its relations with Rome. HQ explains that this was no change of the SSPX’s position on Newrome, but merely a call for SSPX members to recognize that not everything said by Newromans is nonsense. However, the priests who heard the original words in Austria understood the SG to be meaning the same as what he wrote in the Society’s in-house magazine of last March (Cor Unum), namely that the “new situation” in the Church “requires that we take up a new position with respect to the official Church,” because since 2006 “we have witnessed a development in the Church.” Does HQ have an explanation for these written words of the SG?

Secondly, on the same occasion the SG is meant to have said that the potential agreement with Rome would mean every chapel less than three years old being pulled down. HQ explains that in fact the SG said that where the SSPX had said Mass for more than three years, a chapel could be set up. However, the SG did also say that wherever the SSPX had ministered for less than three years, it might continue its ministry in private, which implies that any public buildings must be disused.

Thirdly, on CNS, also in May, the SG spoke of religious liberty being “very, very limited.” HQ explains that the SG was speaking of “true religious liberty,” i.e. as the Church has always taught it, namely the right limited to the Catholic religion. However the SG’s original words on CNS are as clear as clear can be, and verifiable by anybody with the Internet: “The Council was presenting a religious liberty which was in fact a very, very limited one – very limited.” HQ may need here to provide a second explanation to prove that its first explanation was not, at best, a mistake?

Fourthly, in Écône in September, the SG admitted that he had been wrong in his dealings with Rome. HQ explains that the mistake was only on a “very precise and limited point,” namely whether the Pope would insist or not on the SSPX accepting the Council. However, this insistence on the Council (along with the New Mass) is the total bone of contention between the SSPX and Newrome. Is not this explanation of HQ like saying that the gash made by the iceberg in the side of the Titanic was a very precise and limited gash?

Fifthly, years ago the SG said that the Council texts are “95% acceptable.” HQ explains that he was speaking of the letter and not of the spirit of the texts. However, what mother will give to her children any part of a cake which she knows is 5% poisoned? It is true that she could in theory give them any part of the 95% not poisoned, but in practice will she not be afraid of the poisoning spirit behind all parts of the cake?

In conclusion, had the SSPX’s crisis of this spring and summer made me wonder about the competence and honesty of the SG and his HQ, I fear that after this explanation of five quotes I would still be wondering. May God be with them, because they have a daunting responsibility.

Kyrie eleison.

Home Reading

Home Reading on October 20, 2012

When a while back these “Comments” advised readers to fortify their homes in case public bastions of the Faith might, due to the wickedness of the times, prove to be a thing of the past, a few readers wrote in to ask just how homes might be fortified. In fact various spiritual and material means of defending home and family have been suggested in previous numbers of the “Comments,” notably of course the Holy Rosary, but one fortification has gone unmentioned which I think I would try in place of television if I had a family to defend: reading aloud each night to the children selected chapters from Maria Valtorta’s Poem of the Man-God. And when we had reached the end of the five volumes in English, I imagine us starting again from the beginning, and so on, until all the children had left home!

Yet the Poem has many and eloquent enemies. It consists of episodes from the lives of Our Lord and Our Lady, from her immaculate conception through to her assumption into Heaven, as seen in visions received, believably from Heaven, during the Second World War in northern Italy by Maria Valtorta, an unmarried woman of mature age lying in a sick-bed, permanently crippled from an injury to her back inflicted several years earlier. Notes included in the Italian edition (running to over four thousand pages in ten volumes) show how afraid she was of being deceived by the Devil, and many people are not in fact convinced that the Poem truly came from God. Let us look at three main objections.

Firstly, the Poemwas put on the Church’s Index of forbidden books in the 1950’s, which was before Rome went neo-modernist in the 1960’s. The reason given for the condemnation was the romanticizing and sentimentalizing of the Gospel events. Secondly the Poem is accused of countless doctrinal errors. Thirdly Archbishop Lefebvre objected to the Poem that its giving so many physical details of Our Lord’s daily life makes him too material, and brings us too far down from the spiritual level of the four Gospels.

But firstly, how could the modernists have taken over Rome in the 1960’s, as they did, had they not already been well established within Rome in the 1950’s? The Poem, like the Gospels (e.g. Jn.XI, 35, etc.), is full of sentiment but always proportional to its object. The Poemis for any sane judge, in my opinion, neither sentimental nor romanticized. Secondly, the seeming doctrinal errors are not difficult to explain, one by one, as is done by a competent theologian in the notes to be found in the Italian edition of the Poem. And thirdly, with all due respect to Archbishop Lefebvre, I would argue that modern man needs the material detail for him to believe again in the reality of the Gospels. Has not too much “spirituality” kicked Our Lord upstairs, so to speak, while cinema and television have taken over modern man’s sense of reality on the ground floor? As Our Lord was true man and true God, so the Poem is at every moment both fully spiritual and fully material.

From non-electronic reading of the Poem in the home, I can imagine many benefits, besides the real live contact between parents reading and children listening. Children soak in from their surroundings like sponges soak in water. From the reading of chapters of the Poem selected according to the children’s age, I can imagine almost no end to how much they could learn about Our Lord and Our Lady. And the questions they would ask! And the answers that the parents would have to come up with! I do believe the Poem could greatly fortify a home.

Kyrie eleison.

More Ammunition

More Ammunition on October 6, 2012

Enjoying the privilege of having a variety of friends shooting at me from all directions, I cannot bear the thought of them running out of ammunition, so here is a collection of bullets and shells gathered from the battlefield. The comments came from priests, layfolk and Sisters, mainly upset by a certain episode in modern history being denied on Swedish TV in November of 2008. (And yet . . . and yet . . .) As Americans say, “Enjoy!”

“That bishop has a strong temperament with much prestige and authority, so he could not bear not being Number One in the Society of St Pius X. Wishing then to make himself a name in the history books, but realizing that at 68 years of age he would have no more chance of being elected Superior General, he detonated on Swedish TV the “Revisionist Bomb” in order to get attention and come out top dog. To gain influence he was willing to risk splitting the SSPX.”

“He decided on all-out provocation by the broadcast in order to throw a monkey-wrench into the Rome-SSPX talks which he disapproved of. But being in a subordinate position, only by such a scandal could he stop the dialogue and the agreement that might have come of it.”

“He loves provoking because he is an infiltrator, a former Anglican who is still basically hostile to the Catholic Church. Any Rome-SSPX agreement he wanted to block, because it would be too favourable to the SSPX, i.e. to the Catholic Church.”

“He is an illuminated supernaturalist, a conspiracy nut, obsessed with the Jewish peril. He sees the Apocalypse coming tomorrow. Neither he nor Revisionism are serious.”

“He has natural qualities that make him worldly and ambitious. He is used to everybody paying him homage. He used to have influence over many people, and he was treated like a little god when he was still travelling. However, because of his personal qualities he is proud and jealous of Bishop Fellay, so out of envy and resentment he let loose on Swedish TV.”

“Actually, long before the Swedish affair he was too political and too independent of the rest of the SSPX, whose spirit he did not entirely share. In 2004 he publicly attacked the leadership of the SSPX for its jansenizing spirit and its supernaturalism. In reality he was merely settling personal accounts, as churchmen are liable to do.”

“His originality goes with a complete lack of sense of responsibility, which is why he rode that anti-semitic hobby-horse of his in public without a thought for the harm he might do to Tradition. In fact he was manipulated by Fascists and Neo-pagans, or at least he was exploited by them. He was not out for personal power on that occasion, but he is unpredictable, and he is not to be trusted.” And all these things are being said about me! I just love the attention!

Kyrie eleison.