Tag: World War III

Capitalism Unfolding

Capitalism Unfolding posted in Eleison Comments on December 18, 2010

Selfishness cannot make a society. Now money represents essentially its owner’s claim upon the services of the rest of his society. If then capitalism be defined, in anything more than just economic terms, as a way of organizing society whereby every citizen is to be left free to make as much capital, i.e. money, as he can and will, then capitalism is riddled with contradiction. It is trying to make a society requiring selflessness out of encouraging everybody to be selfish.

Thus capitalism can only survive for as long as members of a capitalist society still have pre-capitalist values, such as common sense, moderation in the pursuit of money, and respect for the common good. But capitalism as defined above does nothing to promote any such pre-capitalist values. On the contrary, it works against them, as selfishness works against selflessness. Therefore capitalism is a parasite, living off a social body whose pre-capitalist values it works to undermine.

This internal contradiction of a society built upon the pursuit of money is reaching its devastating conclusion in the present state of world finance and the world economy. Since the end of World War II especially, the peoples of the world have more and more sought money to provide the material comforts they now prefer to the spiritual comforts that formerly gave purpose to their lives. Admiring and seeking money, they have been happy to let the money-men take power over their societies. Admired and sought after, the money-men have taken to themselves more and more money and power. After all, what intrinsic brakes do money or power have to limit their own further acquisition? None. The bankers turn into veritable gangsters.

Hence, for instance, the invention 10 or 15 years ago of “derivatives,” financial instruments which make a fortune in fees for the banksters who purvey them, but which act upon the delicate mechanisms of world finance like weapons of mass destruction, because they easily fabricate an unreal world of colossal and unpayable debt. In this destabilized and fraudulent world of unpayable debt, a semblance of order is maintained by one government after another fabricating out of thin air vast quantities of “money” to “pay” the debt, but this process can only end up in an inflation which empties of any usefulness the currency involved. Thus all the world’s paper and digital money – for years it has had no other – is now doomed.

But money is to a society what lubricating oil is to an engine. Without oil, an engine seizes up and is killed dead. Without money in a society, exchange becomes much more difficult, and commerce can be slowed to a standstill. If for any such reason the food-trucks (or lorries) could not run, and food ran short, especially in the big cities, what could a politician do to head off the food riots, and to stop the peasants from coming after him with pitchforks? Start a war!

World War III may not be far off. Lord, have mercy!

Kyrie eleison.

Sixpenny Art

Sixpenny Art posted in Eleison Comments on December 4, 2010

The French painter Paul Gauguin (1848–1903) repudiates modern society for the sake of art, yet the art he made himself free to create does not seem to have brought him peace (EC 175). The English novelist Somerset Maugham (1874–1965) writes a version of Gauguin’s life a few years later which seems to confirm both the repudiation and the lack of peace (EC 176). But why is the modern artist at odds with the society that he reflects, and that supports him? And why is the modern art he produces normally so ugly? And why do people persist in supporting ugly art?

The artist as rebel goes back to the Romantics. Romanticism flourished alongside the French Revolution, which merely broke out in 1789, but has been pulling down throne and altar ever since. Modern artists, reflecting the society in which they live, as artists cannot help doing, steadily more repudiate God. Now if God does not exist, then surely the arts should have flourished serenely in their new-found liberty from that illusion of God that has dominated men’s minds from time immemorial. Yet is modern art serene? Or is it not rather suicidal?

On the other hand, if God exists, and if the artist’s talent is a gift from God to be used for his glory, as countless artists from the past used to proclaim, then the godless artist will be at war with his own gift, and his gift will be at war with his society, and society will be at war with his gift. Is this not rather what we observe all around us, for instance the deep scorn of modern materialists for all the arts, beneath a pretence of respect?

If God exists, at any rate the questions asked above are easy to answer. Firstly, the artist is at odds with modern society because the breath of God within him that is his talent knows that his society is despicable insofar as it is godless. The fact that society supports him despite his scorn makes it merely more despicable. As Wagner once said when his increased orchestra meant eliminating a row of seats in the theatre, “Fewer listeners? So much the better!” Secondly, how can a gift from God that is turned against him produce anything harmonious or beautiful? For anyone to find modern art beautiful he must reverse the meaning of words: “Fair is foul and foul is fair” (Macbeth) – yet when did even a modern artist mistake ugliness for beauty in a woman? And thirdly, modern people will persist in their reversing the meaning of words because they are making war on God, and have no intention of letting up. “Rather the Turk than the tiara,” said the Greeks just before the catastrophic fall of Constantinople in 1453. “Rather Communism than Catholicism,” said American Senators after World War II, and they had their wish.

In brief, Wagner, Gauguin and Maugham and thousands of modern artists of all kinds are right to scorn our sixpenny Christendom, but the answer is not to make even more war on God with modern art. The answer is to stop making war on God, to give him again the glory due to him and to put Christ back into Christendom. How much more ugliness will it take for men to turn back to the tiara and to choose once more Catholicism? Will even World War III be enough?

Kyrie eleison.

Interior Cave

Interior Cave posted in Eleison Comments on October 23, 2010

Visiting Subiaco put me in mind of two lines of Latin verse which situate in succession four founders of great religious Orders in the Church. Besides sweeping over three quarters of Church history, the lines also suggest why so many a Catholic soul today is hanging onto the Faith by its finger-tips.

Here are the lines:—Bernardus valles, colles Benedictus amabat,

Oppida Franciscus, magnas Ignatius urbes.

A free translation might be:— Bernard loved valleys, Benedict took to the hills

Francis worked towns, cities Ignatius tills.

In chronological order (slightly upset here by the demands of the Latin hexameter), St Benedict (480–547) sought God in the mountains (Subiaco, Monte Cassino); the Cistercians, galvanized by St Bernard (1090–1153) came down to the valleys (notably Clairvaux); St Francis (1181–1226) roamed amidst the small towns of his day, while the Jesuits of St Ignatius (1491–1556) led the apostolate of the modern city. One might say the modern city took its revenge when Jesuits, with Dominicans, led the collapse that was Vatican II (e.g. de Lubac and Rahner, S.J.; Congar and Schillebeeckx, O.P.).

For is not the progression from hill to city a progression from being alone with God to being only with man? Industrialism and the motor-car make the modern city with its soft life possible, but in doing so they generate a daily environment steadily more artificial and cut off from God’s Nature. With the material comforts increase the spiritual difficulties. In fact big city life is becoming so inhuman that the liberal death-wish may soon bring on the Third World War, to devastate urban and suburban life as we know it. Then if, for a variety of reasons, a Catholic cannot take to the hills, how does he stay out of the mental institutions?

One answer is logical. He must live with God, inside himself, in an interior cave, leaving the world to rush all around. He must turn his own heart into a hermitage and at least his home, if he can, into something of a sanctuary, while respecting all natural family needs. That does not mean living in an unreal world of one’s own, but in the real world of God within, as opposed to the fantastical world of the Devil without, pressing on us from all sides.

Similarly, the Newchurch has closed countless monasteries and convents since Vatican II, which leaves rather fewer openings for a soul which may think that it hears an interior call from God. Has he led them up a blind alley, or has he let them down? Or is he maybe calling them to lead a religious life within, turning their little flat in the big city into a hermitage, and their godless office into a field of apostolate, by means of prayer, charity and example? Our world is in grave need of Catholic souls that radiate outwards their inner peace and calm with God.

Kyrie eleison.

Seventy Years

Seventy Years posted in Eleison Comments on March 13, 2010

First and foremost, many thanks to a number of you that sent greetings in one form or another for my completing 70 years of life at the beginning of this week. I can truthfully say that ever since I was ordained priest in 1976 by Archbishop Lefebvre, I have had a great deal of happiness, and it has all come from God. He is the one to be thanked.

Nor was the first half of those years unhappy, on the contrary. With the wisdom of hindsight I can see how God was all the time leading me towards the priesthood, without my having had the least idea of what he was up to, so to speak! He is infinitely good, infinitely more good than we can ever imagine, and “His mercy endureth for ever.” Boys, remember the French saying: “If you want to be happy for three hours, get drunk; for three months (some say three weeks), get married; for the rest of your life, become a priest.” The life of the priest may be tiring, but it is luminous and happy, in the words of the “Poem of the Man-God.”

Many of you also wrote a few words of encouragement or consolation for what you see as the heavy cross of this year-long “internal exile” which was caused by my casting public doubt on a fundamental dogma of the New World Order. Worry not! Firstly, recall that wherever that New Order is in control (and that is almost everywhere), as little room for manoeuvre as possible is left to its enemies, and if we find that to be a painful condition, we must recognize it as being a just punishment coming from the hands of God for our having made him out to be as liberal as we are. His friends have today strictly limited room for manoeuvre.

And secondly, be reassured that this year has not meant for me the suffering that some of you imagine. In the English headquarters of the Society of St Pius X here in Wimbledon, I have been more than well looked after for the past year, I have been positively cosseted by SSPX colleagues. After 32 years of the ascetic life of a seminary professor or rector, it has been a great rest to have no duties and a minimal apostolate. In addition, one advantage of returning to my homeland as a geriatric is that I have had a right to free travel on public transport in London, which gives me the run of my home city, something I never had in my “green and salad days.” Altogether this “exile” so far has rather been what the French call a “sweet violence,” or a delightful pain.

In any case it will last as long as God wills, and no longer. Spring is coming in the northern hemisphere. I see already several kinds of birds flying around in pairs outside my window. Let the Third World War come at the hour appointed by God (and not by his enemies), still Hamlet has it right when he paraphrases the Gospel: “There is a providence in the fall of a sparrow . . . The readiness is all.” In context that is the readiness to die. May God bless each of you that sent greetings, and each of you that meant them.

Kyrie eleison.

Shifting Perspectives

Shifting Perspectives posted in Eleison Comments on August 29, 2009

A remarkable yet possible plan of Heaven for today’s world can be guessed at, if Orthodox Christianity is reviving within Russia in the manner described to me a few days ago in London by a Russian. His description corresponds to the impression brought away from Russia by an American friend visiting St Petersburg a few years ago – the average Russian has distinctly more spiritual substance in him then has the average spiritually wasted Westerner. Does this connect with Our Lady of Fatima . . .?

The Russian in London told me that the Orthodox Church in Russia is following rather than leading a revival of Orthodoxy amongst the people. Attendance at the Orthodox liturgy has increased by half over the last two years, and now 80% of Russians are at least calling themselves “Orthodox,” i.e. believers. New parishes are springing up everywhere. Bibles are snatched up as soon as they come on sale. Religious literature is flourishing, whilst atheistic propaganda is dying. “Holy Russia” is rising from the grave in which Communism from 1917 to 1989 strove to bury it.

For when the Communist structures of the Soviet “empire of evil” (Pres. Reagan) collapsed in 1989, the Russians turned for an ideology to replace Communism not to Western Liberalism but to their national and religious roots in Russian Orthodoxy. What indeed had the decadent West had to offer to Russia’s new needs in the 1990’s? In economics, the plundering of their wealth by capitalist vultures; in politics, the still on-going encirclement of their frontiers to ensure the United States’ permanent global hegemony by the construction of a ring of military bases which are one, if not the real, reason for the disastrous occupations of Iraq and Afghanistan never to come to an end; in religion, the attempted push eastwards into their land of Conciliar ecumenism, with which apparently the Russian churchmen want nothing to do – on the contrary, they are aware of the Traditional Catholic movement, and support it.

However, let us be under no illusion: Russian Orthodoxy welds together religion and patriotism in a not wholly godly mixture, and Orthodoxy is still schismatic by refusing the Papal Supremacy, and heretical by refusing a number of dogmas, so Russians do need to be converted to the truly Universal or Catholic Church. But if Our Lady of Fatima has singled out their country for the Consecration to her Heart, may the reason not be, not that the Russians are still wicked Communists but that the Russian people’s huge sufferings from their 70 Babylonian years of Communist captivity are calling forth from the always religious depths of “Holy Russia” an upsurge of spiritual vitality? And could this not save the true Church, presently wilting in the West, where the mainstream Church may still have large numbers but has little Faith whilst the Traditional remnant has the true Faith but negligible numbers? God knows how the Western Church also needs conversion!

May it then be Russia’s smashing of the encirclement in a Third World War leading to an occupation of Europe, which will at last drive the Latin Pope to consecrate Russia to Our Lady’s Heart, as she has so long been asking for in vain? Will at that moment the Russians’ renewed religious vigor save our languishing Catholic Tradition, whilst our Tradition will cleanse their errors? If so, then God will once again have “concluded all in unbelief, that He may have mercy on all . . .How incomprehensible are His judgments, and how unsearchable His ways . . . To Him be glory for ever” (Rom. XI, 32 . . .36).

Catholics, mainstream and of Tradition, pray your hearts out for the Consecration of Russia to the Sorrowful and Immaculate Heart of the Mother of God, or “Theotokos” as she is known in the Eastern Church.

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.