Tag: Vatican II

Madiran Introduced

Madiran Introduced posted in Eleison Comments on September 19, 2020

As eldest daughter of the Church, France has always had thinkers and writers in the forefront of the defence of the Church, and modern times are no exception. In the confusion and disarray of Catholics arising immediately out of the end of the Second Vatican Council in 1965, an outstanding pioneer of what would come to be “Traditional” thinking was the Frenchman Jean Madiran (1920–2013), creator and editor of the right-wing and nationalist monthly magazine “Itinéraires” (Itineraries) from 1956 to 1996. Already a genuine defender of the Faith before the Council, he made his magazine a centre-piece of that defence after the Council, when it became essential reading for many Catholics trying not to lose their heads or their faith.

In the 1960’s Madiran certainly contributed to maintaining in France the literate public that would provide a basis of support in the 1970’s for Archbishop Lefebvre to be able to lead a “Traditional” movement in France to oppose the destruction of the Church from within by the Conciliar clergy. Madiran and his magazine may also have seriously helped the Archbishop himself to arrive at his momentous decision at the end of the 1960’s to found in French Switzerland the Society of St Pius X, destined to make its decisive contribution to the saving of Catholic Tradition over the next 40 years. The one time that this writer can remember having seen the Archbishop run was when Madiran was once visiting the seminary in Écône, and the Archbishop had to catch him just before he returned to Paris.

Alas, their collaboration came to an end when John-Paul II became Pope in 1978, and Madiran thought that he would rescue the Church, but as far as the Archbishop was concerned, Madiran had had his good influence, and “Tradition” was by now well established. We need today to remember just how unthinkable it was in the 1950’s and 1960’s for Catholics to doubt their clergy. Here is the enormous merit of Madiran: a true faith unshaken by an almost entire Catholic hierarchy gone astray, together with the courage to stand up and write in public against the mass of people either “faithfully” following that hierarchy out of “obedience,” or faithlessly rejoicing in its undermining of the Church by freemasonry. That Madiran let himself be subsequently misled by John-Paul II only testifies to the force of the magnetism of Rome which for a crucial period of time he himself had succeeded in overcoming in the service of Catholic Truth.

That something in him never wavered is suggested by the fact that among all the books that he wrote in a long and productive life, the one in which he himself said that he best said what he essentially wanted to say was the book we are going to look at in these “Eleison Comments” – L’hérésie du vingtième siècle, The Heresy of the 20th Century. It first appeared in 1968, in other words in the thick of the controversy swirling around Vatican II. It contains a Prologue and six Parts, making perhaps seven issues of these “Comments,” because the book is a classic, even if it has not had many – or any – translations.

It is a classic because it takes a thomistic philosopher to take modernism to the cleaners – how does one analyse a fog? – and Madiran was a thomistic philosopher. But not just any thomistic philosopher, because the mass of Vatican II bishops had been drilled at their seminary or Congregation in the principles of the philosophy of St Thomas Aquinas. But they had not learned or understood how those principles apply to reality. This is because it is relatively easy to teach that philosophy like a coherent telephone book. Catholic pupils are docile and they drink it all in, without necessarily grasping that it is the one and only possible account of the one and only reality around us. But who can teach reality to pupils born in central heating and suckled on television? Madiran was of an earlier generation, which helps, but even then, to see modernism as clearly as he did, he needed a special grace of realism, like Pius X de Corte, Calderón and a select few others.

Fasten your seat-belts. Madiran is worth it. Next week perhaps, his Foreword.

Kyrie eleison.

Viganò to Be Diluted?

Viganò to Be Diluted? posted in Eleison Comments on August 29, 2020

In a series of recent statements in public, notably on June 9 the Italian Archbishop Carlo Viganò, still today member of the Church’s official hierarchy, has stood out from the mass of his colleagues in that hierarchy by taking a severe view of Vatican II. Now comes an Italian theologian, Fr. Alfredo Morselli, who seeks to moderate Archbishop Viganò’s severity not exactly by defending the Council, but by arguing for instance that it is not alone responsible for the crisis that has come over the Church in the years following the Council. Let us look at his “Thesis on the Council” which he has made public in nine main points and eight sub-points, here abbreviated:—

1 The present crisis is of unprecedented gravity, essentially neo-modernist, but much graver than the original modernist crisis at the beginning of the 20th century.
2 However, Vatican II is not simply the cause of the present crisis, because:
2.1 The crisis began long before 1960,
2.2 its neo-modernism would never have taken root without the deep corruption of modern man, and
2.3 similarly the pontificate of Pope Francis was prepared long before the 21st century.
3 We must distinguish between the Council itself and the post-Council, or aftermath of the Council:
3.1 The Council cannot be blamed for all errors attributed to it, even if they were done in its name,
3.2 The Holy Spirit was at the Council, so that one cannot say there was no good at all in the Council.
4 The Council texts do include ambiguous formulae, which give the neo-modernists an opening.
5 Almost all these problems have been solved subsequently by official Church Declarations.
6 The problems represent not so much errors as the desire to be inclusive rather than exclusive.
7 A tragic example of that desire is the Council’s refusal to condemn Communism.
8 Calling the Council “pastoral” does not mean that there is nothing dogmatic in its pronouncements.
9 One may only criticize the Council in accordance with Church teaching on the Faith. Hence
9.1 Faith means believing God, i.e. accepting and not choosing what truths one will believe.
9.2 The Catholic Church’s Magisterium is the prime decider of which are those truths to believe.
9.3 That Magisterium is not open to private interpretation. It alone can interpret its own decisions.

And now the briefest of comments on each of these positions of Fr Morselli:—

1 This introductory point lays down how far Fr Morselli agrees with Archbishop Viganò. Bravo!
2 Who would blame an explosion exclusively on the detonator? Of course there must be explosives.
2.1 Indeed Vatican II had a long ancestry, notably the Protestant “Reformation” and 1789’s Revolution.
2.2 Absolutely true. The deep corruption of modern man has been centuries in the making.
2.3 Also true. Five Popes neo-modernist in principle prepared the sixth, merely blatantly so in practice.
3 Beware! – is he who unbolts the stable-door not to be blamed for the horse running away?
3.1 “I never meant for the horse to run away. I only wanted for it to be free to gallop in the sunshine!”
3.2 The Holy Spirit stopped the Council from being even worse, but left the Bishops their free-will . . .
4 The deadly ambiguities were planted by the neo-modernists, allowed to pass by the “Catholics.”
5 These “clarifications” in which Fr Morselli believes usually do not clarify, but maintain the problem.
6 Alas, it is the very desire to be inclusive that makes doors once firmly shut, open again to error.
7 Archbishop Lefebvre said, the refusal to condemn Communism will stigmatise this Council for ever.
8 Dreadful ambiguity: the “pastoral” Council was not dogmatic, but had to be followed like dogma!
9 “The poison is in the tail” – at the end, Fr Morselli falls back on the argument of Authority! –
9.1 Of course we must believe what truly comes from God, and not choose ourselves what to believe.
9.2 And of course, if God demands belief, as He does, He owes us an infallible Magisterium to decide.
9.3 But that Magisterium consists of fallible Church officials with free-will, which God will not take away, and if, exceptionally, they fail in their duty, He expects the sheep to judge them by their fruits.

In brief, Archbishop Viganò’s severity, judging Vatican II by its fruits, surpasses Fr. Morselli’s Authority.

Kyrie eleison.

Drexel’s Pope

Drexel’s Pope posted in Eleison Comments on August 8, 2020

Originally this last of four issues of “Eleison Comments” being drawn from Fr. Drexel’s booklet on Faith is Greater than Obedience was going to argue in favour of the booklet’s position that Pope Paul VI was of good intentions when at the head of the Catholic Church between 1962 and 1965 he presided over the Second Vatican Council and brought about its revolutionary change of the Church. Of course human intentions are the secret of God who alone can know them infallibly, but Our Lord tells us to judge the tree by its fruits, and it is here that Paul VI is found wanting. We are now 55 years on from the end of the Council, and its fruits have proved to be disastrous for Catholicism in any true sense of the word.

Therefore amid the many excellent things contained in Fr Drexel’s Messages from the 1970’s contained in Faith is Greater than Obedience, it is difficult to include his portrait of Paul VI. In brief, here it is –

Paul VI loved the Church – 3-XII-71– He feels pain and sorrow for consecrated souls turning from the Church to the world. 4-VIII-72 – He is abandoned by many who could have supported him with vigour and loyalty. With tears and sweat he wrestles to save the Church, he sorrows for unfaithful priests, he grieves still more for bishops more interested in their comfort than in caring for the faith or for souls. 1 – VIII-75– He is oppressed by false advisers. 7-IV-72 – He becomes more lonely, and those loyal to him are persecuted. 5-VII-74 – He prays, sacrifices and suffers constantly, but many break faith. 7-XI-75 – Never have there been so many sacrileges as since the New Mass, but My visible representative bears no guilt for this. His will is interior participation at the holy sacrifice, in reverence and in love ( . . . ) it is priests who are sinning in this way and act contrary to the word and work of the successor of Peter.

Notice in particular the last of these references, from November of 1975. The categorical statement that the Pope bore no responsibility for the multiple sacrileges that came with the New Mass cannot be true, however good his intentions may have been. “The way to Hell is paved with good intentions,” because men are fallible, they make mistakes and what they intend is not always what they achieve. However, as soon as a good intention has a bad result, then if they really intend the good result, they will change whatever was producing the bad result. But in the 1970’s Pope Paul changed little or nothing from his liberal revolution of the 1960’s, on the contrary he did everything in his power to crush the counter-revolution of Archbishop Lefebvre from inside the Church. Therefore the Pope’s real intention was not “interior participation at the holy sacrifice” but the bringing into line of the Catholic Church with the modern world, a re-aligning to which the Archbishop was an unacceptable obstacle.

As the Archbishop said, Pope Paul was a liberal catholic, in other words a man deeply divided between two irreconcilable loves: his true love of the Church by his Catholic faith, and his false love of the modern world by his liberalism. Inside any one man these two loves must fight to the death. Inside Paul VI the Catholicism would not die, so towards the end of his life he wept for the loss of priestly vocations, but his liberalism ran deeper. It was intellectual, ideological and implacable. Woe to anybody who got, or gets, in its way. Then suddenly the liberal dove brings out its claws, which are those of a hawk. Such was Paul VI. In comparison with his liberalism, his faith was sentimental. Hence his Council and his Mass.

And where does that leave Fr Drexel? When Heaven makes use of a human messenger, it leaves him with his free will and personality. Women and children make the most docile messengers, the most completely faithful to the message being entrusted to them, but men . . . many men have struggled to achieve their views on life, and these may consciously or even unconsciously colour any message of Heaven or earth passing through them. Very possibly Our Lord spoke to Fr Drexel from the 1920’s until his death in 1977. Very possibly Fr Drexel’s own solution to the agonising problem set by Pope Paul was the solution adopted by many a pious Catholic after the Council: the Pope means well, it is the bishops who are the real problem. Alas . . . as today, the bishops were a problem, but so was the Pope.

Kyrie eleison.

Drexel’s Bishops

Drexel’s Bishops posted in Eleison Comments on August 1, 2020

Having reminded ourselves last week (EC of July 18, 2020) of how well the Messages from the 1970’s of Fr. Drexel’s Faith is greater than Obedience still fit the situation of Catholics in the 2020’s, let us see what view these Messages took of the Church’s pivot between Pope and priests, namely the bishops. These Messages are very severe for the clergy that virtually abandoned their flocks in the wake of Vatican II, especially for the bishops who had handed over their God-given responsibilities to man-made Bishops’ Conferences (see July 5, 1974 below. Two years later Archbishop Lefebvre was “hated and ridiculed”) . . .

December 3, 71 But the greatest pain to My Heart was given by those who should be shepherding the faithful – and these are the bishops, who have become silent, indifferent and cowardly. Not only a few, but many of them, are afraid of men and are far from the fear of God. This is the reason why the wolves were able to break into the flock, bringing such confusion and devastation and destruction upon the Church. Indeed, they try to wreck and smash the rock of My Church, but millions of souls, of immortal souls, are being lost. For these souls, those apostate shepherds and tepid bishops must render an account before My eternal Judgment! Once I wept over Jerusalem and over the people of this city and over their priests and high-priests; and still their sin was not as great as the sin of those who, in the Church of today, instead of being leaders become seducers, instead of shepherds become mercenaries, instead of counsellors become traitors. But there are certainly also true shepherds of souls and vigilant bishops, who stand with firmness and charity alongside the successor of Peter.

August 4, 72 While My son Paul ( . . . ) receives with great sorrow the news about priests who abandon their flocks, their vocation, and their office, and he entreats these fugitives and faint-hearted ones, nevertheless his grief is greater over the many shepherds (bishops) who, by virtue of their office and vocation, are obliged to assist with clearness and firmness the head, leader, and father of all the faithful, and to respect his instructions. But instead they lead a comfortable life, and because of laziness and cowardice, they omit being vigilant in their parishes and omit taking care of the faith with great, rigorous attention for the maintenance of discipline and the preservation of the faith.

December 1, 72 So many of the faithful hunger for a good shepherd. Yes, the bishops have been called and appointed as shepherds. But they become mercenaries and wolves, because they have abandoned the road to loyalty. The souls entrusted to them will one day testify against them at the Judgment.

July 5, 74 The distress of souls cries to Heaven; in the meantime , unasked persons take power in the Church and in meetings, and all this is happening because of the bishops, who do not stop them, and who do not set up boundaries.

November 1, 74 Consider: A great confusion has pierced My one and true Church. Books filled with false statements and heresies are accepted by bishops, who are supposed to be shepherds, while writings that tell the truth are rejected by the Church’s representatives, so great has become the confusion!

February 7, 75 Some of the shepherds and guardians who have been anointed ( . . . ) have abandoned the faith and give freedom to heresies. ( . . . ) Oh, would that all of those shepherds might understand what responsibility they carry and how much this responsibility is increasing upon them, because those who still believe and pray do not find protection any more.

July 2, 76 Why are there not guards, who protect the faith any more, and consequently the faithful people, the youth and the children, from having their souls murdered? But those who stand up against the damaging of the faith are persecuted, and their serious and heavy sorrows are exposed to hate and ridicule.

Kyrie eleison.

Drexel’s Crisis

Drexel’s Crisis posted in Eleison Comments on July 25, 2020

In the 1970’s when Our Lord (as one may believe) gave to the Austrian priest and Professor Fr. Albert Drexel the Messages contained in the booklet Faith is Greater than Obedience, Catholic Tradition was still deeply discredited because of Vatican II. Catholics simply could not believe that they had been so betrayed by their own priests. Only many years later would Tradition begin to regain the primacy due to it in the Church of Our Lord. As first of a brief series of these “Comments” drawn from the Messages, here are a few to show how relevant they were, and are, to the unprecedented, ongoing drama of the Church.

September 4, 1970.

The number of the faithful shall become small, but their fearless profession of the faith shall shine like a light in the world, and will be blessed by the power and the grace of the Holy Trinity. The Eucharistic sacrifice shall be celebrated in private homes, in places where the temple of God has been desecrated.

November 6, 1970.

Among the rebels, one can find more and more of the consecrated servants of the Church. These are the ones who make themselves guilty of the sin of Judas, who gave Me with his kiss not love, but the greatest pain. And because of the shepherds (bishops) who were appointed to their office and who became weak, the truly faithful have to supplement with their prayers, their struggles, and s ufferings what these priests have neglected and missed. Therefore, I look with great compassion upon the praying people and the victim souls. Their suffering is great in their heart, but magnificent and beautiful shall be the love that is awaiting them at the threshold of eternity.

June 4, 1971.

Numerous people shall turn away from My one and true Church, because they have lost faith in the triune God, and have been misled and blinded by wicked priests and teachers. These proud and disloyal ones speak about a religion without the supernatural, without mystery and prayer. They speak only about man and no longer about God! They turn charity upside down and give primacy to love of neighbor, but forget, lose, and deny love toward God with outrageous presumption. They are trying to found a Newchurch, in which the world and man mean everything – and God and Heaven nothing.

July 7, 1972.

Should those who are faithful and loyal in grace be sad about this? It is true that I Myself wept over Jerusalem, because its inhabitants rejected My grace. Yet it is My will and that of the Father, that the children of the faith should be joyous, like Saint Francis, who praised Heaven with his canticle of the sun, or happy like the young Saint Therese, who, filled with love of Me, happily and smilingly walked through the garden of creation.

May 4, 1973.

Numerous people of the Church, whose names are registered in parish registers, have lost the sense of what is Holy and who are the Saints. Priests consecrated to the service of the altar and to souls turn instead to the world and forget and despise the commandments of God, and pay homage to a dangerous spirit of the world. More and more people fall under the attraction of a moral corruption, that Saint John names the ‘Harlot of Babylon’ in the Apocalypse. What My visible successor in Rome said about the disintegration and dissolution of faith in the Church is his grievance and his accusation.

December 7, 1973.

The prayer of the faithful shall triumph over the talks and gatherings of those who are cold in faith. Yet, those faithful to God are still suffering, but they should know and consider that the sacrifices of their suffering are bringing down blessings upon the Church. Those who suffer this way shall share eternal glorification with Me, and the love of My Heart.

Kyrie eleison.

Drexel’s Return

Drexel’s Return posted in Eleison Comments on July 18, 2020

The Second Vatican Council (1962–1965) was a huge event in Church history, designed by its movers and shakers to deceive a mass of Catholics, clergy and laity, into replacing the true Catholic Church with their own Newchurch, adapted to modern times. But the agony for believing Catholics from then on was that the betrayal of Catholic Truth had come from the true Church authorities, whom they had learned from their Catholic cradles always to obey and never to criticise. Even Our Lord and Our Lady when they spoke to human beings would, to avoid scandalising Catholic souls, rarely criticise their own priests.

But here was the particular interest of Faith is greater than Obedience. For if these Messages which came through Fr Drexel truly came from Our Lord Himself, as they purported to do, then here was God Himself scathing in His criticism of the bishops, theologians and priests responsible for the Newchurch emerging from the Council, and obviously dispensing Catholics from their normal duty never to criticise priests. Here was God telling Catholics that a mass of their shepherds – not all – had turned into wolves. “I know what agony you faithful souls are suffering,” say the Messages, “but hold on to your faith and do not let these traitors change it. They are wrong, you are right, as time will tell, and great will be your reward if you persevere.”

Such a message was apt to solve one agony of true believers after the Council, but it was apt also to create another agony: what then of the unfaithful Church authorities? In particular, what of the Pope? The popular perception of papal infallibility goes way beyond the reach of its strict definition in 1870 with the four conditions. Then how could John XXIII have convened the Council of wolves, and how could Paul VI have guided it to its conclusion and presided over its being put into practice afterwards? This agony is such that many serious and believing Catholics from the end of the 1970’s, soon after Fr Drexel died, began resorting to sedevacantism for instance, whereby the Conciliar Popes have not been true Popes at all. The solution of Fr Drexel’s Messages is rather that Paul VI was not himself one of the wolves. He is clearly criticised (in at least two of the Messages), but he also had good intentions, he was not aware of all that his subordinates were doing, he agonised over what was happening to the Church.

Yet one must say that Paul VI’s personal responsibility for the Conciliar disaster was huge. Then some followers of Catholic Tradition will draw the conclusion that Fr Drexel’s “Our Lord” was certainly not truly Our Lord, but emerged somehow from Fr Drexel’s own “pious” reflections. In that case we would explain the leniency of the Messages towards Paul VI as being the solution of many “good” bishops and priests at the time to their agony, namely, the Conciliar bishops were terrible but not the Pope himself. On the other hand if the Messages did come from Our Lord Himself, then one might guess that Our Lord was being lenient in them towards Paul VI maybe in order to head off the reaction of Catholics being tempted more or less to despair of Our Lord’s own structural Church – He Himself was saying that he was still behind it, and He needed to say nothing untrue in order to say that.

Deo volente, this issue of these “Comments” is prelude to a second little series drawn from Faith is Greater than Obedience because of the value found by these “Comments” in the Messages given to Fr Drexel in the 1970’s. There should be three issues, on the Church Crisis, the Bishops and Paul VI, all as presented in Faith is greater than Obedience. Whether the Messages did then come from Our Lord Himself or not, readers of these “Comments” should be better able to judge. In any case it is clear that in this Church crisis they must make up their own minds.

Kyrie eleison.