Tag: United States of America

USA Misled

USA Misled posted in Eleison Comments on February 23, 2019

Last week these “Comments” quoted President Putin of Russia in 2014 accusing the United States of America of having “ruined all systems of global collective security.” What was he referring to?

In the 1980’s Presidents Reagan and Gorbachev of the USA and Russia respectively, realising the danger of the store of nuclear weapons on each side capable of ending life on earth, together made agreements to reduce the weapons they had, and to abstain from producing any more armaments of specifically perilous kinds that they did not yet have. These agreements served well to relax tensions and to keep the peace between the two nations until the end of the Cold War in 1989 and beyond, but the fall of the Berlin Wall and the collapse of Soviet Russia created a new situation on the world stage – the USA was now the only super-power. Would it have the wisdom not to misuse its now overwhelming military might?

A number of leaders inside the USA called for a severe reduction in military expenditure – what was it needed for any longer? – but as far back as 1961 the outgoing President Eisenhower had famously warned US citizens in his farewell address to the nation against its “military-industrial complex” exerting too great an influence on public policy. By the “MIC” he meant the informal triangular alliance that had arisen between the USA’s armed forces, heavy industry and Congress, and the danger was that together they would want war for the sake of the immense profits to be made from the production of expensive weapons – in 2011 the USA spent more on its armed forces than the next 13 nations combined.

The truth is that a capitalist economy thrives on war, insofar as weapons can be expensive to produce, and if they are destroyed and have to be replaced, that is all the more turnover for the producers. So at the end of the Cold War, there were at least three arguments for maintaining the heavy expenditure on weapons: the USA must still be ready to defend itself against threats that can arise, the economy needs the turnover, and the world needs a policeman. Within reason, each of the arguments is valid, but the Plan which US leaders (especially Dick Cheney) worked out in the 1990’s to guide US policy was not necessarily reasonable, because it was a plan for the US to rule the world. It calls for the US to maintain its overwhelming military superiority and prevent new rivals from rising up to challenge it on the world stage. It calls for dominion over friends and enemies alike. It says not that the US must be more or most powerful, but that it must be absolutely powerful. The Plan has turned disarming back into rearming.

(For the Cheney Plan, see http://​www.​informationclearinghouse.​info/​article1544.​htm).

That a plan expressed in such terms suffers from dangerous pride and overweening ambition should be obvious to anyone with the least knowledge of human nature. Under President Clinton (1992–2000) the Plan was slowed down, but as soon as Dick Cheney came back to power with the Republicans as Vice-President, the wicked idea of a new Pearl Harbour as a contrived event to mobilise the people behind a policy they would never in their right minds approve of, was put into practice – 9/11, one of the greatest lies of all history, which can only have been engineered by the secret government (the true “Deep State”) from deep within the public government, but which eminently succeeded at the time in furthering Cheney’s Plan. 9/11 immediately made the military invasion of Iraq possible, and how many more wars of aggression since then. It also made the worldwide police State take gigantic strides forward.

But lies are the sure footprint of Satan. It would follow from the huge lie of 9/11 that there is something satanic about Cheney’s Plan with its design for military domination of the world by the USA, all in the name of “democracy.” For a sane view of insane US policy heading straight for World War III, read at PaulCraigRoberts.org the sanity of a former official high under President Reagan in the US government, who watched at first hand and admired how Reagan and Gorbachev succeeded in working together to protect world peace. And let us pray for both Trump and Putin. With all their respective faults, both are surely gifts of God for which we need to be grateful to God.

Kyrie eleison.

War Avoided? – I

War Avoided? – I posted in Eleison Comments on April 21, 2018

At world’s end there will be “wars and rumours of wars,” says Our Divine Lord (Mt. XXIV, 6), but “see that you are not alarmed; for this must take place, but the end is not yet.” In the last few weeks we have certainly had rumours of war, including the threat in Syria of a major confrontation between the armed forces of the United States and of Russia. Since then the threat seems to have subsided. What happened to it, and what are the prospects for the future? Are we now safe from World War III?

It is difficult to tell for sure, because of course the public media are virtually all in the hands of that race which is pushing towards that Third World War which it hopes will enable them to complete their tyranny over mankind, left incomplete by their first two World Wars. Therefore virtually all media reports are slanted in favour of the people and events which could lead to war. However that race has not yet managed to control the Internet which has for the moment broken their monopolistic control of public opinion, so that sane voices can still be heard if one is looking for the truth. What follows is a version of events starting out from material supplied by two such commentators from the United States, both accessible on the Internet – Paul Craig Roberts, and “the Saker”:—

The latest feared confrontation between the USA and Russia in Syria was avoided because the leaders of the US armed forces in Washington would not risk a conflict with the Russians, because of the fearsome Russian weapons newly revealed by President Putin in Russia. These weapons would seem able to wreak havoc upon any American fleet presently in the Mediterranean. Therefore the Americans carefully avoided a strike which could have provoked a Russian retaliation, and they warned the Russians in advance, so that most of the attacking missiles were shot down by Syria, and the damage was minimal.

Does that mean that the danger is over? By no means. The race mentioned above still wants war, and it controls American foreign policy, as Ariel Sharon once boasted in Israel – “We control the Americans, and they know it.” By all means within their considerable power they will go to work on the dissenting American Generals and on President Trump, meanwhile working furiously to develop effective means of defence against the new Russian weapons. And as soon as they think that they have overcome these obstacles, their media will produce another set of lies to fool the stupid Western public, like “chemical weapons” (all long since removed from Syria), or building democracy (Syrians themselves are quite happy with their President Assad), or “Putin is Hitler” (he continues to show remarkable forbearance in the face of vile Western provocation, but if it will not stop, then one day he will more than understandably react).

However, even that race’s overpowering influence (barely alluded to by the two political commentators) does not go to the very heart of the matter (not mentioned at all by the commentators): that race is merely a scourge used – and protected – by God to serve Him by punishing the peoples on earth that turn their backs on Him. Thus that race has shown to leaders of the West all the kingdoms of the world, boasting that they are in its power, and it has promised to hand over to the West the New World Order if only the West will bow down and adore. The Western leaders and nations did not have to accept the offer, but of their own free choice they did.

Therefore unless the Western leaders and nations start to give the correct answer to that offer, namely “You shall worship the Lord your God, and Him only shall you serve,” that race will continue to use all its special God-given talents to tempt and to scourge. World War III seems correspondingly likely to occur eventually, if not in Syria, then wherever else godless nations can be fooled.

Kyrie eleison.

Resistance Rising

Resistance Rising posted in Eleison Comments on April 20, 2013

Another three-week journey on the western side of the Atlantic Ocean has just given me to see that the resistance to the collapse of the Society of St Pius X into the embrace of apostate Rome is rising, more in quality than in quantity (but Catholic quantity follows Catholic quality, and not the other way round). Traditionalists have been deliberately kept in the dark as to what is going on between the Society and Rome, but as they find out just how the true Catholic religion is being endangered, so a number of good men are reacting with seriousness and resolution.

I visited first of all Fr Jahir’s community of some dozen religious in northern Brazil, behind the city of Salvador where Fr Jahir was a parish priest for many years. Having fled the Newchurch, he sees the situation of the Newsociety very clearly. He has founded his own community in the true Faith, and it is easy to imagine several of his men becoming in a few years’ time valiant priests who will hold that Faith. I gave to one of them Tonsure and the first two Minor Orders, and then headed south to visit another Brazilian priest becoming famous for his staunch adherence to Tradition, as Archbishop Lefebvre understood it.

The Benedictine Dom Thomas is Prior of the Monastery in the mountains near Nova Friburgo behind Rio de Janeiro. It was founded in the 1980’s by Dom Gérard as an offshoot from the Traditional Benedictine Monastery which Dom Gérard had also founded in France in the 1970’s, with the encouragement and support of Archbishop Lefebvre. However, when the Archbishop consecrated bishops in 1988, Dom Gérard broke with him, took his monastery into the Newchurch, and crossed the ocean to do the same with the Brazilian monastery.

Here he ran into the resistance of Dom Thomas, who was still only a young monk, but who before becoming a monk had learned in depth from a famous Brazilian lay Catholic, Gustavo Corçâo, the wrongness of the Newchurch. With help from good laymen and with the support of Archbishop Lefebvre, Dom Thomas stood up to Dom Gérard and saved the Monastery for Tradition. With such a clash behind him it is not surprising that Dom Thomas also sees very clearly the situation both of the Newchurch and of the Newsociety. In a tent set up outside the small Monastery church for the extra visitors to the Holy Week ceremonies, we celebrated with few priests but with all the essentials the Maundy Thursday Consecration of Holy Oils. These the Monastery can now supply for this year to priests in particular whose supply could be cut off by the Newsociety.

Then I flew north to visit three more centres of the Resistance being launched in the USA by the brave Frs Joseph Pfeiffer and David Hewko. Near Connecticut, in New Jersey and in Minnesota I was able to give Confirmations and conferences to Catholics suspicious of what is going on in the Newsociety. They had good questions, deserving of truthful answers.

Good news for benefactors in Euroland: the St Marcel Initiative has at last a RIB and an IBAN, based in France, to facilitate donations in euros to the St Marcel Initiative. To make a bank transfer from inside France use the following RIB: [write to letters@eleisoncomments.com for the number]; from outside France use the following IBAN: [write to letters@eleisoncomments.com for the number]. The St Marcel Initiative has just been able to give a little serious aid, much needed, to Dom Thomas’ Monastery. He thanks all of you who have contributed to the Initiative.

Kyrie eleison.

Yellow Light

Yellow Light posted in Eleison Comments on January 5, 2013

Not all of you readers of “Eleison Comments” may have come across the admirable letter of two months ago written by Fr. Ronald Ringrose to the US District Superior of the Society of St Pius X, Fr. Arnauld Rostand. Fr Ringrose has been for over 30 years the independent pastor of the Traditional parish of St Athanasius just outside Washington, D.C., and for all that time he has been the faithful friend, without being a member, of the SSPX. However in June of last year he hosted in his parish the first meeting in the USA of the nucleus of priests now forming a Resistance to that change of direction of the Society, long latent, but which became clear to all in the spring of last year. As Bishop Fellay’s faithful executive in the USA, Fr. Rostand wrote to him to propose a meeting where he might persuade Fr Ringrose that the change was no change. Here is Fr. Ringrose’s reply:—

“Thank you for your letter of October 12 in which you offer to meet to discuss the situation within the Society of St Pius X. While this is a very kind offer on your part and I appreciate it very much, I don’t think that such a meeting will serve any useful purpose, since the problems stem from the Society’s top leadership, and you are not in a position to change that.

It is true that I have been a strong supporter of the Society for many years. This support was based on the fact that my mission as a priest, and the Society’a mission were one and the same, to help souls hold onto the Catholic faith during this time when it seems to have been abandoned by post Vatican II Rome.

Now I have to be more cautious and reserved in that support. I am alarmed that the Superior General would say that 95% of Vatican II is acceptable. I am astounded that the Society’s leadership would respond to three of the Society’s bishops by suggesting that they are making the errors of Vatican II into a “super-heresy.” I am disappointed that the Society’s response to Assisi III was so weak and anemic. I am saddened by the Society’s unjust disciplining of priests who are following the example of Archbishop Lefebvre, and I am outraged at the treatment of Bishop Williamson – not just his recent expulsion, but the shabby treatment he has gotten over the past few years.

Prior to this year, when asked about the Society by an inquiring parishioner, I always gave the Society a green light. Given the Society’s recent actions, I do not yet give the Society a red light, but I do give it a yellow light of caution. The red light will come if and when the Society allows herself to be absorbed into the Conciliar Church that Archbishop Lefebvre so vigorously resisted.

It is with great sadness that I write these words. There are many good, zealous, faithful priests within the Society’s ranks. Many of them I know personally and admire. Many souls depend on them. It is out of love for the Society that I fear for her future. I fear that she is on a suicidal path. The leadership may think that a deal is off the table, but I fear that that is not the thinking of Rome.

I pray for the Society to return to the mission given to her by Archbishop Lefebvre without compromise or hedging. When she does, she will have my unreserved support.”

And Fr Ringrose’s letter concludes with fraternal greetings. It is truly a model of clear-mindedness and courtesy, firmness and charity. Long live Fr Ringrose to maintain an incomparable bastion of Catholicism right next to the United States’ capital city!

Kyrie eleison.

Dictatorship Imminent

Dictatorship Imminent posted in Eleison Comments on November 24, 2012

A remarkable portrait of our contemporary world appeared two months ago on the Internet website, 321gold. The title is daunting: “Decline, Decay, Denial, Delusion and Despair,” but the content is surely true to life. Starting from a street scene to be found no doubt all over the eastern United States, the author concludes that within 15 years an Orwellian dictatorship will descend upon his country as the unwanted effect of wanted causes. But the USA is not typical of the whole world? The whole world is buying into the American way of life. “Let the buyer beware”!

This autumn in the streets of Wildwood, New Jersey, the author observed pavements encumbered with a host of heavily overweight men and women under 50 years of age rolling around town on government-subsidized mobility scooters to visit one fast-food joint after another in order to gorge on sugar-laden goodies which would give their latest model scooters more work than ever. His amusing name for them? – “The weight-challenged disabled on their powered mobility enhancement vehicles.” Such is the flight from reality of “political correctness” and its language.

The author seeks causes for this tragic-comic effect: how can the American people that once saved 12% of their income have been persuaded to frighten the obesity statistics off the end of the charts with a debt-laden, sugar-sodden way of life, with no more savings for themselves and with an unbearable burden of debt being bequeathed to their children and grand-children? Of course there is a lack of self-control on their part, he says, but there must be something more sinister, some mind behind such a mindless scene. He says the mass of citizens are being manipulated by an invisible government that has mastered the modern techniques of mass manipulation.

He quotes a pioneer of these masters from the 1920’s, Edward Bernays: “The conscious and intelligent manipulation of the masses is an important element in democratic society . . . Vast numbers of human beings must cooperate in this manner if they are to live together as a smoothly functioning society . . . Whether in politics, business, social conduct or ethical thinking, we are dominated by the relatively small number of persons . . .who understand the mental processes and social patterns of the masses.” They are “the true ruling power of the country,” and they “pull the wires which control the public mind.” For what purpose? For their own wealth and power.

It is they who have organized today’s financial and economic crisis for their own benefit. They have “wrecked the world economy . . .shifted their worthless debt onto the backs of taxpayers and unborn generations, thrown senior citizens and savers under the bus by stealing 400 billion per year of interest from them, and enriched themselves with bubble-level profits and bonus payments.” And when the plug has to be pulled on this unsustainable way of life, then our invisible masters have prepared for us a 1984 “dictatorship of tears” with militarized police with millions of bullets, surveillance cameras and drones everywhere, imprisonment without charges and so on and so on. Yet, says the author, it is the citizens’ own fault who have preferred ignorance to truth, sickness to health, media lies to critical thinking, security to liberty.

There is only one thing lacking to this admirable analysis: could our governing elite have run so wild, or our masses have turned so dumb, if either had retained the least sense of a God who judges us all at death, according to Ten Commandments? Of course not. Catholics, wake up!

Kyrie eleison.

Infection? – Who?

Infection? – Who? posted in Eleison Comments 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.