Rome

Resistance Undermined

Resistance Undermined on July 21, 2012

The good news from the General Chapter of the Society of St Pius X which closed on Saturday is that the SSPX, led to the brink of suicide, has been given a reprieve by the Chapter. However, if the following words, spoken in an interview broadcast worldwide, are any indication of the mind of the leaders still in place for another six years, prayers must still go up for the reprieve to last. Here are the words (which may or may not still be accessible on the Internet – see Catholic News Service):—

“Many people have an understanding of the Council(Vatican II) which is a wrong understanding, and now we have people in Rome who say it. We may say, in the Discussions(between Rome and the Society of St Pius X, from 2009 to 2011), I think, we see that many things which we(in the SSPX) would have condemned as coming from the Council are in fact not from the Council, but from the common understanding of it.”

To comment, we must go back to Vatican II. Containing both truth and error, its 16 documents are profoundly ambiguous and contradictory. Following Archbishop Lefebvre, the SSPX has never said that the documents contain no truth, but it has always accused them of containing serious errors, for instance the doctrine that the State has no right to repress non-Catholic religions. Conciliar Rome has always defended the documents, for instance by referring to the opposite truths contained in them, such as that every man must in matters religious find out and profess the truth. But the truths have never been the problem. The problem is the error and the contradiction. For instance, if a mass of individuals, such as the State, may be neutral in religion, why should the single individual not be? The contradiction opens the door wide to the liberation of man from God – liberalism.

The Doctrinal Discussions of 2009 to 2011 were set up to examine the doctrinal clash between the Romans’ Conciliar subjectivism and the SSPX’s Catholic objectivism. They showed, of course, that the clash is profound and irreconcilable, not between Conciliar truth and Catholic truth, but between Conciliar error and Catholic truth, in effect between the religion of man and the religion of God.

Now comes the speaker to state that the “people in Rome” are right, and that “we” are wrong, i.e. the SSPX, because “many things” the SSPX has constantly condemned as coming from the Council come only from a “common understanding” of the Council. In other words, the Archbishop and his Society were wrong from the beginning to accuse the Council, and accordingly to resist Conciliar Rome. It follows that the episcopal consecrations of 1988 must have been an unnecessary decision, because Conciliar bishops could have been trusted to look after Catholic Tradition. Yet the Archbishop called those consecrations “Operation Survival,” and he called trusting Conciliar Rome “Operation Suicide.”

Today the speaker – consistently with his words quoted above – is certainly favouring a Rome-SSPX agreement. Moreover he is quoted as suggesting in Austria two months ago that this agreement would entrust Conciliar Rome with choosing the SSPX’s future bishops. Then unless Rome has stopped being Conciliar since the Archbishop’s day, and all the evidence cries out against such an illusion, the Archbishop would have said that the speaker was promoting “Operation Suicide” of the SSPX – unless the speaker has since disowned these words.

Kyrie eleison.

Benedict’s Ecumenism – VI

Benedict’s Ecumenism – VI on July 14, 2012

It was promised that in the last of this series of “Eleison Comments” articles inspired by Dr Wolfgang Schüler’s book on “Benedict XVI and the Church’s View of Itself” its main lesson would be applied to the present situation of the Society of St Pius X. The application has already been suggested: if one can only be Catholic by belonging to the living organism of the Catholic Church, then one will become Conciliar by belonging to the organism of the Conciliar Church.

Benedict XVI holds that Catholic pieces cut off from the Catholic Church still belong to the Church of Christ. Dr Schüler, following Our Lord (Jn. XV, 1–7), argues on the contrary that the Church being a living organism, then branches cut off it wither and die, because it is the plant that gives them its life. It follows that if the SSPX is grafted onto the Conciliar plant which is wholly diseased with the Vatican II religion of man, then the Conciliar plant will transmit its disease to the SSPX. Here are three quotes of Archbishop which express this reality:—

In 1984, well before the Episcopal consecrations of 1988, he condemned in advance the illusion that the SSPX, by “getting back inside the Church would be able to fight, to do this, to do that.” He replied, “That is absolutely untrue. You don’t get back inside a structure, putting yourself beneath its superiors, and expect that once inside you are going to turn everything upside down. The reality is that they have everything they need to strangle us. They have all the authority.”

In 1988, just before the consecrations, he said, “Rome wants everything to go Vatican II, while they leave us a little bit of Tradition. ( . . .) They are not changing their position. We cannot put ourselves in the hands of those people. We would be fooling ourselves. We do not mean to let ourselves be eaten up. ( . . .) Little by little Tradition would be compromised.”

In 1989, soon after the consecrations, he answered the objection that the SSPX would have done more good for the Church by staying inside than by getting itself put outside. He replied,”What Church are we talking about? If you mean the Conciliar Church, then we who have struggled against the Council for 40 years because we want the Catholic Church, we would have to re-enter this Conciliar Church in order, supposedly, to make it Catholic. That is a complete illusion. It is not the subjects that make the superiors, it is the superiors that make the subjects. Amidst the whole Roman Curia, amidst all the world’s bishops who are progressives, I would have been completely swamped. I would have been able to do nothing.”

In conclusion, if by any practical agreement or canonical regularization the SSPX were to put itself under the Conciliar authorities of the Church that are still firmly attached to the ideas of Vatican II, as the Doctrinal Discussions of 2009–2011 amply proved, then its defence of the true Faith would be “strangled, eaten up, swamped.” Grafted into the living Conciliar whole, it could not help receiving from it the diseased Conciliar life. God forbid!

Kyrie eleison.

Vatican II-B

Vatican II-B on July 7, 2012

The parallels between Vatican II and the recent happenings within the Society of St Pius X are so striking that these happenings could be called Vatican IIB. It stands to reason. Exactly the same seduction and pressure of the modern world that made the mainstream churchmen collapse in the 1960’s have swayed a number of SSPX members in the 2000’s, bringing the SSPX to near collapse. I recently imagined I heard a mother telling her child a bed-time story:—

“Once upon a time there was a flourishing Catholic Church, but it was surrounded by a naughty modern world. So the Church condemned the modern principles on which that world was based. But that world did not like being condemned, so it did all it could to infiltrate the Church and stop its condemnations. However, events like two dreadful World Wars were proving the Church to be right, and so souls were joining the Church in large numbers because it was providing true solutions to the world’s problems.

“But then disaster struck! Just when so many souls were surrendering to the sweet yoke of Christ, the leading churchmen decided that the modern world was right after all, and so at a great four-year meeting in Rome they changed the Church’s principles to fit the modern world. They made friends with all the Church’s former enemies, and were very cruel towards the Church’s true friends that wanted nothing to do with the modernization. These true friends were only a small minority of Catholics, because over several centuries Catholics had come to put so much trust in their leaders that even when these were betraying the Church, still the Catholics put their trust in them. However God in his mercy at last gave his true friends a leader of their own, a truly Catholic Archbishop, and then they began to rally, and a truly Catholic movement of resistance began to flourish.

“However, the movement was surrounded by the naughty Newchurch whose Newchurchmen did not like being condemned as modernists by the movement. So they did all in their power to shut it down. But events such as the emptying out and shutting down of one Newchurch institution after another were proving the movement to be right, and so more and more Catholic souls were making their way towards the movement because of its true solutions to the problems otherwise insoluble, both of the modern world and of the Newchurch which had gone over to that world.

“But then disaster struck! Just when the movement was gaining more and more souls from the collapsing Newchurch, the leaders of the movement began to say that the ills of the modern world can be exaggerated, so the four-year meeting was not so bad after all. These leaders then began to make friends with the Newchurchmen, and they showed great harshness towards any members of the movement who might insist on condemning the Newchurch and its false principles. Worse, these leaders were not without followers inside the movement, because Catholics are so used to thinking they are disloyal if they do not trust their leaders.”

“Ooh, Mummy, did the story end happily ever after?”

“Darling, I can’t tell you. It’s not yet over. Now go to sleep.”

Kyrie eleison.

Two Errors

Two Errors on June 30, 2012

Whether or not the Society of St Pius X survives its present severe trial, liberals will keep coming back with false arguments to persuade it to commit suicide. Let us look at two more of them.

The first has come up constantly in recent debates over whether the SSPX should accept some practical (non-doctrinal) agreement with Conciliar Rome. It is simple: a Catholic leader (or leaders) has graces of state from God, therefore he should not be criticized but automatically trusted. Answer: of course God is offering to every one of us at all times, and not only to leaders, the natural assistance and/or supernatural grace we all need to begin fulfilling our duty of state, but we have free-will to co-operate with that grace or to refuse it. If all Church leaders always co-operated with their graces of state, how could there ever have been Judas Iscariot? And how could we ever have had Vatican II? The argument from graces of state is as foolish as it is simple.

The second argument is more serious. It was put forward last month in a ten-page article by a Mr. J.L. in a conservative Catholic periodical in England. It favoured a Rome-SSPX practical agreement. Here it is, abbreviated of course, but not distorted. The Catholic Church is today under heavy attack, from without (e.g. by the USA government) and from within (e.g. by bishops who love the good life but do not know their theology), and at the topmost level by a Vatican administration riddled with scandals and in-fighting. The Pope is besieged on all sides, and he is looking to the SSPX for help to re-establish within the Church the sane influence of the Church’s past, in which he believes, even if he also believes in Vatican II. Monsignor Bux gave voice to the Pope’s appeal: if only the SSPX would respond by accepting a practical agreement, it would immensely benefit not only the whole Church but also the SSPX itself. Fr Aulagnier, a former high-up SSPX priest, clearly sees as much.

Dear J.L., full marks for your love of the Church and recognition of its problems, for your concern for the Pope and your desire to help him, but low marks for your grasp of where those problems come from and of what the SSPX is all about. Like one zillion souls in today’s Church and world, including Fr. Aulagnier, you miss the absolutely basic importance of the doctrine of the Faith.

The USA government attacks because the Church is weak. The Church is weak because the bishops’ poor behavior follows on their poor grasp of the doctrine of Heaven, Hell, sin, damnation, redemption, saving grace and the Redeemer’s ever-present sacrifice in the true Mass. The bishops have such a poor grasp of these world-saving truths because, amongst other things, the Bishop of bishops only half believes them. The Pope only half believes them because the other half of him believes in Vatican II. Vatican II undermines all the true religion of God by the deadly ambiguities planted throughout its documents (as you recognize), and designed to put man in the place of God.

Dear J.L., false doctrine is the basic problem. By the grace of God the SSPX has up till now upheld Jesus Christ’s true teachings, but if it put itself under Church authorities only half-believing them at best, it would soon stop attacking error (as is already happening), and it would finish by promoting error, and with error all the horrors you mention. God forbid!

Kyrie eleison.

Archbishop Speaks

Archbishop Speaks on June 9, 2012

Until Archbishop Lefebvre finally decided to consecrate bishops for the Society of St Pius X in June of 1988, he was, like all Catholics since Vatican II, torn between the Catholic Truth and Catholic Authority that that Council, following the modern world, had split from one another. However, once he had taken that decision, which proved clearly to have been the saving of Catholic Tradition, it was as though everything in his mind dropped back into place, and he never again wavered until his death some two and a half years later.

As an example of his clear mind, here is a letter that he wrote on August 18, 1988, to Dom Thomas Aquinas, the young Prior of the monastery in Brazil which had been founded from the Traditional Benedictine monastery in the south of France, le Barroux, under Dom Gérard. Alas, within days of the consecrations in Écône, Dom Gérard had broken with the SSPX in order to integrate his monastery into the Conciliar Church. Here is what the Archbishop wrote to Dom Thomas:—

“How I regret that you had to leave before the events ofle Barroux(i.e. Dom Gérard’s defection). It would have been easier to consider the situation resulting from Dom Gérard’s disastrous decision.

“In his declaration he lays out what has been granted to him, and he accepts to put himself under obedience to modernist Rome which remains fundamentally anti-Traditional. That is what made me keep my distance. At the same time he wished to retain the friendship and support of Traditionalists, which is inconceivable. He accuses us of resisting for the sake of resisting. I did warn him, but his decision had already long been taken, and he did not want to heed our advice.

“The consequences are now inevitable. But we will have no further relations with le Barroux, and we are advising our faithful to give no more support to an operation which is henceforth in the hands of our enemies, the enemies of Our Lord Jesus Christ and of his Universal Kingship. The Benedictine Sisters(attached to le Barroux) are in great distress. They came to see me. I gave to them the advice that I give to you: remain free, and reject any tie with this modernist Rome.

“Dom Gérard is using every argument to paralyze the resistance. ( . . .) Fr. Tam will tell you what I have not written down here. ( . . .) May God bless you and your monastery. Mons Marcel Lefebvre.” Subsequently Dom Gérard visited the monastery in Brazil to make it follow him into the Newchurch, but young Dom Thomas bravely stood his ground, and the monastery under his guidance has remained Traditional ever since. What does not appear in the letter above is that the Archbishop actually encouraged Dom Thomas to rally the faithful monks in le Barroux, and eject Dom Gérard!

Such was the Archbishop’s clear mind and will from the Episcopal consecrations onwards. One wonders how some of his sons can now be wanting to put themselves “under obedience to modernist Rome which remains fundamentally anti-Traditional,”or, under a subjectivist Pope who has no possible understanding of objective Catholic Tradition. Such is the power of seduction, increasing all the time, of the subjectivist world around us. The madness of subjectivism has become so normal, so widespread, that few people notice it any longer. “Our help is in the name of the Lord.”

Kyrie eleison.

Doctrine Undermined

Doctrine Undermined on May 26, 2012

Entire books have been written on the subject of religious liberty as taught by Vatican II in its Declaration of 1965, Dignitatis Humanae. Yet the Revolutionary teaching of that document is clear: given the natural dignity of every individual human being, no State or social group or any human power may coerce or force any man or group of men to act, in private or in public, against their own religious beliefs, so long as public order is observed (D.H.#2).

On the contrary the Catholic Church always taught up until Vatican II that every State as such has the right and even duty to coerce its citizens from practising in public any of their false religions, i.e. all non-Catholic religions, so long as such coercion is helpful and not harmful to the salvation of souls. (For instance in 2012 freedom is so widely worshipped that any such coercion would scandalize the citizens of nearly all States and make them scorn, not appreciate, the Catholic religion. In that case, as the Church always used to teach, the State may abstain from using its right to coerce false religions.)

Now the precise point on which these two doctrines contradict one another may seem quite limited –whether or not a State may coerce the public practice of false religions – but the implications are enormous: is God the Lord or the servant of men? For if on the one hand man is a creature of God, and if he is social by nature (as is obvious from men’s naturally coming together in all kinds of associations, notably the State), then society and the State are also creatures of God, and they owe it to him to serve him and his one true religion by coercing false religions at any rate in the public domain (which is the State’s business), so long as that will help rather than hinder the salvation of souls.

On the other hand if human freedom is of such value that every individual must be left free to corrupt his fellow citizens by the public practice and proselytizing of any false religion he chooses (unless public order be disturbed), then false religions must be left free to flourish in the public domain (e.g. Protestant sects in Latin America today). So the difference between false religions and the one true religion is less important than human dignity. So the true religion is not so important. So the worth of God compared with the worth of man is not so important. Thus Vatican II down-grades God as it up-grades man. Ultimately Vatican II is replacing the religion of God with the religion of man. No wonder Archbishop Lefebvre founded the Society of St Pius X to uphold the transcendent dignity and worth of God, of Our Lord Jesus Christ, in a world and Church gone mad, drunk on man’s dignity.

But now comes a religious leader who pronounced in public earlier this month: “Many people have an understanding of the Council, which is a wrong understanding.” Religious liberty, he said, “is used in so many ways. And looking closer, I really have the impression that not many know what really the Council says about it. The Council is presenting a religious liberty that is a very, very limited one: very limited . . .” Asked whether Vatican II itself, i.e. as a whole, belongs to Catholic Tradition, he replied, “I would hope so.”

See for yourselves the interview, given in English and accessible on YouTube under the title, “Traditionalist leader talks about his movement, Rome.” Can anybody be surprised if “his movement” is currently going through the gravest crisis of its 42 years of existence?

Kyrie eleison.