Society of St. Pius X

HONOURING APOSTATES

HONOURING APOSTATES on March 2, 2024

The Newsociety does not compromise? 

To venerate apostates is not wise!

If these “Comments” sometimes shock good souls by how they can present either the Newchurch (since 1965) or the Newsociety of St Pius X (since 2012) in a good light, let them know that it is for pastoral reasons, because many Catholics are hanging on to their Catholic Faith through either the Newchurch or the Newsociety by their fingernails, and without the Newchurch or the Newsociety they could easily let go. In many such cases surely the proverb applies, “Better half a loaf than no bread.” On the other hand for doctrinal reasons this way of keeping the Faith has its serious dangers because both Newchurch and Newsociety have made compromises in doctrine which are dangerous for keeping the Catholic Faith. Here is that valuable lesson, from the following article written by a Benedictine monk of the Monastery of Santa Cruz, near Rio de Janeiro. “Arsenius” (his pen-name) has our warm thanks. 

Ever since the heresy of humanism (man before God) was made officially “Catholic” by the Council Fathers of Vatican II (1962–1965), the Popes and their advisers have done nothing but continue on their way leading straight to the abyss, falling typically faster and faster as their fall proceeds. Such a picture in no way inspires within us any hope for the least glimmer of a wish on the part of any of these officials to look after Catholic Tradition (meaning quite simply the true Church) in any way whatsoever. However, there are those who not only entertained some such hope but even felt a strange certainty that things were getting better for Tradition in Rome. By “Tradition” here they can only have meant the Newsociety with its desire to enter into a blameworthy “unity in diversity” with Rome. Hence the split, puzzling for many, between the Newsociety of St Pius X and the so-called “Resistance.” 

The turning-point for the Society of St Pius X was the year 2012, when the Resolution of the previous General Chapter of 2006, that there would be no practical agreement with Rome as long as the Catholic Truth had not yet triumphed, was replaced by the Newsociety’s official desire for a practical agreement, even if the Pope and his advisers had not yet come back to the Catholic Truth. Bishop Williamson was excluded from the General Chapter that made this change, and then from the Newsociety altogether. 

The years that followed showed more and more clear signs of Rome and the Newsociety growing closer together. One by one, Rome gave official approval to the marriages, priestly ordinations and confessions dispensed by the Newsociety. Was this the famous phrase being put into practice, namely “Rome gives everything and asks for nothing in return”? In which case the phrase was a reality and not just an illusion? One might well reply that it was just a way of acting to ensure that from now on the Newsociety would be acting more and more only with modernist Rome’s approval, basing its activity no longer on the general and grave emergency within the Church, because with Tradition now being “officialised,” the emergency was supposedly over. Meanwhile Rome would be waiting for the day when it could “pull the rug” from under the Newsociety’s feet, driving it into the blind alley into which it had driven itself. 

But may the recent announcement that the Newsociety is going to consecrate one or more bishops without Rome’s permission not be a sign that the old Society prior to 2012 is coming back? Alas, that seems virtually impossible. A return to the fighting spirit of Archbishop Lefebvre against the enemies of the Church in Rome seems to us a heritage of his in large part now lost within the Newsociety. The future looks dark to us, although God is still at work in numerous souls, thanks to the apostolate of members of the Newsociety. But that does not stop us from recognising that the Newsociety should be correcting a number of its post-Lefebvre guiding principles. In any case, the more scandals stain the pontificate of Francis, and the more the illusions of a reconciliation with Rome should be fading out. May Our Lady make us understand and love deeply the Church of all time, not to be identified with its caricature fabricated at Vatican II, and put into practice in the pontificates following. 

Kyrie eleison

REASON for the “RESISTANCE”

REASON for the “RESISTANCE” on February 10, 2024

God gave us the wise old Saint He knew we need –

How could a youngster think that he could lead?

Less than one month ago, on January 24, the Brazilian Prior of the Traditional Benedictine Monastery of Santa Cruz, nestling in high hills of Brazil behind Rio de Janeiro, Bishop Thomas Aquinas, published a severe denunciation of a prominent leader who is active worldwide in the Traditional Catholic movement. But surely Traditionalists have enough problems from outside of Tradition without having to fight among themselves as well? Normally that is Catholic common sense, but not if the very basis of Catholicism, the Catholic Faith, is at stake. Now in the struggle between Rome and the Society of St Pius X, never has it not been at stake. Let readers judge for themselves if, as a shepherd of Our Lord’s flock, Bishop Thomas has done anything other than his bounden duty by denouncing this wolf in sheep’s clothing – 

The reason for the existence of the Resistance is none other than Dom Fellay, with his words and actions. His words minimized the gravity of the crisis and of the Council. His actions exposed Tradition to suffer the same fate as the Ecclesia Dei communities. 

Dom Fellay did not speak like Dom Lefebvre. Dom Lefebvre strongly denounced the Council’s mistakes, as well as the churchmen who were the cause of those mistakes. He warned virtually all the popes about their responsibilities. He told John Paul II that if he continued on the path of ecumenism he would no longer be the good shepherd, and in the drawing about Assisi he said, with images and words, that John Paul II would go to hell if he continued to be an ecumenist. He told Cardinal Ratzinger that he, Ratzinger, was against the Christianization of society. The Archbishop denounced the apostasy of Vatican II. ( . . . ) He defended priests and faithful from modernist contagion. He exposed himself to an invalid but degrading excommunication. In defence of France he did not back down in the face of the Muslim danger. He protected us against Dom Gérard’s Roman temptation. He was, in short, like bishops of old: the defender of Christianity and of its basis, which is the faith. He was the man of theological virtues, who sustained our faith and all virtues. 

And Dom Fellay? Did he continue Dom Lefebvre’s actions? No. Both in word and in deed, Dom Fellay distanced himself from Dom Lefebvre. Regarding the heresy of Religious Freedom, he minimized the seriousness of what the Council had said. He did not react to the mistakes like Dom Lefebvre. He did not talk about the two churches, as did Dom Lefebvre. He did not clearly distinguish the official Church from the Catholic Church, but spoke of a “Concrete Church,” confusing the faithful and even priests. What specific church is this? Do we have to be in this church? We are in the Catholic Church. We recognize the Pope, but not the Conciliar Church that Cardinal Benelli spoke of. We recognize the Pope, but not his doctrine or his actions contrary to Tradition. These acts are not Catholic, but anti-Catholic. 

It was under the influence of Dom Fellay that the 2012 Chapter modified the principle enunciated by the 2006 Chapter: there can be no practical agreement without doctrinal agreement. This did not please Dom Fellay, and it was changed. Under certain conditions, the Fraternity can now reach a practical agreement without a doctrinal agreement. It is a legal loophole, opening the way to lead the Fraternity down the path of the Ecclesia Dei communities. He did not go that far, but he lowered his guard, and Rome took advantage of that. Opposition from within the Fraternity Dom Fellay repressed by expelling Dom Williamson and other priests; then he punished others, such as the seven deans who rightly protested against Rome’s marriage document. Dom Fellay disorganized Tradition, walked away from Dom Lefebvre’s line, and made others also depart from it. To resist this departure was the reason for the “Resistance” coming into existence. 

We want to follow Dom Lefebvre in everything, in doctrine and also in practical solutions, because, as Aristotle and St.Thomas teach, the examples of the ancients serve as principles of action. We follow Dom Lefebvre in doctrine and action, especially in relation to modernist Rome, and we do this to be faithful to Eternal Rome, teacher of truth and holiness. 

Kyrie eleison 

Pope’s Disintegration – III

Pope's Disintegration - III on May 1, 2021

If these “Comments” of April 17th praised the analysis by the Society of St Pius X’s Superior General, Fr. Davide Pagliarani, for his March 12 analysis of the unthinkable madness of Pope Francis’ “thinking,” then nobody need conclude that this week’s “Comments” are trying to undermine that Society if they go on to make a couple of suggestions to the same Superior General. In all languages there will be some proverbial expression of the distance between words and action. Fr. Pagliarani is talking the right talk. Americans might say that all he now needs is to walk the right walk, in accordance with his talk.

For indeed if the Superior General truly wants the good of the Society of which he is the Superior, he will want to act as the Founder of that Society acted, because to follow a Founder is to serve his foundation, while to contradict him in word or deed will be to help to undo his foundation. Now what distinguished Archbishop Lefebvre from his thousands of fellow bishops at and after Vatican II? He always said that a few hundred came out of the Council still resolved to defend the true Catholic Faith, but that in the 1970’s Pope Paul VI succeeded essentially in breaking their resistance, especially by misuse of his authority. So the bishops put the System above the Truth, while the Archbishop put the Truth above the System.

Now by declaring in your March 12 analysis that Pope Francis is virtually abandoning all Catholic philosophy and theology, honourable Fr Pagliarani, you show that you have a real grip on the Truth and on the dire peril in which it finds itself today. So what did the Archbishop do when in the 1970’s and 1980’s Popes Paul VI and John-Paul II similarly imperilled the Faith? Did he put the System in front of the Truth? Or did he not supremely walk the walk by Consecrating four bishops, even outside the System, to ensure the practical survival of his heroic talk? May I suggest that there are two things you can do, one for the Church and one for the State, to lift your walk to the level of your talk?

For the Church, help it enormously, as did the Archbishop (and as you did yourself with your absolutely clear condemnation in February, 2019 of the Pope’s Joint Declaration with the Grand Imam of Al-Azhar) by not only faithfulness to Catholic doctrine, but also by unequivocally shunning the Church System, presently still mired in Conciliar doctrine, and liable to contaminate any Society priests or leaders who imprudently flirt with such objective instruments of Belial. Towards such gravely mistaken Church officials, courtesy and charity, yes, but friendly contact, by no means! For there can be no greater charity towards such objective traitors, risking a terrible eternity, than to make them understand how they need to convert. And you have a bounden duty to steer your own priests away from them, so dangerous are they!

And for the State, similarly. Virtually all States of the world are presently under the disguised control of the bi-millennial enemies of God and man, whom God is using to scourge apostate mankind. In what is radically a religious war on their part, by the blindness and weakness of the Catholics who should be stopping them, they have gained mastery of our banks, politics, universities, arts, culture, law, medicine, and so on, so that all of these things are the mere anti-Christian shells of what they once were as parts of Christian civilisation. It is the Christians’ fault by their lack of faith, and it has recently entailed the stealing in a once great nation of its national election, with far too little protest against the mass of lies necessarily involved. Now, bearing the stamp of the same anti-Christian warriors is the entire artificial Covid crisis. Father, any Catholic Society is further betraying Christ if it does not discern, and act upon, who and what is at stake. Covid is a problem even more religious than it is political, and the men of God must say so, if the people of God are to get back on their knees. May God be with you.

Kyrie eleison.

P.S. Enough ECs for the moment on the gravity of modernism. Let the next two ECs present for the Easter season the joy of Beethoven (even if it is not directly Christian joy, but rather derived from it.)

Pope’s Disintegration – II

Pope's Disintegration - II on April 24, 2021

The rhyming couplets at the beginning or end of each of the issues of these “Comments” have normally only two lines of ten syllables each to make their point, which means that they can be so compressed that they are difficult to understand. Last week’s was an example. But since what it was saying goes to the heart of the great error ravaging the true Catholic Church ever since Vatican II (1962–1965), let us return to that couplet to explain it in a little more detail. Here it is again –

The Greeks, even bearing gifts, one had to fear?

To modernists those Greeks come nowhere near!

The first of the two lines refers to a famous quote from the second book of Virgil’s Aeneid in Latin, which says translated, “Howsoever it be, I fear the Greeks, even when they bear gifts.” The Trojan war has been going on for ten years, and despite tremendous military efforts the invading army from Greece has so far been unable to capture the city of Troy. The Greeks resort to trickery. Outside the gates of Troy they will leave a hollow wooden horse filled with Greek soldiers as a “gift” for the Trojans. The Trojans are deliberating what to do with this handsome horse – should it be brought inside the gates of the city? A wise old Trojan says no, because whatsoever it be, he cannot trust the Greeks. Alas for Troy, his advice is not taken, the horse is brought in, the soldiers spill out at night, Troy is taken by surprise and the Greeks win the Trojan war, thanks to that trickery for which they were notorious in the ancient world. However, the second line of the couplet above says that even the trickery of the ancient Greeks comes nowhere near the trickery of today’s modernists penetrating into the heart of the Catholic City and destroying it to its very foundations. How can that be?

Let us say, by a progressive loss over the centuries of mankind’s sense of the reality of God and of its own dependence on God. This loss was wilful. To introduce the last age of the world with the largest harvest of souls ever for the bliss of eternal salvation, Almighty God had granted the greatest grace ever, the Incarnation of His own one and only divine Son to die on the Cross to seal in His Blood the New and Eternal Testament between God and man, and to found the Catholic Church to make available to all men by its sacraments the fruits of that death and Redemption. And after one and a half thousand years that Church had indeed succeeded in creating Christian civilisation, incomparably superior to any other.

But after 1500 years man’s pride could take it no longer, and men designed a series of ever more refined hypocrisies to get their liberty out from under God’s truth. Protestantism and Jansenism pretended to be Catholic, Liberalism pretended to be Christian, Communism pretended to be human, and the strain for Catholics of living in a more and more profoundly anti-Catholic world all around them was becoming for Catholics heavier all the time, especially since the modern world, forged by the hypocrisies, was becoming more and more “normal” all the time. Finally the strain, for instance, of having in a big city all the children that God is liable to send, became unbearable, and the supreme hypocrisy of Vatican II, post-Catholics pretending to be Catholic thanks to compliant clergy, took place, and the true Church is in scattered disarray until the moment to be chosen by God for the Augean stables to be cleaned out.

But God has never abandoned His unchanging Church, nor the souls at whatever level that cleave to it, nor need any soul fear being abandoned by God that does not want to abandon it, or God’s reality. However, God may ask of such souls some suffering to help pay for the tidal waves of sin flooding over mankind, and let it not indulge in the variety of hypocrisies by which modern men succeed in deceiving themselves that God does not exist, or that they are not preferring their own reality to His . . .

Kyrie eleison

 Pope’s Disintegration

 Pope's Disintegration on April 17, 2021

In an interview which he released early last month, the Superior General of the Society of St Pius X, Fr Davide Pagliarani, tackled in his own words a subject which is of supreme importance in today’s Church and world, but which is not often tackled because it is so unthinkable, namely the disintegration of thinking. For in attempting to analyse the thinking of Pope Francis, Fr Pagliarani concludes that the Pope, in his desire to reach modern man wherever he is, has abandoned all system of thinking, all Catholic philosophy or theology in the classical sense of those two words. This would mean that to get to modern man, Pope Francis is giving up on Catholic doctrine. Here is the SG’s argument:

Pope Francis is “above” all systems of thinking. Whereas for John-Paul II certain doctrines were untouchable, and whereas Benedict XVI was always concerned to appear faithful to Tradition, on the contrary Pope Francis is demolishing all Catholic bastions from the past. Indeed it was inevitable that as Vatican II (1962–1965) with its religious liberty and ecumenism undermined the Church’s dogma, so with

the passing decades her moral teaching without basis in dogma would also give way. Thus with his Amoris Laetitia of 2016 Pope Francis taught, as solemn Church doctrine, a completely new approach to morality, namely Mother Church must face the modern facts and become a quite different kind of mother. She can no longer impose herself and her laws as she has always done before. Now she must listen to, understand and accompany her children, adapting herself passively to whatever they do. Obviously moral principles are going to change with men’s changing practice in evolving historical circumstances.

Thus Francis misunderstands love – no mother loves her child drowning in a dangerous river by jumping in with him. He misunderstands mercy – it is no mercy to a man to leave him in a state of sin displeasing to God. By such a falsification of God’s true love and mercy, not only does the Church give up on the whole supernatural order, she also leaves him “free” in the natural order, so that no bastion remains, because Mother Church has adapted to the sins of the world, by making no more claims on her children. With Vatican II she adapted to the world. With Pope Francis she goes further, adapting to the sins of the world, leaving her children, deeply wounded by original sin, with no supernatural grace to heal them.

What then does Pope Francis propose instead, as a goal or goals for Church and world? Firstly, the universal imposition of a utopian integral ecology, to look after Mother Earth (Pachamama) in all material respects (Laudato sí, 2015), and secondly a quasi-masonic universal brotherhood for us to look after our fellow-men (Fratelli tutti, 2019). Thus, Mother Church is reduced to a purely natural priesthood, stripped of all supernatural power, at the service of the secular State in all of its superior secular humanism.

The Superior General concludes that the real answer to all modern problems is for Mother Church to preach once more infallible doctrine, namely the supernatural dimension and destiny of man in Heaven eternal, the Fall of man in time with its lasting consequence of Original Sin, and the absolute need of the grace of Christ to overcome sin. The doctrine of Christ the King embodies by itself the eternity of Heaven, the victory of the Redeemer over sin, and the indispensable help of the supernatural grace which He brought as Redeemer to enable men to get to Heaven. And His Mother will play a very special part in what will be the Church’s final victory over the passing triumph of errors so subtle and pernicious.

This analysis by the Superior General of the Pope’s thinking and action presents a coherence and logic for which we should all be grateful. There is certainly some light at the top of the Society of St Pius X. We say sincerely, thanks be to God. But does it mean that the Society is out of danger? That must remain to be seen. The Doctor has not as such the virtues of the Martyr. Please, God . . .

Kyrie eleison

Ruinations Causes

Ruinations Causes on March 13, 2021

Two weeks ago in these “Comments” a veteran Traditionalist made some interesting comments on the subject of infiltrators, conscious or unconscious, wrecking the Catholic Church from within. Readers may recall how he strove in vain to restore Catholic Tradition within the Conciliar structure. He found out that it could not be done. When further asked, “But how could the very churchmen commit the Church’s suicide? That makes no sense!,” he had further interesting things to say –

I think all of this comes down to a love of the Truth or a lack of Truth. In my opinion, those who truly love the Truth will find it – or struggle until they do find it, and then act upon it. I think the Faith collapsed in the 1960 and ‘70s because Catholics had become so weak. At the noon Mass at my parish in the 1950s, practically no one went to Communion. Priests come from the people, and the people had become soft. When the changes came, one half of those people gladly accepted those changes since it made living the “Faith” much easier, because non-Catholics were no longer hostile, one faith was as good as another, we could now all smile at each other, and did the clergy ever lead lead the way! Most of the other half either joined Protestant sects or simply gave up religion altogether. A few brave souls, a tiny minority who still possessed that love of the Faith, formed their own chapels. Their greatest inspiration was Archbishop Lefebvre, who alone had the faith to grasp that the hierarchy was in a hopeless state of apostasy.

God alone can judge men’s hearts, but in my opinion there is no excuse for those who abandoned the Faith. Perhaps nearly all who did so will pay with their souls. My generation is the worst because we were born and raised in the Faith and we abandoned it because we thought it would make life easier and far less of a challenge. The following generations, although a bit less guilty because they were denied their Catholic heritage, still had little excuse, as everyone has a duty to live the Truth. Where the faith is soft, Catholics are cowards, particularly when it comes to abortion. The bishops won’t even speak out against it, for fear of losing their tax status or of offending someone. Senator Timothy Kaine who lives in our city is as pro-abort and pro-perversion as one can be, while still claiming that the Catholic Faith is the most important thing in his life. He said it all when he said, “I am a Francis-type Catholic.” To my knowledge, the Bishop of Richmond has never challenged him on abortion, much less denied him what passes for Holy Communion, when he should have excommunicated him long ago.

The veteran above is probing the general collapse of Catholics after Vatican II. Another reader of these “Comments” seeks below the cause of the particular slide of the Society of St Pius X, which had nevertheless been raised by God to resist that general collapse –

I think it’s Pharisaism. It’s the same Pharisaism that killed Our Lord that is now killing the Church and the Society. True humility and charity have been lost. Pharisaism, as of the “whited sepulchres” in the Gospel, leads to spiritual blindness – “Make this people blind, so that seeing they may not see, hearing they may not hear” . . . . The Pharisees had a perfect knowledge of the Scriptures and the Law, yet still they killed their Messiah. Today they are killing the Church, and they simply cannot see it, they are blind . . .

In the Society I do believe there were at least subversive priests, and at the top some leaders suffering from complete blindness, but these would have gotten nowhere if the Society as a whole had not fallen into Pharisaism. Had they humbly followed their saintly Founder, they would not have thought they knew better than he did, nor would they have pushed aside Our Lady’s requests for Rosaries for the Consecration of Russia, thinking they knew better than God Himself. Such an insult could not go unpunished by Him. The punishment was the spiritual blindness as of the Pharisees, a dreadful punishment! God, have mercy upon us!

Kyrie eleison.