Tag: Scripture

Cassocks Weighed

Cassocks Weighed posted in Eleison Comments on March 12, 2011

To affirm, as did last week’s “Eleison Comments” (190, March 5), that whoever possesses the fullness of Catholic Truth is in the driving-seat of the Catholic Church, may seem a statement at best risky, at worst untrue. After all, 1/ who is in the driving-seat of the Church if not the drivers – the Church authorities – put there by Our Lord? 2/ Since when did Our Lord design his Church to be led by any claimant to the Truth? 3/ Is not the direction of the Church being entrusted to any claimant of Truth a recipe for chaos in the Church?

The best answer is in Scripture. When St Paul preached the true Gospel of Jesus Christ to the peoples of Galatia (think of today’s Turkey), they accepted the Gospel with rejoicing and great fruit (Gal. II, 14–15; III, 5). But soon after he left them to preach elsewhere, enemies of God came amongst them to preach salvation not by faith in Jesus Christ but by the works of the Old Law, notably circumcision (V, 2, 11). By falling for this perversion of the true Gospel (I, 6; III,1), the Galatians provoked from St Paul the glorious Epistle to the Galatians.Here are some key verses from Chapter I:—

“(verse 6) I wonder that you are so soon removed from him that called you into the grace of Christ, unto another gospel. (v.7) Which is not another, only there are some that trouble you, and would pervert the Gospel of Christ. (v.8) But though we, or an angel from Heaven, preach a gospel to you besides that which we have preached to you, let him be anathema. (v.9) As we said before, so now I say again: if anyone preach to you a gospel, besides that which you have received, let him be anathema.” (“Anathema” means, utterly condemned and excommunicated.)

Now it is obvious that any angel appearing to the Galatians would appear with all the authority of a true messenger from Heaven. And if St. Paul himself were to return amongst them, he would appear with all the authority of his prior evangelizing amongst them as Doctor of the Gentiles. In either case the appearances of authority could hardly be stronger. Yet St. Paul says, and repeats, that the Galatians would have to put, as one might say, content before cassock, so that if he were ever to change the content of his preaching, they were not to believe a word of it, whatever the colour of his cassock upon his return!

In answer therefore to the three objections laid out at the start, let us say: 1/ Our Lord puts, ultimately, Truth-tellers and not cassocks in the driving-seat of the Church. 2/ These drivers will be Truth-tellers and not just Truth-claimants. Claims do not make the Truth, but Truth makes its telling (this is what few modern people can grasp). 3/ The Truth being one, then all Truth-tellers will be united in the Truth, and the only chaos will come from souls that reject or pervert that Truth.

The greatness of Archbishop Lefebvre lay in his discerning that Vatican II was sliding into “another” gospel than that of Jesus Christ or St. Paul, a gospel of justification by the works of modern man, and that even white cassocks were not to be followed if they preached it. Is today’s white cassock any different?

Kyrie eleison.

Sick Claims

Sick Claims posted in Eleison Comments on May 23, 2009

Another friend of mine tells me that on the occasion of some anniversary of Shakespeare (1564–1616), numbers of people, no doubt to battle “homophobia,” are maintaining once more that he was one of “them.” For proof that the Bard belonged to what is often called the Lavender Brigade, they are resorting as usual to the Sonnets, many of which were indeed lovingly addressed to a certain young man. Let us attempt to disentangle the mess.

Firstly, for men to misuse with men or for women to misuse with women that process which God gave to both to use properly with one another for the reproduction and continuation of the human race, is so grave a sin against God and human society that the Catholic Church calls it one of the four sins “crying to Heaven for vengeance.” To ensure that mankind continues, God gave to every one of us a deep and natural repugnance for man on man, or woman on woman. To whitewash the sin by blackening the repugnance for it as “homophobia,” is mentally and morally sick.

However, “to them that are defiled, and to unbelievers, nothing is clean” (Titus I, 15). For sick minds, there can be no such thing as a clean love between man and man. Therefore when Scripture (I Kings I, 26) presents to us such a love as noble in the extreme, as when David grieves for his dead friend Jonathan – “I grieve for thee, my brother Jonathan: exceeding beautiful, and amiable to me above the love of women. As the mother loveth her only son, so did I love thee,” these sick minds will declare that such love is to be approved of not because it could be void of sin, but only because to condemn it as sin is “homophobia.”

The case of Shakespeare’s love for the young man that he made famous in his Sonnets is surely similar. Many of them tell us how this young man was graced with a beauty comparable to that of women, or even more beautiful, says Shakespeare. And apparently those now trying to enlist the Bard in their ranks appeal in particular to Sonnet 20 for proof of his perversion. But I ask me: can they read? The first eight lines of this Sonnet may praise the young man’s feminine beauty, but the next four go on to tell how Nature endowed him also with a masculine feature which is (l.12) of no use to Shakespeare, but only to women (l.13). Conclusion? – “Mine be thy love, and thy love’s use their treasure” (l.14).

If people who have let themselves get caught in the vice against nature do all they can to get out of it, they deserve the sympathy of all sane souls. But if they so wallow in their perversion as to pretend that sane heroes of the past were like them, they need to be vigorously and clearly denounced – for as long as it is not illegal to do so!

Kyrie eleison.

Difficult Discussions – I

Difficult Discussions – I posted in Eleison Comments on April 18, 2009

From Bishop Tissier de Mallerais speaking in Paris we hear that terms have been fixed for the doctrinal discussions due to take place between the Society of St. Pius X and the Church authorities in Rome. The discussions are to be in writing, which is wise, insofar as there is less room for passion and more time for careful thinking. Also they will not be made public, a provision which at best eliminates “grand-standing” by either party, otherwise known as playing to the gallery, because there will be no gallery present.

From Rome we hear that the impetus towards a Rome-SSPX understanding which was generated by the Pope’s January “re-incommunication” of the four SSPX bishops, was seriously slowed down by the distrust generated by the media uproar of January-February, which is what that uproar was designed to achieve. Yet subjectively speaking, there is certainly still good will on the part of the Pope towards the SSPX, and there is no lack of good will on the part of the SSPX towards the person of the Holy Father.

The problem for these discussions is that, objectively speaking, as on either side there may be some reluctance to admit, we are in the presence of an irreconcilable clash between the religion of God and the religion of man. Vatican II mixed the two together, which was too much of the religion of man by half. Let us then say that Benedict XVI wishes to combine Vatican II with Catholic Tradition. That is still too much of the religion of man by a quarter. Let us now suppose that the SSPX and Benedict XVI were to agree to come half-way towards each other. That would still represent one eighth of the religion of man mixed with seven eighths of the religion of God, which for the purposes of Almighty God would still be one eighth too much.

For just as it takes a disproportionately small amount of water mixed with a tank full of gasoline (or petrol) to stop a car engine dead, so it takes only a small admixture of idolatry to stop dead the true religion of God. The Lord God himself tells us that he is a jealous God (Exod. XX, 5; etc.), and will not endure any false gods beside him. To anybody in the SSPX who might be tempted to worship with the neo-modernists, as to any neo-modernist who might wish to share worship with the Catholics, the Old Testament prophet Elias would say as he said to the hesitating Israelites, “How long do you halt between the two sides? If the Lord be God, follow him: but if Baal, then follow him.” Scripture then says, “The people did not answer him a word” (III Kings, XVIII, 21).

Subjectively, the Israelites wanted to have it both ways. Objectively, that was impossible. For ourselves too.

Kyrie eleison.

Flight-Seeing

Flight-Seeing posted in Eleison Comments on April 26, 2008

If anyone loves mountains, they should fly in day-time on a sunny day up the north-western coast of the United States and Canada, say from Seattle to Anchorage in Alaska. Beneath them stretch out, often on both sides of the airplane, the splendors of the lofty Northern Rockies in an uninterrupted series for hours on end, a spectacle no way to be compared with that provided by the mere half-hour crossing of these mountains between east and west.

And if, when such a traveller arrived in Anchorage, he still admired the long snow-capped horizon framing that city to the east, then he should try, as I did a few days ago, “flight-seeing.” I had never before heard the expression, but its meaning in Alaska is not difficult to guess – you get into a little four-seater airplane and go flying up amongst the glaciers and peaks for an hour and a half.

Not even mountaineers who conquer the peaks on foot can enjoy such an overview of the majestic scenery as flying provides. Clambering at first upwards like the trees, but then leaving them behind, one lifts above rocks and snow, then above more and more snow, amidst ever higher peaks, with an intimacy and freedom such as only flying can give. One is so effortlessly close to the majestic slopes dazzling in the sunshine that one could think one was their companion . . . but they remain silent, quite silent, as though mocking the mechanical fly that intrudes on their nobility.

For let no-one say they are dead! Local inhabitants who watch them year round comment on their constant change by way of mist and light and wind and cloud, and such change is surely effect rather than cause of their life, because the mountains present a prospect of infinitely more power than that of any of the fickle phenomena of weather at play amongst them.

Nor let anyone say the mountains are serene! With their zig-zag outlines, jagged crests, precipitous sides, they evoke, according to all sane geology, that cosmic upheaval which tore up the surface of the globe and gave us earth’s present mountain ranges, the tortured up-thrust of titanic masses of granite and rock, driven, crashing, crumpling into one another.

That upheaval was the Flood of Noah’s time, some 5,000 years ago. That Flood was the result of men’s “corrupting their ways” – Scripture’s own words. Earth’s mountains are then monuments of the grandeur of God, to be sure, but also of his wrath. Mankind has now again corrupted its ways, so . . .

Kyrie eleison.