Tag: Vatican II

Conciliar Church

Conciliar Church posted in Eleison Comments on July 11, 2009

The expression “Conciliar Church” gives rise to much confusion. For instance, how can the Catholic Church, the spotless Bride of Christ (Eph.V, 27), be stained with the new man-centred religion of Vatican II, i.e. Conciliarism? Yet Our Lord founded only one Church, so if the “Conciliar Church” is not Catholic, there must be two Churches, a Conciliar Church and a Catholic Church? Impossible.

Indeed there are not two Churches. There is only the one Church of Our Lord Jesus Christ, and that is the Catholic Church. But this Catholic Church is embodied in human beings who are necessarily imperfect. Our Lord instituted it to save not angels or animals, but exclusively us poor human beings who tend by ourselves, because of original sin, only to fall further and further away from Heaven and from God.

So the Catholic Church always has two aspects: divine by its origin or beginning (Jesus Christ) and by its end (bringing souls to Heaven), it is, in between, also necessarily human, by its involvement in amongst the human beings it came to save. Therefore as there must be human beings inside the Church, so too there will always be imperfections inside the Church, sometimes very visible, but these imperfections will still be incapable of staining the Bride of Christ, spotless in herself.

Now Conciliarism, as the new religion of Vatican II putting man in the place of God, is error and imperfection, purely human, in no way divine. So the expression “Conciliar Church” means the Catholic Church in its purely human and imperfect aspect, the Church as disfigured by modern man organising Vatican II to put himself in the place of God. Yet the divine Church remains stainless beneath all the disfigurement, as if it were a kingfisher swooping down on a lake to pick up a fish and fly again heavenward, flicking off as it flies any water it momentarily picked up.

Then there are two Churches? No way. There is only the one immaculate Bride of Christ. Then does the expression “Conciliar Church” have no real meaning? Alas, it names an all too real reality. It names all those members and structures of the one true Church as caught up in the toils of the subtle errors of Vatican II, and as tending all the time to be taken out of the true Church by those errors. This is the “Conciliar Church” from which Archbishop Lefebvre did not mind being “excommunicated,” because, as he said, he never belonged to it in the first place.

Kyrie eleison.

81 / 121 Re-Structuring

81 / 121 Re-Structuring posted in Eleison Comments on June 27, 2009

Tomorrow, or the day after, there is hardly a box outside of which it will not be necessary to think. In Church and world, the mentalities and structures of so-called “Western civilization” are collapsing around our ears. Still the mass of Western souls are preferring to slumber on in their audio-visual dream, but reality is closing in all the time – they may awake not before they are shackled into the New World Order.

The USA has for nearly a century acted as the shield and sword-bearer of “Western civilization.” Now its financial, economic and political power structures are melting down in a welter of greed, corruption, selfishness and dissolution slung between Wall Street, New York, and Washington, DC. However – let it never be said too often – “We the people” have only ourselves to blame. We have wanted the cause: godless materialism. Now we must live with the effects: the final breakdown of fractional reserve “banking,” of paper “money,” of democratic “politics.”

City structures are crumpling. In Flint, Michigan, original home of General Motors presently employing 8,000 local people where once it employed 79,000 and now bankrupt, local politicians are pioneering an idea to save their dwindling city: raze entire districts and return the land to nature. This idea so appeals to the Federal Government that another 50 cities have been earmarked as potential candidates for salvation by the bulldozer, including Detroit, Philadelphia and Baltimore.

State structures are failing. In California, Controller John Chiang said a few days ago that if State lawmakers cannot quickly solve California’s 24 billion dollar deficit, then next week he will have to pay State debts with paper promises to pay. “Unfortunately,” said he, “the State’s inability to balance the check-book will now mean short-changing taxpayers, local governments and small businesses.” It is easy to imagine how these will react, but it is not easy to imagine how the budget deficit will be solved.

As for our national structures, if we will not acquiesce to their being merged into the international New World Order, then surely a Third World War will be engineered to persuade us, starting with an 81/121 (a 9/11 squared)! Yet all these collapses pale in comparison with Vatican II, because it was the Catholic Church that was upholding “Western civilization.” If the Catholic collapse is not soon reversed by the Consecration of Russia to the Immaculate Heart of Mary, then one must wonder if the healthiest elements in the Church will not need re-structuring as an underground resistance movement.

Kyrie eleison.

Just Claims

Just Claims posted in Eleison Comments on May 30, 2009

On the assumption that the Second Vatican Council established within the Catholic Church a serious split between Catholic Truth and Catholic Authority, “Eleison Comments” three weeks ago (“Flat Contradiction”) divided today’s Catholics between those who cling to Truth and have problems with Catholic Authority, and those who cling to Catholic Authority and have problems with Catholic Truth or doctrine, for instance on religious liberty.

Setting up such a parallel between “Conciliarists” following Vatican II and “Traditionalists” following the age-old doctrine and liturgy, may well shock numbers of both, for the reasons evoked above, but let us appeal to the realities in the Church around us. Do we not observe that as Traditionalists who wholly reject present Church authorities risk losing their Catholic sense, so too Conciliarists who wholly scorn present Traditionalists (as do most German bishops) risk ceasing to be Catholics for lack of any sense of doctrinal truth?

However, the parallel only goes so far. For while outright “sedevacantism” and outright Neo-modernism are in this logical respect comparable, they are by no means equivalent, because Truth is higher than Authority, which only exists to serve Truth. If all Authority disappeared, Truth would still be there (“My words will not pass away,” says Our Lord – Mk.XXV, 35). But if all Truth were smothered in lies, as is happening today, we would see, as we are seeing, all Authority discredited with it, and being replaced by brute force. Truth and its ensuing Justice are the life-blood of Authority. Authority is merely the servant and protector of Truth and Justice.

This is why Traditionalists clinging to Truth are, as such, repeat, as such, better Catholics than Conciliarists clinging to Authority – judge by the fruits! And while Truth, by its nature of corresponding to the object and not to the subject, cannot bend to Authority, on the contrary the Church authorities, Popes and Cardinals and Bishops, must one day bend back to the Truth, and the sooner the better. Nor is saying so remotely an arrogant claim on the part of Traditionalists, as Cardinal Ratzinger once opined, because Traditionalists never invented Tradition, Tradition was a given, from being merely faithful to which they got their name. Archbishop Lefebvre had engraved on his tombstone St. Paul’s “Tradidi quod et accepi” (I Cor.XI, 23), because he was the very first to maintain that he had done no more than hand on what had been handed down to him.

This fundamental primacy of Truth over Authority applies inside and outside the Catholic Church, inside and outside any part of the Church. But modern souls have lost almost all grip on Truth. Here is the drama.

Kyrie eleison.

Flat Contradiction

Flat Contradiction posted in Eleison Comments on May 9, 2009

Ever since, with the Second Vatican Council, Catholic Authority and Catholic Truth substantially parted company, the Catholics who clung to Authority have had problems with the Truth, and the Catholics who clung to Truth have had problems with Catholic Authority. What could be more logical? Catholics on both sides long for a reunion. Especially amongst decent Conciliar Catholics, this takes the concrete form of the ardent wish that Pope Benedict XVI and the Society of St. Pius X come to an understanding.

Well and good. But there is a problem. Vatican II contradicts Catholic Truth, outside of which Catholic Authority dissolves, is now dissolving, because its Divine Master, Our Lord Jesus Christ, is “the Way, the Truth and the Life” (Jn. XIV,6). For proof of the contradiction, read for instance Michael Davies’ The Second Vatican Council and Religious Liberty, where he shows that while the Catholic Church has always taught that no man has a true right not to be prevented from propagating error, Vatican II (Dignitatis Humanae) taught that every man has a true right not to be prevented from propagating error (save public order – see Davies’ Chapter XXII in particular). The contradiction is direct.

At first sight it may seem unimportant, because what does it matter if a few crazy people more or a few crazy people less spout nonsense in public? But in fact the difference between the right and the non-right to propagate error is all the difference between Hollywood’s candy-on-a-leash deity, and the Lord God of Hosts, whose thunder and lightning struck terror into the hearts of the Israelites even miles distant from his flaming Mount Sinai (Exodus XX, 18–21).

For indeed all human action follows on some thought. But thought is uttered between men, or socialized, mainly with words. Thus the being and action of any human society hangs on exchanges of words. Therefore either truth and error in those exchanges are of no importance to the existence of any society or the direction it is taking, or any society must control public speech in its midst, at least sufficiently to check significant transmission of significant error.

Now the only limit set by Vatican II to public discourse is that it should not disturb “public order.” So for Vatican II, any heresy or blasphemy may be uttered in public so long as the police do not have to be called in, and any deity that may exist must bow down before this “freedom and dignity of the human person”! On the contrary the Lord God of Sinai, the Holy Trinity whose Second Person is Jesus Christ, tells us we will answer for every idle word (Mt. XII, 36), and even for sinful thoughts (Mt.V, 28). So in accordance with God’s Truth (and so long as it will do more good than harm), Catholic society checks the public propagation of error against Faith or morals.

Kyrie eleison.

Good Question

Good Question posted in Eleison Comments on April 25, 2009

On the blog-site of a certain Fr. John Zuhlsdorf appeared this week a number of comments provoked by “Difficult Discussions” appearing here a week ago. Many of these comments were relatively thoughtful – a compliment to Fr Zuhlsdorf. One went straight to the point: “Bishop Williamson is using terms without defining them. I’d really like to know if I am a Neo-modernist.” Joe Pinyan further wanted to know, “in order not to be in league with Baal,” whether he should be worshipping God rather at an SSPX Chapel than at a parish where both the “extraordinary” and “ordinary” forms of Mass are celebrated.

To offer Joe an answer, let me begin by defining Neo-modernism. It is the revival (“Neo-”), let loose within the Catholic Church by Vatican II (1962–1965), of the all-embracing heresy of Modernism. Modernism is the dreadful system of mind-rot, emerging over a century ago within the Church and solemnly condemned by St. Pius X in his Encyclical “Pascendi,” whereby the Catholic Church must be adapted to fit the modern world, as shaped by Protestantism and Liberalism. It is in fact the ultimate form of Liberalism, because by its Kantian principles it pretends to liberate man’s mind (and will) from any truth (or law) whatsoever.

Modernism is an especially hypocritical and dangerous error because it can leave intact the appearances of Catholicism even while emptying out its reality. Thus Jesus Christ is not really God, but I am free to make him God (for me) if I want to. Thus Catholic Truth and Law become whatever I care to make of them. Thus out of the Ten Commandments, I become free to obey none or all ten, because either way I am only obeying me. Neo-modernism is even more dangerous than Modernism, because by it the very highest of churchmen, instead of continuing like St.Pius X utterly to condemn Modernism, adopted it to establish it officially inside the Church!

Thus today Catholics have been made free to attend either the “extraordinary” or the “ordinary” form of Mass, according as they prefer the unchanging real God and his essentially unchanging true Mass, or both of them as suited to today’s world. Now this recent freeing of attendance at the true Mass may have proceeded from the best of intentions of Benedict XVI, but the real God imposes on all of us to worship him as he really is, and not as he has been downsized by modern man. So I hardly expect you to believe me against Rome, Joe, if I tell you to flee the “ordinary” form of Mass, but if you want nothing to do with the worship of Baal, then that is, objectively speaking, what you should do.

However, if you do wish to believe me, you must read! Alas, Pius X’s Pascendi makes for difficult reading. Start here on Dinoscopus with those “Eleison Comments” that treat of religion. Then graduate to the two books, soon to be four, advertised alongside. Then read anything written by Archbishop Lefebvre. Most important to obtain light, pray the Rosary to the Mother of the real God. And may God bless you.

Kyrie eleison.

Difficult Discussions – I

Difficult Discussions – I posted in Eleison Comments on April 18, 2009

From Bishop Tissier de Mallerais speaking in Paris we hear that terms have been fixed for the doctrinal discussions due to take place between the Society of St. Pius X and the Church authorities in Rome. The discussions are to be in writing, which is wise, insofar as there is less room for passion and more time for careful thinking. Also they will not be made public, a provision which at best eliminates “grand-standing” by either party, otherwise known as playing to the gallery, because there will be no gallery present.

From Rome we hear that the impetus towards a Rome-SSPX understanding which was generated by the Pope’s January “re-incommunication” of the four SSPX bishops, was seriously slowed down by the distrust generated by the media uproar of January-February, which is what that uproar was designed to achieve. Yet subjectively speaking, there is certainly still good will on the part of the Pope towards the SSPX, and there is no lack of good will on the part of the SSPX towards the person of the Holy Father.

The problem for these discussions is that, objectively speaking, as on either side there may be some reluctance to admit, we are in the presence of an irreconcilable clash between the religion of God and the religion of man. Vatican II mixed the two together, which was too much of the religion of man by half. Let us then say that Benedict XVI wishes to combine Vatican II with Catholic Tradition. That is still too much of the religion of man by a quarter. Let us now suppose that the SSPX and Benedict XVI were to agree to come half-way towards each other. That would still represent one eighth of the religion of man mixed with seven eighths of the religion of God, which for the purposes of Almighty God would still be one eighth too much.

For just as it takes a disproportionately small amount of water mixed with a tank full of gasoline (or petrol) to stop a car engine dead, so it takes only a small admixture of idolatry to stop dead the true religion of God. The Lord God himself tells us that he is a jealous God (Exod. XX, 5; etc.), and will not endure any false gods beside him. To anybody in the SSPX who might be tempted to worship with the neo-modernists, as to any neo-modernist who might wish to share worship with the Catholics, the Old Testament prophet Elias would say as he said to the hesitating Israelites, “How long do you halt between the two sides? If the Lord be God, follow him: but if Baal, then follow him.” Scripture then says, “The people did not answer him a word” (III Kings, XVIII, 21).

Subjectively, the Israelites wanted to have it both ways. Objectively, that was impossible. For ourselves too.

Kyrie eleison.