Vatican II

Menzingen’s Mistake – I

Menzingen’s Mistake – I on July 8, 2017

Not all readers of these “Comments” may appreciate their regular return to what can look like mere “quarrels between priests,” but let such readers recall – or learn – that the Catholic Church exists as the one and only sure means of saving souls for eternal Heaven, while the Devil exists as a first-class agent for sending souls to eternal Hell. If then Our Lord chooses priests to be the agents of His Church, the Devil will attack them, and one of the best means to attack priests is other priests. In fact easily most of the Church’s arch-heretics have been priests, e.g. Bishop Nestor and Fr. Martin Luther. “Quarrels between priests” are only unimportant if nobody still wants to go to Heaven, but then the Devil has really won!

So let us look at the 20-page document put out on June 13 by the priests of SSPX HQ in Menzingen, Switzerland, to defend their having welcomed Conciliar Rome’s April 4 document which proposed more or less close participation by Conciliar churchmen in the celebration of SSPX marriages. Menzingen’s Letter to Clarify and Rectify Marriage Questions is well put together and quite persuasive if one does not notice the special pleading, but it suffers from the crippling defect of the Society’s present leaders in Menzingen, namely it mistakes Conciliar appearances for Catholic substance. In words the “Letter” condemns repeatedly Conciliar errors in general and on marriage in particular, but in action it treats the Conciliar churchmen as though they are normal Catholic churchmen, when in reality they are profoundly abnormal churchmen – they are modernists. In St Paul’s words for the last times, they have “an appearance of godliness, but deny the power thereof” (II Tim. III, 5). And he adds, “Now these avoid.”

Thus the whole first part of the Letter presents the involvement of the diocesan bishop or the parish priest or their delegate in witnessing Catholic marriages to ensure their validity, as classic practice of the Church and part of its law since the Council of Trent. Who disputes that? But the application of this law has been since Vatican II in the hands of churchmen who have had a steadily more abnormal view of Catholic marriage. The Church today is no longer in normal times! Has Menzingen not noticed? Or chosen to notice no longer? It took a few centuries for Protestantism to break the universal grip of the Catholic Church. It took a few centuries more for liberalism to work its way upwards inside the Church’s hierarchy, but once God allowed, as a just punishment, the elections of John XXIII and Paul VI to prevail, then the highest Catholic authority became liberal, and ever since then never has it been easier for all Catholics under authority to convince themselves, even sincerely, that they are remaining Catholic even while they are destroying the Church.

When in 1987 Archbishop Lefebvre called the Conciliar churchmen “antichrists” (Letter to four future bishops), he was by-passing their possible subjective sincerity and keeping a firm grip on their certain objective destructiveness. When in 2017 Menzingen highlights the normalcy of hierarchical Superiors’ involvement in Catholic marriages, it is taking for granted the hierarchs’ sincerity and by-passing their ruinous liberalism. But liberals they remain, with a concept of marriage that includes easy annulments, and so on. If once they get their foot in the door of Traditional marriages, what stops them tomorrow or the day after from applying even the Church’s Traditional law in accordance with their “renewed” idea of marriage? In fact, how can they not, tomorrow or the day after, apply their own sincere convictions?

For tens of years since Vatican II, according as Catholics have realized what was happening to the Church and become “Traditionalists,” so they have put a distance between themselves and the Church’s official authorities. Without necessarily lacking in courtesy or respect, they have moved away in order to protect their Catholic Faith and morals. Now comes Menzingen moving towards these authorities and wanting all Traditionalists to follow! Menzingen has forgotten the famous quote from Virgil’s Aeneid: “Whatever it be, I fear the Greeks, even when they bring gifts.” Menzingen trusts the Greeks!

Kyrie eleison.

Consecrations Achieved

Consecrations Achieved on May 20, 2017

Thanks in part, no doubt, to readers’ prayers, the two Consecrations, of Bishop Zendejas and of Russia, took place successfully in Vienna, Virginia, USA, on May 11 and 12 respectively. The weather was not good on May 11, because the rain poured down, but the outdoor tent was watertight and accommodated perfectly a congregation of around 500 people coming from all over the United States, and a few from even further afield. The weather was a little better on May 12 for the new bishop’s first Pontifical Mass with the Consecration of Russia, and with a congregation only a little smaller than on the previous day.

Special thanks went to Fr Ronald Ringrose, Traditional parish priest of Vienna, on whose Rectory grounds the double Consecration took place. He has maintained the parish of St Athanasius as a bastion of Catholic Tradition within easy striking distance of the capital city of the United States for well over 30 years, which is a considerable achievement in these troubled times for the Catholic Church. “Ad multos annos” says Mother Church to her devoted servants – may Fr Ringrose thrive for many years yet.

As for the purpose and scope of the two Consecrations, it is necessary to be both modest and clear. Ever since Vatican II (1962–1965) when the mass of Catholic churchmen surrendered to liberalism (the worship of liberty) and to modernism (the adaptation of God’s Church to the godless modern world), the Church has been in serious trouble. In 1970 Archbishop Lefebvre created the Society of St Pius X to act as an emergency lighting system for the mainstream Church going dark, but his successors at the head of the Society are doing all they can to make the emergency lighting go dark. Let us then compare Bishop Zendejas’ Consecration to a candle being lit, or a match being struck, in the increasing darkness. It has no ambition either to save or to convert either the Newchurch or the Newsociety.

What it should do is contribute to the saving of that Oldtruth, so to speak, which is at the heart of the true Church and the true Society. Working mostly in the USA, but with no territorial jurisdiction of any official kind, Bishop Zendejas will help to look after many souls in the USA that have the true Faith, and want to keep it. Accessible by car or train from anywhere in North America if anything happens to ground the aeroplanes, he is a relatively young bishop with the fullness of certainly valid Holy Orders, able to Confirm or Ordain, with or without condition, and who is by the grace of God, at least for the moment, sensible and sane – in English the word “sanity” is three quarters of the word “sanctity.” Let us lend him our prayers that he may stay sane for many years to come, or at least until a truly Catholic Pope turns on the lighting once more. At that moment Bishop Zendejas puts his episcopacy back in the hands of Catholic Rome, for the Pope to do with as he wishes. Meanwhile may the new bishop be a candle lit in the darkness, a point of reference for any soul seeking the complete and uncontaminated Truth.

As for the Consecration of Russia led by all four bishops present on the eve of the first of Our Lady’s great apparitions in Fatima, there was not the remotest pretence that their Consecration could replace that of the Pope with the bishops of the entire world, which is what Our Lady requested. There was merely the hope that by doing what lay in their power, with the support of all the congregation present, they might help to obtain from Heaven the graces necessary for the Pope to perform at last the Consecration of Russia, exactly as Our Lady requested so long ago. That Consecration will eventually take place because Our Lord said so in 1931, and then begins the Triumph of the Immaculate Heart, so necessary and so long delayed.

Kyrie eleison.

God’s Weapons

God’s Weapons on May 13, 2017

On this 100th anniversary day of the beginning of the great series of apparitions of Our Lady to the three children of Fatima in Portugal in 1917, it may be well to remember that Our Lord warned mankind through Sister Lucy that the Devotion to His Mother’s Sorrowful and Immaculate Heart would be the last major Devotion given to mankind, together with the Holy Rosary, for the salvation of souls. Towards the end of the 17th century when Protestantism and Jansenism were making charity grow cold, Our Lord had given to His Church the Devotion to His own Sacred Heart to remind men of God’s burning love for them. Towards the beginning of the 20th century, just as Communism was about to overwhelm Russia, He gave us, especially through Fatima, the Heart of His Mother as our last major recourse before world’s end.

But another half century passes from 1917, and Our Lord’s own churchmen are preparing to give the Church over to the demons of Modernism, the equivalent of Communism inside the Church. Sister Lucy of Fatima just then warned Fr. Fuentes that Catholics could no longer be relying on the clergy to save their souls. Sure enough. In 1962 Vatican II launched the pre-apocalyptic devastation of the Church, the worst in all its history. And in the 1970’s an Italian critic of Vatican II and of all its pomps and all its works, Professor Romano Amerio, wrote, as readers of EC 400 may remember, that if the Conciliar crisis was internal to the Church like no crisis before it, then we were “headed for a formless darkness ( . . . ) in the face of which there will be no alternative but to keep silence.”

A full century after Fatima we are well on our way to that darkness. Such are the disputes, divisions, confusion and chaos in Catholic hearts and minds being caused by the churchmen’s hollowing out of their authority by their abandoning of God’s Truth, that many a clear-sighted Catholic can already be preferring to keep silent rather than attempt to argue or to teach. A mass of modern minds are so incapable any longer of thinking or reasoning that any attempt to dispel their errors can seem to risk only increasing their confusion. Now, one reader of these “Comments” disagrees strongly with Amerio: how can Catholic Truth fall silent, he asks, and how can Catholics stop fighting? But he needs to recall the Gospel, especially the Passion.

Our Lord tells us not to throw pearls in front of swine, in other words not to teach people unfit to learn, and He tells His Apostles to shake off from their feet the dust of a town that will not listen (Mt. VII, 6; Lk. IX, 5). Our Lord gave the example of keeping silent, in front of the Sanhedrin (Mt. XXVII, 12, 14), Herod (Lk. XXIII, 9) and Pilate (Jn. XIX, 9). Many souls today are likewise unfit to hear the truth. And when it comes to fighting, Our Lord Himself in the Garden of Gethsemane told Peter to put up his sword. Such was not the will of God (Mt. XXVI, 54). Peter’s problem was that he had not done what Our Lord had told him to do, which was to “watch and pray.” As a result, when his manly will to fight was frustrated even by his beloved Master, he abandoned him and ran away (Mk. XIV, 50). Beware, fighters for Our Lord – if your fighting does not work, you risk running away from Him!

Today what Our Lord does ask us to do is to make reparation to the Sorrowful and Immaculate Heart of His Mother, especially by the Rosary and the Devotion of the First Saturdays. If only enough Catholics were listening to Him, then Our Lady of Fatima could soon obtain from Him the grace for the Pope to consecrate Russia to Her Heart, exactly as She asked, and then the “formless darkness” would immediately begin to grow light and regain its form. Order from the Fatima Centre in Ontario, Canada, copies of their excellent flyer on the First Saturdays. Immaculate Heart of Mary, pray for us!

Kyrie eleison.

Vatican “War”

Vatican “War” on January 7, 2017

In today’s crisis of the Church, of an unprecedented gravity in all Church history, it is most important that Catholics should give due importance both to the Traditional movement and to the Catholic Church outside the Traditional movement. Tradition in its broadest sense, meaning everything which Our Lord entrusted to his Church to be handed down ( tradendum in Latin) to world’s end, is indispensable to the Church, and the Traditional movement has played an indispensable part in preserving Traditional doctrine and sacraments from their destruction by the Conciliar Revolution over the last half-century. But to survive, the Traditional movement had to place itself outside the normal hierarchical structure of the Church, and that structure is very much part of Tradition – “Peter, feed my sheep” (Jn XXI, 17). Therefore however deep is the Conciliar corruption in Rome, Catholics must still be looking to Rome.

Hence the interest of the following report from inside Rome by the Founder and Director of an American Novus Ordo publication, LifeSiteNews. Steve Jalsevac normally visits Rome twice a year with colleagues to talk with all kinds of contacts in Rome, the better to be able to assess how the situation in the Church is developing. From his late November visit he published on December 16 a “deeply worrying” report of his impressions of the situation in Rome today. Extracts follow:—

“Our Nov. 16–23 visit to Rome was the most dramatic of many such twice-per-year work trips we have taken there during the past 10 years. After meeting with cardinals, bishops and other Vatican agency and dicastery staff, our new Rome reporter John-Henry Westen, Jan Bentz, and I saw a consistent pattern of widespread anxiety and very real fear among faithful Church servants. We have never encountered this before. Many were afraid of being removed from their positions, fired from their jobs in Vatican agencies or of encountering severe public or private reprimands and personal accusations from those around the Pope or even from Francis himself. They are also fearful and anxious about the great damage being done to the Church and being helpless to stop it.

“. . . . Catholic universities in Rome are watched and professors’ lectures screened to ensure they fall in line with a liberal interpretation of Amoris Laetitia. Clerics are reported to Superiors if they are overheard expressing concerns about Pope Francis. Many are afraid to speak openly, even though in the past they were always very willing. Vatican reporters told us they were warned numerous times not to report on the dubia (the questions raised by Cardinal Burke and three other Cardinals as to doctrine contained in Amoris Laetitia). I have heard reports that the Vatican is like an occupied state. Certain sources I’ve spoken with have a fear that communications with Vatican officials are being monitored; some have even reported suspicious anomalies in their telephone conversations in which, after a dropped call, the audio of the last moments of their conversation has played over and over again on a loop, as though they are hearing a recording. Some individuals who work within the Vatican are advising their contacts on the outside not to share sensitive information via email or their Vatican-issued cell phones.

“We have to wonder where all of this is going. It is deeply, deeply concerning. The common phrase we kept hearing that week in Rome is that there is a “war” going on in the Church – a war of the “The Spirit of Vatican II” progressives against the orthodox Catholics. One person after another shockingly used the word “war.” I have never experienced anything like this in my lifetime and I am sure most, if not all regular LifeSite readers, can say the same thing.”

Traditionalists may say that the four Cardinals and Mr Jalsevac are victims of Vatican II, waking up a little late, but let nobody say that they do not mean or intend to be Catholic. The Church will only be healed when true Doctrine and the true Hierarchy come together again, so let Traditionalists pray urgently for these souls waking up to the Conciliar war. May God give them light and strength.

Kyrie eleison.

Churchmen Aware? – I

Churchmen Aware? – I on November 5, 2016

A reader of these “Comments” just raised a question once often asked, now probably less often, but still of interest: is the Superior General of the Society of St Pius X (SG for short) aware of how he contradicts himself? – in July of this year he called for a new Rosary Crusade “exclusively” to obtain the Triumph of the Immaculate Heart through the Consecration of Russia, while more recently he claimed that Rome wants the SSPX to fill important positions in the Church to help it to overcome modernism. The contradiction is clear, because the churchmen presently holding position in Rome are certainly opposed to the Consecration as asked for by Our Lady, and the reasons for that run deep.

Write to Fr Guy Castelain at Le Moulin du Pin, F53290 Beaumont-Pied-de-Boeuf, France, for a copy of the excellent editorial in his SSPX bulletin of this month, where he lays out ten reasons why Vatican II is the main obstacle to Our Lady’s Consecration of Russia. In very brief, the Consecration represents political involvement against political neutrality, the reign of Christ against his dethronement, Catholicism against religious liberty, the Pope against collegiality, the one true religion against ecumenism, the Immaculate Heart against a glorification of human dignity forgetting original maculation or sin, the one true Church against salvation in other religions, peace by the Catholic Pope against peace by “the Spirit of Assisi,” and so on. No wonder Pope Francis told Vladimir Putin who came to see him and expressed an interest in the Consecration: “We do not speak about Fatima”!

Now human politics and politicians can solve by compromise many a human clash between man and man, but Fr Castelain’s ten reasons prove that the clash between Fatima and the Conciliarists is no less than the clash between the “old” religion of Rome, as fresh as eternity, and the “new” religion of Vatican II, as stale as sin. Here is one of those clashes between God and man where political compromise is out of the question. In 1973 had not Our Lady warned in Akita, Japan, that “. . . the Church will be filled with agents of compromise . . .” The question for the SG then becomes, is he aware that he is an “agent of compromise”? Does he or does he not see that he is promoting an irreconcilable contradiction? If he does see it, then he is a liar, either when he promotes Fatima or when he protects the Conciliarists, or both. If on the contrary he does not see it, then he is blind.

A number of Catholics are by now convinced that his latest call for a Rosary Crusade is merely a political ploy to deceive his more Traditional followers. Certainly in his first term as SG plenty of his words and deeds indicate that he did then see the clash as clearly as Archbishop Lefebvre saw it. But there must have come a turning-point since then when instead of holding to the interests of God he wished also to serve the interests of men. It cannot be done (Mt.VI, 24; Gal. I, 10), but like many of us, he wanted to have his cake and eat it, and nature is expert at dressing itself up as grace, says the Imitation of Christ. So there must have followed a time of transition when he was wilfully blind, but if wilful blindness goes on for too long, it turns into habitual blindness, which is a terrible punishment from God. Assuredly between 2006 and 2008 Our Lady obtained for him more than enough graces to see what he was doing, but like the Conciliarists and Macbeth, instead he “waded on in blood” (Act III, Scene 4) – that of the Church. Like the Conciliarists in Rome, he certainly needs our prayers.

Readers, if you wish to see clear, pray the Rosary, and if in our dark times you wish never to stop seeing clear, pray all 15 Mysteries of the Rosary every day. The Mother of God cannot fail you.

Kyrie eleison.

Bishops’ Declaration – II

Bishops’ Declaration – II on April 30, 2016

Here is the second and last part of the bishops’ Declaration at Bishop Thomas Aquinas’ consecration in Brazil on March 19, six weeks ago:—

Yet the gravest of all in our 21st century is perhaps the mass of Catholics, both clergy and laity, who are still docilely following the destroyers. As to the churchmen, how can the destroyers amongst them not be aware of what they are doing? It must be by that “diabolical disorientation” mentioned even before the Council by Sister Lucy of Fatima. And as for the laity, how can so many still not see that Catholic Authority only exists to establish Catholic Truth, and once it betrays that Truth it loses its right to be obeyed? It must be by the same “disorientation.” So in what exactly does this disorientation consist? In the loss of Truth, in the progressive loss of all sense of the very existence of objective truth, because men have wanted to break free from the reality of God and his creatures and to replace that reality with their own fantasy, so as to be able to do as they like. It is always false freedom at work.

But God does not abandon his Church, and so in the 1970’s he raised up Archbishop Lefebvre to come to its help. The Archbishop recognized that the Pope and his kindred spirits at the Council were for the sake of being modern leaving behind the Church’s Tradition, and that by so doing they would destroy the Church. By a sort of miracle he managed to set up within the Church a solid resistance to the on-going destruction, in the form of a Priestly Fraternity which he dedicated to St Pius X, a Pope who saw right through the corruption of modern times. But the Roman authorities would not put up with anyone refusing their supposed “renewal” of Vatican II, so they did everything within their power to make the Archbishop’s resistance disappear.

However he stood up to them, and in order to guarantee that his work of immense importance for the defence of Catholic Tradition would survive, in 1988 he proceeded to consecrate four bishops, against the express will of the mistaken Roman authorities, but in line with the implicit will of all Popes since the beginning of the Church, with the exception of the last four, all won over to the Council.

This heroic decision by by Archbishop Lefebvre was amply justified by events, notably the uninterrupted downfall of the Church authorities whose only wish was to bring the Church in line with today’s corrupt world. Of these four bishops, the Spanish-speaker was appointed to settle in South America to look after Catholics wishing to keep the Faith of all time in a whole continent, formerly so Catholic, but where there were now no more bishops that could be relied on to lead souls to Heaven.

Alas, the downfall has gone on ever since, only now it is the Archbishop’s Society of St Pius X that is in turn falling victim to the universal corruption by its General Chapter of 2012, where the Society’s leaders under their Superior General made the Society lurch towards the Council. Instead of insisting on the primacy of the Church’s unchanging doctrine, on Tradition, they opened the door to an agreement with official Rome, given over to the Council. And so since 2012, the same disorientation has been making its way within the Society, whose bishops can at least for the moment no longer be relied on. That is most sad, but altogether normal in the present state of Church and world. Hence once more, a reliable bishop needs to be consecrated to make sure that the unchanging Faith survives, especially where a whole continent of souls needs a true shepherd to save their souls for eternity.

May God be with him! Let us pray to the Blessed Virgin Mary that she keep him faithful under her mantle, faithful unto death.

Bishop Jean-Michel Faure.
Bishop Richard Williamson.