Society of St. Pius X

Infection? – Who?

Infection? – Who? on August 25, 2012

A favourite proverb of mine comes from China: “The wise man blames himself, the fool blames others.” Not that others are never to blame, obviously, but that I can usually do little or nothing to change their behaviour, whereas I am at least in theory in command of my own. As the Imitation of Christ has it, we rarely think with profit on the sins of others, always with profit on our own.

This age-old wisdom is called to mind by the letter of a reader of “Eleison Comments” (# 263) in which she complains of the “Conciliar infection” that she observes in the way in which Society of St Pius X Tridentine Masses in the USA can be celebrated by the priests and attended by the laity. If her dark observations are summarized below, it is not in order to overwhelm priests or laity with the darkness, but to suggest how each of us can examine his own behaviour.

In general she says that the “Conciliar infection” has been creeping into the SSPX chapels for some time. She goes so far as to say that the situation is deteriorating and desperate, and the damage is already done. It is as though Latin has taken pride of place over the Faith, as though anything goes if only it is a Tridentine Mass said in Latin. Not having understood – or retained – what the Mass really is, she says, the laity find it normal merely to attend. Many attend Mass daydreaming, and then they receive Holy Communion in a very disrespectful way, just like in the Newchurch.

She blames the priests for not having sufficiently explained the Faith or the Mass. As for their sermons, she wonders at times whether they understand what they are proclaiming and at times she finds that the personal ideas of the priest and the context of the sermon as a whole come over as Conciliar. Liturgical rules are not respected, rubrics are not consistent, the Canon of the Mass is hurried through. In brief she is not surprised if a number of SSPX priests and layfolk are ready to join the Newchurch, nay, may even already belong to it.

Now nobody in his right mind would claim that her dark description fits all SSPX Masses, but such is the corruption of our age that a deterioration of the kind she observes is all too normal. The corruption presses upon priests and laity alike, and it means that all of us need to observe closely how it may be creeping up on ourselves. As Sister Lucy of Fatima once said in the 1950’s, the laity can no longer rely on the clergy to do all the work for them of getting them to Heaven. In fact they never could do so, but a lazy “obedience” is still today a common temptation. If layfolk want good priests to lead them, and if they do not want the SSPX to go Conciliar, then let them observe their own household to put it in order – for instance, how do I myself and my family attend Mass?

As for us priests, let us not forget the dire warning of the prophet Ezechiel (III, 17–21) to pastors: if the pastors tell the people how they are sinning, and the people go on sinning, the Lord God will punish the people but he will not hold the pastors responsible. Contrariwise, if the people sin and the pastors do not tell them how they are sinning, then the Lord God will hold the pastors guilty for the people’s sins. “Judgment should begin at the house of God” (I Pet. IV, 17).

Therefore it depends on all of us to do what is in our power to prevent the SSPX from catching the “Conciliar infection.” That is today more easily said than done, but as St Paul says (I Cor. IV, 3–5), let each of us look to his own sins. It is God who judges.

Kyrie eleison.

Doctrine Again

Doctrine Again on August 18, 2012

The scorn of “doctrine” is an immense problem today. The “best” of Catholics in our 21st century pay lip-service to the importance of “doctrine,” but in their modern bones they feel instinctively that even Catholic doctrine is some kind of prison for their minds, and minds must not be imprisoned. In Washington, D.C., around the interior dome of the Jefferson Memorial, that quasi-religious temple of the United States’ champion of liberty, runs his quasi-religious quotation: I have sworn upon the altar of God eternal hostility against every form of tyranny over the mind of man. Surely he had Catholic doctrine in mind, amongst others. Modern man’s quasi-religion excludes having any fixed doctrine.

However, a sentence from the “Eleison Comments” of two weeks ago (EC 263, July 28) gives a different angle on the nature and importance of “doctrine.” It ran: So long as Rome believes in its Conciliar doctrine, it is bound to use any such(“non-doctrinal”) agreement to pull the SSPX in the direction of the(Second Vatican) Council.In other words what drives Rome supposedly to discount “doctrine” and at all costs to conciliarize the SSPX is their own belief in their own Conciliar doctrine. As Traditional Catholic doctrine is – one hopes – the driving force of the SSPX, so Conciliar doctrine is the driving force of Rome. The two doctrines clash, but each of them is a driving force.

In other words, “doctrine” is not just a set of ideas in a man’s head, or a mental prison. Whatever ideas a man chooses to hold in his head, his real doctrine is that set of ideas that drives his life. Now a man may change that set of ideas, but he cannot not have one. Here is how Aristotle put it: “If you want to philosophize, then you have to philosophize. If you don’t want to philosophize, you still have to philosophize. In any case a man has to philosophize.” Similarly, liberals may scorn any set of ideas as a tyranny, but to hold any set of ideas to be a tyranny is still a major idea, and it is the one idea that drives the lives of zillions of liberals today, and of all too many Catholics. These should know better, but all of us moderns have the worship of liberty in our bloodstream.

Thus doctrine in its real sense is not just an imprisoning set of ideas, but that central notion of God, man and life that directs the life of every man alive. Even if a man is committing suicide, he is being driven by the idea that life is too miserable to be worth continuing. A notion of life centred on money may drive a man to become rich; on pleasure to become a rake; on recognition to become famous, and so on. But however a man centrally conceives life, that concept is his real doctrine.

Thus conciliar Romans are driven by Vatican II as being their central notion to undo the SSPX that rejects Vatican II, and until they either succeed or change that central notion, they will continue to be driven to dissolve Archbishop Lefebvre’s SSPX. On the contrary the central drive of clergy and laity of the SSPX should be to get to Heaven, the idea being that Heaven and Hell exist, and Jesus Christ and his true Church provide the one and only sure way of getting to Heaven. This driving doctrine they know to be no fanciful invention of their own, and that is why they do not want it to be undermined or subverted or corrupted by the wretched neo-modernists of the Newchurch, driven by their false conciliar notion of God, man and life. The clash is total.

Nor can it be avoided, as liberals dream it can. If falsehoods win, eventually even the stones of the street will cry out (Lk.XIX, 40). If Truth wins, still Satan will go on raising error after error, until the world ends. But “He that perseveres to the end will be saved,” says Our Lord (Mt.XXIV, 13).

Kyrie eleison.

A Chapter

A Chapter on August 4, 2012

As many of you know, a certain bishop was excluded from the General Chapter, or meeting of heads of the Society of St Pius X, held last month in Écône, Switzerland. To confirm the exclusion, use was apparently made of the adaptation by “Eleison Comments” (#257, June 16) of St Paul’s seemingly murderous wish that the corruptors of the Catholic Faith be “cut off” (Galatians V, 12). Actually Ambrose, Jerome, Augustine and Chrysostom all think that the wish, in context (Gal.V, 1–12), is aimed at the Judaisers’ manhood rather than at their very lives, and Chrysostom thinks it is a jest.

However, when I heard what serious use was being made of the jest at the Chapter, I must admit that I had a naughty vision: I imagined my noble colleagues in SSPX headquarters looking out of the windows at night to see if there might not be a lanky episcopal Englishman, heavily disguised as Jack the Ripper, prowling around in the bushes with a long carving-knife gleaming in the moonlight, seeking someone to carve to pieces. Dear colleagues, sleep easy – I have no murderous ambitions. Honestly!

But the Chapter was serious business. What did it produce? Above all, a Declaration, made public a few days later, and six conditions for any future Rome-SSPX agreement, leaked on the Internet soon after that (given how many souls are presently entrusting their faith and their salvation to the guidance of the SSPX, I find such a leak not unreasonable). Now all honour to the good men at the Chapter who by all accounts did their best to limit the damage, but if the Declaration and conditions give us the present mind of the Society’s leaders as a whole, then there has to be cause for concern.

As for the Declaration of 2012, it is enough to compare it for a few moments with Archbishop Lefebvre’s Declaration of 1974, to wonder what has happened to his Society. Whereas the Archbishop explicitly and repeatedly denounces the reformation wrought by Vatican II (“born of Liberalism and Modernism, poisoned through and through, deriving from heresy and ending in heresy”), in words that brought down upon him the wrath of the Conciliar Popes, on the contrary the Declaration of 2012 refers only once to the Council with its “novelties” merely “stained with errors,” in terms that one can easily imagine Benedict XVI underwriting from beginning to end. Does the SSPX now think that the Conciliar Popes represent no serious problem?

As for the six conditions for any future Rome-SSPX agreement, they deserve a detailed examination, but suffice it to say here and now that the demand made by the SSPX’s 2006 General Chapter for a doctrinal agreement prior to any practical agreement seems to have gone completely by the board. Is it now the mind of the SSPX that the doctrine of the Romans to whom they would submit is no longer so important? Or is the SSPX itself succumbing to the charms of Liberalism?

For a contrarian point of view, may I venture to recommend a collection of “Sermons and Doctrinal Conferences” of His Excellency Jack the Ripper from between 1994 and 2009, now available on seven CD’s from http://​truerestorationpress.​com/​node/​52, with special incentives to purchase expiring at the end of this month? Not every word in these 30 hours of recordings may be golden, some words are no doubt too temperamental, but at least the effort is made to disembowel the enemies and not the friends of our Catholic Faith.

Kyrie eleison.

Conciliar Infection

Conciliar Infection on July 28, 2012

May Catholics who wish to keep the Faith attend a Tridentine Mass celebrated by a priest who is part of the Conciliar Church, for instance by his belonging to the Institute of Christ the King or to the Fraternity of St Peter? The answer has to be that, as a rule, a Catholic may not attend such a Mass, even if it is a Tridentine Mass, and even if it is worthily celebrated. What can be the justification for such a seemingly strict rule?

The basic reason is that the Catholic Faith is more important than the Mass. For if through no fault of my own even for a long time I cannot attend Mass but I keep the Faith, then I can still save my soul, whereas if I lose the Faith but for whatever reason go on attending Mass, I cannot save my soul (“Without faith it is impossible to please God” – Heb. XI, 6). Thus I attend Mass in order to live my Faith, and, belief going with worship, I attend the true Mass in order to keep the true Faith. I do not keep the Faith in order to attend Mass.

It follows that if the celebration of a Tridentine Mass is surrounded by circumstances that threaten to undermine my faith, then depending on the gravity of the threat, I may not attend such a Mass. That is why Masses celebrated by schismatic Orthodox priests may be valid, but the Church in her right mind used to forbid Catholics to attend on pain of grave sin, because, belief and worship going together, the non-Catholic worship threatened the Catholics’ faith. Now Orthodoxy has in the course of centuries caused huge harm to the Catholic Church, but can anything compare with the devastation wrought upon that Church within mere tens of years by Conciliarism? If then Catholics were forbidden to attend Mass in Orthodox circumstances, would not the same Church in her right mind forbid to attend a Tridentine Mass celebrated in Conciliar circumstances?

Then what is meant by Conciliar circumstances? The answer must be, any circumstances which, over a shorter or longer period of time, are going to make me think that the Second Vatican Council was not an utter disaster for the Church. Such a circumstance might be a charming and believing priest who has no problem with celebrating either the new or the old Mass, and who preaches and acts as though the Council presents no serious problem. Conciliarism is so dangerous because it can so be made to seem Catholic that I can lose the Faith without – or almost without – realizing it.

Of course common sense will take into account a variety of special circumstances. For instance a good priest trapped for now within the Conciliar church may need encouragement to start on his way out of it by my attending his first celebrations of the true Mass. But the general rule must remain that I can have nothing to do with even the true Mass being celebrated in a Conciliar context. For confirmation, notice how Rome began by allowing the Institute of the Good Shepherd to celebrate exclusively the true Mass, because Rome knew that once the Institute had swallowed the official hook, eventually Rome could be sure of pulling the Institute into their Conciliar net. Sure enough. It took only five years.

That is the danger of any practical agreement without a doctrinal agreement between Rome and the Society of St Pius X. So long as Rome believes in its Conciliar doctrine, it is bound to use any such agreement to pull the SSPX in the direction of the Council, and the context of every SSPX Mass would become Conciliar, if not rapidly, at least in the long run. Forewarned is forearmed.

Kyrie eleison.

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.