Truth

Discussions’ Aftermath

Discussions’ Aftermath on June 18, 2011

As the doctrinal Discussions which were held from the autumn of 2009 to the spring of this year between the Society of St Pius X and Rome drop back into the past, the question naturally arises of future relations between the two. Among Catholics on both sides there is a wish for contacts to continue, but since such pious wishes for union easily give rise to illusions, it is necessary to keep one’s grip on reality if one is not to join the whole modern world in its anti-God fantasy.

Originally the Discussions were wanted not by the Society but by Rome, as it hoped to dissolve the Society’s notorious resistance to the Neo-modernism of Vatican II. The great obstacle was doctrine, because the Society is well protected inside the fortress of the Church’s age-old and unchanging doctrine. It had to be lured out of that fortress. Now for Neo-modernists, just as for Communists, any contact or dialogue with an adversary in a secure position was – and remains – better than none, because he can only lose by it while they can only gain. So Rome agreed even to doctrinal Discussions.

Alas for Rome, the Society’s four representatives believe clearly and held firm. As one of the four Roman theologians taking part in the Discussions was overheard to say afterwards, “We do not understand them and they do not understand us.” Of course. Unless the Romans abandoned their Neo-modernism or the Society priests betrayed the Truth, it was bound to be a relatively fruitless dialogue. But Rome cannot stand its own betrayal of the Truth being shown up by the paltry Society, so it is not likely to give up. That is why we already hear of an Ecclesia Dei spokesman telling that Rome will very soon offer an “Apostolic Ordinariat” to the Society. Of course such a quote may be merely a trial balloon to test reactions, but it is also a tempting idea. Unlike a Personal Prelature, an Apostolic Ordinariat is independent of the local bishops, and unlike an Apostolic Administration, such as Campos in Brazil, it is not confined to just one diocese. What more could the Society ask for?

It asks that Rome should come back to the Truth, because it knows, as do Communists and Neo-modernists, that any practical co-operation which would skirt around doctrinal disagreement leads eventually, for all kinds of human reasons, to absorbing the false doctrine of the enemies of the Faith, in other words to betraying the Truth. Here is why the Society’s Superior General has in public more than once repudiated any canonical agreement with Rome that would precede a doctrinal agreement. But the Discussions have served at least to demonstrate the depth of the doctrinal disagreement between the Society and Neo-modernist Rome. That is why Catholics should be prepared for the Society to refuse even the offer of an Apostolic Ordinariat, however well-intentioned the Roman authorities may be.

But why is doctrine so important? Because the Catholic Faith is a doctrine. But why is Faith so important? Because without it we cannot please God (Heb.XI,6). But why must it be the Catholic Faith? Will no other faith in God do? No, because God himself underwent the horror of the Cross to reveal to us the one true Faith. All other “faiths” contradict, more or less, that true Faith, with lies.

Four future numbers of “Eleison Comments” will show, with all due respect, how disoriented in this respect is the way of believing of the present Pope, however well-intentioned he may also be.

Kyrie eleison.

Men’s Authority

Men’s Authority on May 28, 2011

Two young men, uncertain of getting married, begged me the other day to write a manual on how men should be men. Theirs was a real cry of distress: “When should we be nice with women, and when should we be firm? We just don’t know any longer!” Yesteryear the answer to that question was common sense for many a man, but authority today has been so widely undermined by liberal propaganda that the problem of exercising it in marriage may be one reason why now numbers of young folk prefer simply to live together rather than get married. What follows is not a manual, but it may at least point our two musketeers in the right direction.

St. Paul says: “I bow my knees to the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ of whom all paternity in heaven and earth is named” (Eph. III, 14,15). In other words all fatherhood or authority amongst God’s creatures is modelled upon and derives from the fatherhood and authority of God himself. As Dostoevsky has one of his characters say, “If God does not exist, then I have no business being an army officer.” So it stands to reason that if men chase God out of their society, as he is being chased today out of the whole wide world, then all authority is radically undermined. In the individual, reason will be unable to govern the passions, in the family the father will be unable to control his household, and in the State democracy will come to seem the only legitimate form of government.

Now within the family, who, observing daily life, can deny that men are stronger than women in the use of reason, while women are stronger than men in intuition and emotion? Watch any sitcom if you doubt it. Now feelings have their rightful place in life and they are scorned, like one’s wife, at one’s peril, but they come and go, they are unstable and as such they are a guide, but not a reliable guide, to action. On the contrary if reason discerns what is objectively true and just, it is stabilized by the fact that objective truth and justice are above any individual or his feelings. Therefore reason may listen to feelings, but it must rule them. That is why men have, as men, a natural authority possessed only exceptionally by women, who have as a rule other qualities. That is why the man is naturally the head of the family and home, while the woman is naturally its heart.

But the liberalism which rules the modern world dissolves all sense of objective truth or justice. By so doing it deprives the reason of its object, and of its objective anchor in a reality above and independent of the reasoning subject. Reason being the prerogative of men, liberalism hits the men before it hits the women, whose feminine instincts are not dependent on reason. By the same token liberalism undercuts the authority of men which comes down from conforming to what is above them, ultimately divine Truth and Justice, and it makes all use of authority become arbitrary.

Therefore, young men, in all your dealings with men or women, seek to be true and just, and turn to God for the help necessary to discern truth and justice amidst so much untruth and injustice and arbitrary misuse of authority all around us today. Then act upon what you discern, and you will re-build your manly authority from above, in a world undercutting it from below. In brief, “Seek ye first the kingdom of God, and his justice, and all these things shall be added unto you” (Mt. VI, 33).

Kyrie eleison.

True Pope? – II

True Pope? – II on May 7, 2011

By no means everybody agrees with the opinion laid out here one week ago (EC 198) whereby subjective good faith or good will on the part of Conciliar Popes prevents their hair-raising objective heresies from invalidating them as Popes (see Prof. Doermann for John-Paul II’s teaching of Universal Salvation, see Bishop Tissier for Benedict XVI’s emptying out of the Cross). The opposite opinion is that these heresies are so hair-raising that #1, they cannot possibly have been uttered by true Vicars of Christ, or #2, no amount of subjective good faith can neutralize their objective poison, or #3, subjective good faith is excluded in the case of Conciliar Popes trained in the old theology. Let us gently take each argument in turn:—

Firstly, just how far the Lord God can allow his Vicars to betray him (objectively), God alone knows for sure. However, we do know from Scripture (Lk. XVIII, 8) that when Christ returns, he will hardly find the Faith still on earth. But is the Faith yet, in 2011, reduced to that point? One may think not. In which case God may allow his Conciliar Vicars to do worse yet, without their ceasing to be his Vicars. Does not Scripture declare at exactly the moment when Caiphas was plotting the crime of crimes against God, namely the judicial murder of Christ (Jn. XI, 50–51), that he was High Priest?

Secondly, it is true that the objective heresy of well-intentioned heretics is much more important for the Universal Church than their subjective good intentions, and it is also true that many objective heretics are subjectively convinced of their own innocence. For this double reason when Mother Church is in her right mind she has a mechanism for forcing such material heretics either to renounce their heresy or to become fully-fledged formal heretics, and that is her Inquisitors, whom she endows with her God-given authority to define and condemn heresy, to maintain the purity of doctrine. But what happens if it is the highest authority in the Church that is swimming in objective heresies? Who is there above the Popes that has authority to correct them? Nobody! Then has God abandoned his Church? No, but he is putting it through a severe trial, all too deserved by the tepid mass of today’s Catholics – and, alas, Traditionalists?

Thirdly, it is true that both John-Paul II and Benedict XVI received a pre-Conciliar training in philosophy and theology. But by their time the worms of Kantian subjectivism and Hegelian evolutionism had already for over a century been eating the heart out of the concept of objective and unchanging truth, without which the concept of unchangeable Catholic dogma can make no sense. Now one may well argue that both those Popes were morally at fault – say, love of popularity, say, intellectual pride – for falling into material heresy, but moral faults cannot replace authoritative doctrinal condemnation for purposes of turning them from material into formal heretics.

Therefore since only formal heretics are excluded from the Church, and since the only sure way of proving someone to be a formal heretic is not available in the case of Popes, a certain range of opinion on the problem of Conciliar Popes must remain open. “Sedevacantist” does not deserve to be the dirty word that liberal “Traditionalists” have made of it, but on the other hand the arguments of the sedevacantists are not as conclusive as they might wish or pretend. In conclusion, sedevacantists may still be Catholic, but no Catholic is yet obliged to be a sedevacantist. I for one believe the Conciliar Popes are valid Popes.

Kyrie eleison.

Cassocks Weighed

Cassocks Weighed 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.

Future Discussions

Future Discussions on March 5, 2011

To the relief of some, to the disappointment of others, it looks as though the doctrinal Discussions held over the last year and a half between theologians of Rome and representatives of the Society of St Pius X will after all come to an end this spring, because the main subjects of discussion will by then have been covered, without any real prospect of agreement opening up. Such is the conclusion tentatively to be drawn from remarks of the Society’s Superior General, Bishop Fellay, made in the course of an interview he gave on February 2.

Now let anyone disappointed be sure that there are Romans and important priests of the SSPX who will hardly give up their efforts to build a bridge between the churchmen of Vatican II and the churchmen of Catholic Tradition. But howsoever it be with such strivings to unite all Catholics of good will, strivings that ebb and flow, yesterday, today and tomorrow, Our Lord’s words are an anchorage: “Heaven and earth will pass away, but my words will not pass away” (Mt. XXIV, 35). For on his life the Church’s life is modelled, and in his life there was an ebb and flow of human strivings and sufferings, culminating in the dreadful crucifixion, but while he felt every human urge to shy away from the crucifying will of his Father – “Father, if it be possible, let this chalice pass from me . . .” – still his human mind and heart were anchored in that divine will – “ . . .nevertheless, not as I will, but as thou wilt” (Mt.XXVI, 39).

So the same unchanging divine will that directed and anchored Our Lord’s human mind and will, must anchor also the life of his Church. So Popes, Councils, religious Congregations and Societies may come and go, but in order to be Catholic they must submit to that divine will to which Our Lord submitted, and they must tell the exact same truths that Our Lord transmitted from his Father to his Church. Like no other institution upon earth, the Catholic Church is so built around Truth that its survival is proportional to its fidelity to that Truth. It is because the Conciliar Church is putting human interests in the place of divine Truth, that it is disintegrating, and any Catholic Congregation or Society that would do the same will likewise fall apart.

It follows that whoever is faithful to the fullness of revealed Truth is in effect – not in principle, but in practice – in the driving-seat of the Church (See “Letters from the Rector” Vol. IV, p.164). Furthermore, whoever has that Truth and pretends he is not in the driving-seat would be what Our Lord would have called himself, had he denied his Father, “a liar” (Jn.VIII, 55). That is because any messenger disowning the divineness of his divine message is no true lover of his fellow-men, as he and they may like to think, but he has for his father the Father of Lies (Jn.VIII, 44).

There is a Truth, even if most people can barely recognize it. The right and ability of the Romans to govern the Church depends on their being faithful to that Truth. The right and ability of the SSPX to stand up to unfaithful Romans depends on the SSPX’s own faithfulness to the Truth. For now the SSPX has been faithful, so for now the SSPX will survive, but may Rome, by returning to the Truth, make that survival unnecessary!

Kyrie eleison.

Few Elect?

Few Elect? on January 22, 2011

Why is it so seemingly difficult to save one’s soul? Why – as we are told – are relatively few souls saved in comparison with the number of souls damned? Since God wishes for all souls to be saved (I Tim.II, 4), why did he not make it somewhat easier, as he surely could have done?

The swift and simple answer is that it is not that difficult to save one’s soul. Part of the agony of souls in Hell is their clear knowledge of how easily they could have avoided damnation. Damned non-Catholics might say, “I knew there was something to Catholicism, but I chose never to go into the question because I could see ahead that I would have to change my way of life.” (Winston Churchill once said that every man runs into the truth at some time in his life, but most men turn the other way.) Damned Catholics might say, “God gave me the Faith, and I knew that all I needed was to make a good confession, but I reckoned it was more convenient to put it off, and so I died in my sins . . .” Every soul in Hell knows that it is there by its own fault, by its own choice. God is not to be blamed. In fact looking back on their lives on earth, they see clearly how much he did to try to stop them from throwing themselves into Hell, but they freely chose their own fate, and God respected that choice . . . However, let us delve a little deeper.

Being infinitely good, infinitely generous and infinitely happy, God chose – he was in no way obliged – to create beings that would be capable of sharing in his happiness. Since he is pure spirit (Jn. IV, 24), such beings would have to be spiritual and not just material, such as animal, vegetable or mineral. Hence the creation of angels with no matter in them at all, and men, with a spiritual soul in a material body. But that very spirit by which angels and men are capable of sharing in divine happiness necessarily includes reason and free-will, indeed it is by the free-will freely choosing God that it deserves to share in his happiness. But how could that choice of God be truly free if there was no alternative to choose that would turn away from God? What merit does a boy have in choosing to buy a volume of Shakespeare if there is only Shakespeare for sale in the bookstore? And if the bad alternative exists, and if the free-will is real and not just a pretence, how are there not going to be angels or men who will choose what is not good?

The question may still be asked, how can God have foreseen to allow the majority of souls (Mt.VII, 13–14; XX, 16) to incur the terrible punishment of refusing his love? Answer, the more terrible Hell is, the more certain it is that to every man alive God offers grace and light and strength enough to avoid it, but, as St Thomas Aquinas explains, the majority of men prefer the present and known joys of the senses to the future and unknown joys of Paradise. Then why did God attach such strong pleasures to the senses? Partly no doubt to ensure that parents would have children to populate his Heaven, but also surely to make all the more meritorious any human being’s putting the pursuit of pleasure in this life beneath the true delights of the next life, which are ours for the wanting! We need only want them violently enough (Mt.XI, 12)!

God is no mediocre God, and to souls loving him he wishes to offer no mediocre Paradise.

Kyrie eleison.