Tag: Tradition

Solzhenytsin Speaks

Solzhenytsin Speaks posted in Eleison Comments on April 3, 2021

Here, for Easter, is Alexander Solzhenytsin’s famous Templeton Address, drastically summarised. 1983.

When I was a child, people said it was forgetting God that led to the Russian Revolution of 1917. Now I am a man in 1983, that one phrase still says it all. It sums up the entire 20th century with all its crimes, starting with World War I, which would not have been possible (e.g. making poison gas into a weapon) without a godless embitterment in the leaders of Europe. Likewise World War II. Europeans are burnt out. Peace depends on stout hearts, not on the nuclear bomb. We have grown all too used to the Apocalypse. Dostoyevsky said that great events have caught us unprepared, and only after the world has been possessed by devils will it be possible to save it again.

Meanwhile the Devil is triumphing, worldwide. By 1917 the faith was extinct in Russia’s leading class, and it was being threatened in the working class. Yet once upon a time Russia was steeped in Orthodox Christianity. Piety, not materialism, moulded people’s thinking and their personalities, and organised their lives. But a schism in the 17th century and the reforms of Peter the Great weakened religion, and the secularism of the 19th century poisoned the leading class, so that by 1917 religion was crippled.

Revolution always starts with atheism, says Dostoyevsky, but never has atheism been so malevolent as it is at the heart of Communism. In the 1920’s there was a veritable cloud of Christian martyrs in Russia, from top to bottom of Church and State, while for instance children were wrenched from their parents and from all religion. Stalin favoured religion only to revive Russian patriotism against Hitler, and Brezhnev pretended to be religious so as to deceive the West, but Krushchev showed how deeply religion is hated by Communism, and by all the unworthy successors of the frenzied Lenin. However, never did any of these maddened persecutors of Christ expect what happened: beneath the Communist steamroller the Russian awareness of God is now acute and profound. Tanks and rockets will never vanquish Christianity.

In the West, religion is more threatened from inside than from outside. In the Middle Ages Secularism arose from within, more dangerous than tanks or rockets. Its ideal flies no higher than life, liberty and the pursuit of my own happiness. Good and evil are objects of mockery. Forget the human heart. Result, evil is all around. The West is slipping all the time, losing its youth. The media blaspheme Jesus and Mary. In that case, what reason do I have to hold back from doing what I like with my liberty? Why not hate my own society, as it teaches me to do? Do not the weaknesses of capitalism correspond to the weaknesses of human nature? For instance the pursuit of money to the capital sin of greed? Capitalism boasts that it establishes equality. But is that not an equality of slaves, destitute of spiritual values? And it makes me more free? But the more “free” I am, does that not mean the more blindly I hate? Salvation can never be by money or by abundance of material goods.

Without love, life and art perish. In the West that happens voluntarily at the hands of men who want to take the place of God. East and West alike have been forgetting God. Yet the key to our whole existence is the daily choice every single human heart has to make between good and evil. The modern theories re-centring everything on society have proved bankrupt, but we have not rejected their lies. Unless we turn back to God we shall never find the way out of our problems. The enemy is within me. It is we who are hanging ourselves.

Human life is merely a stage on the way to God. It is more than just the laws of matter, i.e. the physical sciences. In God we live and move and have our being: He is the “Love moves the sun and the other stars” – Dante, concluding line of the entire “Divine Comedy.” Forget the 19th and 20th centuries. We must reach for God. The so-called Enlightenment was a complete failure.

Kyrie eleison.

SSPX Questions

SSPX Questions posted in Eleison Comments on January 16, 2021

A reader of these “Comments,” no doubt anxious from what he sees or hears about the Society of St Pius X being less faithful than it used to be or should be, has in mind a few possible explanations. The author of these “Comments” offered some considerations by way of reply to a few of his questions:—

1. There have been rumours of infiltration of the SSPX. Some of these rumours suggest that there was a plot to infiltrate the Society from the beginning, others argue that it took time for the Society to be infiltrated.

No doubt the classic enemies of the Church, who closely watched Our Lord in His time, discerned rapidly what a threat to their scheming was represented by Archbishop Lefebvre with his priestly Society of St Pius X and its new generation of faithful priests. However, I for one cannot say I ever recognised any clear and conscious enemy infiltrators. But what I could recognise was priestly sons of the Archbishop, formed under his care, but who ceased to recognise what they once recognised, namely the necessity of obeying only selectively orders coming down from the Conciliar Church authorities in Rome and in the dioceses. These priests have gone a long way not exactly to infiltrate but rather to change the SSPX from within. If today it was still defending the Faith as the Archbishop did, it could be doing a power of good to a mass of Catholics now waking up to the Vatican II betrayal, by helping them to see how and where the true Church is surviving. Instead, the loyalty of the SSPX leaders now seems to have gone over to the officials of Vatican II in Rome, and many souls that it could have converted, it now rather confuses than converts.

2. So has the SSPX been infiltrated, and if so, by whom?

Properly speaking, by formal infiltration, perhaps not. But loosely speaking, by an often unconscious abandoning of the Archbishop’s understanding of Vatican II and its officials, yes. The problem has been a gradual going with the flow of today’s universal fantasy, and a corresponding loss of grip on reality, more on the part of the SSPX leaders in HQ than on the part of the humble priests on the ground. The problem of these leaders has been less in their Catholic doctrine than in their application of that teaching to the 21st century, where they have failed to grasp the full evil of the modern world. They are too “nice.”

 3. Some blogs have pointed to an Austrian-Jewish family by the name of “Von Gutmann” who were originally given a financial “leg up” by the Rothschilds. This family has, according to Maximillian Krah, given money to the SSPX via a Foundation. Who is this family and why are they giving money to the SSPX?

It is a Jewish family from Austria, but, as best I recall, the Mrs. Von Gutmann that you name was a bona fide convert, and she left a great deal of money to the SSPX in Austria to help Catholic Tradition to thrive there. 

4. It is rumoured on the internet that Archbishop Lefebvre was a sedevacantist? Is this true?

The Archbishop had, from Paul VI onwards, always a certain sympathy with sedevacantism as a possible solution to the immensely serious theological problem of Vicars of Christ destroying the Church. Twice he entertained in public the possibility – in 1976, and in 1985 – that the apparent Popes in Rome were not real Popes. But he never decided for that solution, and frequently he considered it only to reject it. He considered that it raised more problems than it solves.

5. Why won’t the current SSPX leadership reconcile with Rome? What are your thoughts?

I think that too many of its best priests still think too like the Archbishop about today’s Rome and Romans for the SSPX leaders to be able to slide into the Romans’ arms. But these priests had better watch out!

Kyrie eleison.

Fortunate Family

Fortunate Family posted in Eleison Comments on October 24, 2020

When the horizon is, humanly speaking, so dark all around, and when demonic forces are intent on tearing the family apart because it is the means designed by God to start human beings out on the road to His Heaven, then it may be a good time to summarise for readers of these “Comments” an email sent to their editor by the father of a family of eight children in the United States, who is neither hopeless nor afraid. He lives in the middle of nowhere. He has Mass only once a month in a Traditional Chapel nearby. But sanity is still possible. Here is the essence of his email –

Spiritually and sacramentally, we continue to survive with monthly Mass at our Resistance chapel which we will need as long as we have need of Mass and the Sacraments. And I do not see that need (or the crisis in the Church) ending any time soon. The chapel is up and running, but there have been some poor turnouts at the last couple of Masses. For various reasons, a good number of Traditional Catholics seem to be giving in to the media-induced panic.

Our family is doing well; we have no complaints. We are expecting our ninth child soon. We had another boy recently. Everyone notices how different he is from the girls. He explores everything, gets into everything, is more interested in “things”, machines, equipment, etc., than people. Since we have several girls, we really notice the innate differences between boys and girls. Our children are all into music, because I am teaching them to love and appreciate music with melody, harmony, rhythm, and good lyrics. We listen to folk music, especially Irish, various instrumental music, classical, and chant. Any songs coming from a place of angst, despair, depression, hate, etc. are evil, ugly, and to be shunned.

I have been working full time from my home office for a Catholic operation which seems to be waking up more with every passing year, unlike the SSPX which once had the full package of truth, but is losing it year-by-year. If where I work continues to be faithful to the Truth as they have been, it will eventually have to become full Trad or change course/betray at some point. There are no other options. I also work manually in our gardens which we have just finished expanding, having learned about “Back to Eden” gardening a couple of years ago. Our soil is pure clay and very poor, but with mulch one can imitate God’s nature, letting rich soil form from organic material by rotting down. With a recently discovered source of free wood chips, I can make quantities of my own mulch. So the children are all helping me to use this new technique to treat our fruit trees and start garden beds. We hope we will soon be able to grow a decent amount of food here. Our two garden beds measure 1,500 square feet, so far.

We are especially concerned with the results of the election this year. My gut feeling is that 2020 will make 2016 look like child’s play. Then there’s the whole COVID madness and the nationwide riots over a black man who overdosed on Fentanyl. Maybe the fight is merely between the really bad guys (Deep State) and some lesser or rival bad guys (Trump and his associates). Maybe Trump is merely less evil, i.e. he hasn’t partaken in the child sacrifice, child torture, and other devilry that the rest of them have? My hopes are limited. Still, I do not think that Trump is on the side of the Deep State. I will be voting for him because of his unprecedented actions against abortion and in favour of freedom in general.

We are doing fine financially, thanks to many blessings from God. But the biggest blessing has been that I learned as a teenager the evils of the banksters’ usury. Without this grasp of economics, I might be blameless and sinless but still deep in debt and related miseries. Also my wife has always been frugal, so we have always lived within our means, giving up many luxuries and working hard, but now we are reaping the benefits. We are now completely debt-free, even with eight children and only one modest income. I point out to my children that it took years of frugality and hard work, but eventually it can be done.

As for the local chapel, alas, many souls come and do not come back, but today some are looking for a Tridentine Mass where they can continue to receive Holy Communion on the tongue, as forbidden by our official diocese for “Covid” reasons. So much for Tradition depending on the official Church! I often wonder why God is allowing so many setbacks for Tradition. Is He purifying the remnant, looking for more quality over quantity? Both among non-Catholics and in Traditional Catholic families, even when the parents seem solid, I do not see their children “fully taking their place” in the next generation. The tides of the World beat on them relentlessly, wearing them down, some slightly, some greatly, while some completely collapse. Truly, if these days are not shortened, even the Elect will not be saved.

Kyrie eleison.

Bishop Huonder

Bishop Huonder posted in Eleison Comments on March 30, 2019

It was widely known that Bishop Huonder (BpH) of the official diocese of Chur, Switzerland, when he is due to retire in April at the age of 77, was due to take up official residence for his autumn years in a boys’ school of the Society of St Pius X in Wangs, Switzerland. There was even a rumour circulating, from a close collaborator with two previous Superior Generals of the SSPX, that this same Conciliar bishop would be the principal consecrator of two Society priests to give, with Pope Francis’ full approval, two new bishops to the SSPX, perhaps after Easter. A date so soon for an event so significant is certainly impossible now, but its logic was inexorable, given the Newsociety’s 20-year old policy of blending with the Newchurch.

The same logic was behind BpH’s settling for his retirement in the Society’s school for boys in Wangs. Even as official bishop for one of the largest Newchurch dioceses in Switzerland, he is reported to have made several visits already to the school, and to have made himself popular with the Newsociety priests and boys living there. But he would not be cutting all contact with the Newchurch in Rome. On the contrary, his present diocesan spokesman announced in January that the bishop’s retiring to Wangs in April “is tied to a mission being entrusted to him by the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, to maintain contact with the SSPX.” Clearly BpH, reputed to be a personal friend of Pope Francis, was planning to act as a link between Newchurch and Newsociety, in the hope of bringing them closer together.

Nor was the hope necessarily dishonest. Many a Newchurchman cannot see (or will not see) the gulf that separates the Catholic religion of God from the Conciliar religion of man. On both sides there exists the wish to pretend that there is no such gulf. On the one hand Catholics find it hard to bear being outside the structure of the Church’s visible Authority, while on the other hand followers of Vatican II need re-assurance that they have not broken with the true Church’s unchanging Tradition. It may be to BpH’s credit that he wanted to settle in a more Catholic environment than the official diocese where he probably has no alternative to giving Communion to young women badly dressed, and no alternative to taking back remarks entirely justified against homosexuality. But “A fact is stronger than the Lord Mayor,” says the English proverb.

The fact is that Vatican II was the greatest break with Catholic Tradition in all Church history. Take for instance the Newmass, which is to the Council as practice is to theory. Would BpH have been asked never to say it in the school? Could he have accepted never to say it? And even if so, could he possibly have admitted that the theory and practice of his priesthood and episcopacy have been immersed in the Conciliar sell-out of God’s true Church to the godless modern world? Could he have shed overnight the convictions of all his tens of years of immersion in the Conciliar Church? Ordained priest in 1971 and consecrated bishop in 2007 with the rites of the revolutionary Paul VI, could he have admitted that to eliminate all doubt as to the Newrites’ validity, he needs to be conditionally re-ordained and re-consecrated? Or would the Newsociety have required neither? That seems most likely, given its recent practice, but how would the Swiss Traditionalists have responded to that? To all appearances Bishop Vitus Huonder may be an honest and well-meaning man, but his honesty is Conciliar, which means that he is loyal to a thoroughly dishonest corruption of the Catholic Faith and Church.

Alas, all over the world Society Traditionalists are being accustomed to the replacing of Archbishop Lefebvre’s Society by the Newsociety. Bishop Fellay wanted to establish the SSPX within the walls of official Rome for it to act as a Trojan horse to convert Conciliar Rome. But was not BpH, even granting him all the good will in the world, being placed to act as a Trojan horse within the walls of the Society? One may hope that the school in Wangs would have enabled him to see the gulf between Tradition and the Council, but that is a fond hope. Alice was in Wonderland. The Newsociety wanted to be in Huonderland.

Kyrie eleison.

Consecration Imminent?

Consecration Imminent? posted in Eleison Comments on November 17, 2018

A rumour has been flying around in Catholic Tradition that there will soon be in the Society of St Pius X the consecration of a new bishop, or bishops. Rumours need never be taken too seriously, but on the other hand they are not always without foundation. In the present case the SSPX certainly needs new bishops, because Bishop Tissier has for some time now been not in good health, Bishop de Galarreta as the Society’s First Assistant must now concern himself with administering Society affairs worldwide, and that leaves Bishop Fellay alone with complete freedom to travel anywhere for Confirmations and Ordinations. So there is certainly foundation for the rumour of a new consecration.

But the rumour goes further, because it says that the bishop(s) to be consecrated will have the approval of the Roman authorities, and here is where the rumour is worth considering, even if it is untrue, because here lies the clearest example of the impossible dead end into which the Newsociety has driven itself by its policy of seeking official approval from the Conciliar authorities in Rome. For if the bishop elect has the approval of unrepentant Conciliarists, how can he be pleasing to true Traditionalists? And if he has the approval of true Traditionalists, how can he be at the same time be pleasing to the masters of Conciliarism in Rome? And the answer to that question can only be either that the Conciliarists are giving up on their Vatican II, or Traditionalists are going over to Vatican II, or that Conciliarists and Traditionalists are meeting somewhere in between, as though 2+2=4 and 2+2=5 can be reconciled at 2+2=four and a half.

For do we need to be reminded that Catholic Tradition and Vatican II are intrinsically irreconcilable? Yes we do, because we poor human beings are always wanting to have our cake and eat it. We are always wanting to square the circle, to mix oil and water, to dance with the Devil in this life while not spoiling our chances of enjoying with God in the next life. We want to have it both ways, so that any recipe for reconciling God with the Devil will always sell like hot cakes until it inevitably fails, whereupon it will be immediately succeeded by the next recipe for doing the same thing. The failure is inevitable because in the words of the Anglican Bishop Butler of the 18th century, “Things are what they are, their consequences will be what they will be, why then should we seek to be deceived?”

Thus Catholic Tradition came from Jesus Christ, who is God, while Vatican II (1962–1965) came from the desire of modern man to combine God’s religion with godless modernity arising from the French Revolution. For about Vatican II both Cardinal Suenens on the left and Archbishop Lefebvre on the right said the same thing, namely that it was the Revolution of 1789 inside the Church: religious liberty to free men from all truth of the past, equality to level down all order of old Christendom, and fraternity to create the New World Order of the Masonic brotherhood of man without God. Of course Vatican II has failed, except in the secret purpose of its Judeo-Masonic designers to destroy God’s Church, and since Almighty God, to cleanse His Church, is still giving power to His age-old enemies to scourge it, then they are by no means renouncing their Council, rather today’s Church authorities are putting it into action more than ever.

Therefore if the same authorities approve of a bishop elect coming from inside the once Traditional SSPX, it can only be to help dissolve any remaining resistance from within the SSPX to their Masonic Newchurch. And if any Traditionalists approve of the bishop elect who pleases the Newchurch, it can only be because they are losing their Catholic Faith under the overpowering influence of today’s worldwide apostasy. “Caveant consules,” said the Latins. Let those who are in command watch out.

Kyrie eleison.

Why Tradition?

Why Tradition? posted in Eleison Comments on August 19, 2017

If it is true that a generation of Traditional Catholics is growing up who do not know why they are Traditional, that is definitely one reason why the Society of St Pius X is “losing its savour” – see Mt. V, 13. To keep the Faith, every Catholic needs to know why he must follow Tradition. Now the Second Vatican Council was arguably the greatest single assault on Catholic Tradition in all the history of the Church. So let us look at a modernist encyclopedia’s useful ten-point summary of the new teaching of Vatican II, together with the briefest of pointers to the error in each point. The ten points are in italics, their skeletal refutation follows immediately each point:—

1 The Church is, first and foremost, a mystery, or sacrament, and not primarily an organisation or institution. “Mystery” and “sacrament” are deliberately vague words to get away from the Church’s structure, but Our Lord clearly instituted Peter to lead His Apostles and disciples in the saving of souls. Peter is Pope, and in St Paul’s Epistles clearly Apostles become bishops and disciples become priests.

2 The Church is the whole people of God, not just the hierarchy, clergy and religious. Of course the Catholic Church includes all Catholics as well as priests, but the priests are its backbone, or structure.

3 The Church’s mission includes action on behalf of justice and peace and is not limited to the preaching of the Word and the celebration of the sacraments. Doctrine and sacraments are the basic means by which the Catholic Church has contributed more than anybody or anything to justice and peace in the world.

4 The Church includes all Christians and is not limited to the Catholic Church. Non-catholic “Christians” can never be truly Christian, because they reject more or less of what Our Lord instituted.

5 The Church is a communion, or college, of local churches, which are not simply administrative subdivisions of the Church Universal. Today’s chaos in “local churches” all over the world proves how they absolutely need to be united and administered by a sane Universal Pope in Rome.

6 The Church is an eschatological community; it is not yet the Kingdom of God. Wherever souls are in the state of grace, there God is King, not only in Heaven but also already here below on earth.

7 The lay apostolate is a direct participation in the apostolate of the Church and not simply a sharing in the mission of the hierarchy. As a human body needs both skeleton and flesh, so the Mystical Body of the Church needs both clergy and laity (cf. I Cor. XII). Opposite errors (clericalism and laicism) are generated by exaggerating the role of either. The Church needs both.

8 There is a hierarchy of truths; not all teachings of the Church are equally binding or essential to the integrity of Catholic faith. Only non-dogmatic truths can be ranked in order of importance. All Catholic dogmas rank equally, because to deny just one is to deny God’s authority which is behind them all.

9 God uses other Christian churches and non-Christian religions in offering salvation to all mankind; the Catholic Church is not the only means of salvation. To all men alive God offers graces sufficient for salvation. These may come to men IN non-Christian religions or non-Catholic “churches,” but they can never come THROUGH anybody or anything except through Jesus Christ and His one Catholic Church.

10 The dignity of the human person and the freedom of the act of faith are the foundation of religious liberty for all, over against the view that “error has no rights.” Catholicism being the only true religion, then the only true religious liberty is the liberty to be Catholic. Error indeed has no rights.

Kyrie eleison.

P.S. On Sunday September 10, after Mass at 10h00, Dr David White will give three lectures in Broadstairs on Fr Gerard Manley Hopkins (1844–1889), Jesuit priest and important English poet.