Vatican II

900th “COMMENTS”

900th “COMMENTS” on October 12, 2024

Where is the true Church? Wait. It will revive,

Wherever the true faith has remained alive.

As we draw towards the close of 2024, there appears the 900th issue of these “Comments” which have appeared once a week since 2007. Amidst the confusion in Church and State which grows worse with each passing year, let the occasion be celebrated with another attempt to take the error of modernism to pieces, which has done so much damage to souls, especially since the 1960s, when it succeeded in deceiving so many high-placed Catholic churchmen at the disastrous Second Vatican Council.

Modernism inside the Catholic Church is the error of wanting to bring the Church in line with the modern world instead of bringing the modern world in line with the Church. Just before Our Lord Jesus Christ ascended into Heaven at the end of His personal ministry on earth, in the course of which he had founded His Catholic Church to be the continuation of His Incarnation among men, he gave, as His last words to His Apostles, highly important instructions: “All power is given to Me in heaven and in earth. Going therefore, teach ye all nations; baptising them in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost. Teaching them to observe all things whatsoever I have commanded you: and behold I am with you all days, even to the consummation of the world” (Mt. XXVIII, 18–20).

“All power in heaven and earth” belongs to all three persons of the Omnipotent God, but it has also been entrusted by the Father to the Son in His human nature. So Jesus has a divine authority to be telling the Apostles what they must do. What He tells them is to “Teach all nations”: to teach, not to dialogue; “all nations,” including Israel and Saudi Arabia, and not just some nations: And “nations,” not just sacristies, which means that politics are to serve the Church with their considerable influence, in order to help save souls. And after souls have been taught the truths of salvation, then they are to be given the supernatural sacraments of salvation, and they are to “observe all things whatsoever I have commanded you,” in other words they are to obey the commands of Jesus, not just consent to His suggestions. And if that programme seems daunting, then they have the assurance that if they fulfil His commands, they will always have His support and presence with them – even in 2024. But they must do what He says, and that is what the Church has always said and done, which is Catholic Tradition.

Just a glance at these last lines of the Gospel of St Matthew is enough to show us how well Our Lord designed and built His Catholic Church. What happened then? For three of its Seven Ages, of the Apostles, Martyrs and Doctors respectively, it thrived, building up to the approximately one thousand years of the Fourth Age, the Middle Ages stretching from the end of the ancient world to the beginning of the modern world, from around 500 to 1517, when Luther is reputed to have nailed his 95 theses to the door of the Church in Wittenberg. In any case he was primarily responsible for launching Protestantism, the father and mother of a series of revolutions, creating the modern world: naturalism, rationalism, LIBERALISM; ecumenism, communism, MODERNISM, and a host of other “isms,” all attempting to put together again what Luther had broken apart, the Catholic Church’s God-given wholeness of man, but failing to do because they refused to return to the true Church of Catholic Tradition.

The neo-modernism of Vatican II, as Fr Calderon clearly presents it in his admirable book Prometheus, is merely the latest in the long line of these sub-protestantisms, upgrading man at the expense of God. The clever excuse was that all the previous humanisms had merely resulted in two World Wars, but the Catholic Church itself was now going to create a new humanism which would upgrade man without downgrading God. Vain illusion! For the sake of “human dignity,” Jesus’ commands had to turn into men’s consents. God was no longer to be in command. What god was that? Millions upon millions of Catholics lost their faith in Him. Yet His true Church still lives, in the few souls keeping the true Faith.

Kyrie eleison

LEFEBVRE post 1988 – II

<b>LEFEBVRE post 1988 – II</b> on October 5, 2024

It takes a Saint to see how evil is bad.

And most of us? Evil can make us glad!

Three weeks ago these “Comments” concluded with a few lines of verse, but a few more lines than usual, in order to draw the lesson from words of wisdom spoken by Archbishop Lefebvre in 1989 concerning that controversial consecration of four bishops which he had performed in the summer of 1988 without the official permission of Rome, normally necessary. However, not all readers may have understood how the lines of verse were connected to the Archbishop’s line of thinking. And even for those who did understand, the crucial question of those consecrations deserves always to be developed, so we return to the subject. Here are those lines of verse, in heavy black, with explanation following –

A liberal is a wolf dressed like a sheep

Here is the central problem. A “liberal” is somebody whose real religion is not Catholicism, as he may deceive himself, but liberty. Thus he can come to think that Catholicism, the one true religion of the one true God, is a matter of choice, of his own choice, and he personally chooses it, but if anybody else wants to choose any other of the numberless false religions, he is at liberty to do so. He is not. True, God gives to every one of us human beings at the age of reason the faculty of free-will enabling us to choose between truth and error, between right and wrong, but He gives us no moral right to choose error or moral wrong. If He gives me the faculty of reason with its free-will, it is only so that I will make good use of it by choosing whatever is true and right, so that by rewarding me with Heaven He can share His infinite bliss. If I have the free-will to choose error or wrong, I have no “liberty” to escape the consequences of my choice, which will ultimately be, if I do not repent, the fires of eternal Hell. I will have freely chosen Hell. Only in this sense are human beings “free” to choose for themselves (what they know to be) any false religion.

It follows that if anybody wants to persuade me that my worth or dignity as a human being depends on my mere faculty of free-will, and not on the right use I make of it, then he is wanting to persuade me of a terrible error (he is a wolf), even while he is pretending to encourage my dignity (he is in sheep’s clothing). Every soul in Hell has the “dignity” of having itself chosen its torment, but what real dignity is that? The “dignity” to blaspheme, for ever and ever!? Yet such is the doctrine of Vatican II, with its Decree on “Human Dignity”: the State must protect the right, not just faculty, of every citizen to choose his own religion. This Decree is absolutely not Catholic. No wonder the Archbishop never signed it!

Judge by his fruits – sheep corpses in a heap

Are not the fruits of Vatican II millions upon millions of Catholics losing the Faith? Of course! The Council has told them that their dignity consists in choosing whatever religion they like! There are so many religions much easier to practise than Catholicism!

For what use is it to him to be “free”

If by God’s tenfold Law still bound he be?

Here is why the worshippers of “liberty” must have religious liberty, because whoever or whatever else they are free from, if they are not free from God Himself with His Ten Commandments, what are they really free from? Here is why religious liberty is the key to “liberty,” and why every liberal inclines to join in that war on God, war against God, which rages all around us. Here is why the Decree of Vatican II on “Human Dignity” is an unbelievable crime against all mankind. And in the half century since Vatican II, do the high Church officials in Rome show any sign of abandoning their wretched Council? In real terms, none at all!

To Hell with Heaven! I will do as I like,

And let God with His Hell for ever strike!

Among liberals, at least the ring-leaders know exactly what they are doing. Theirs is a diabolical pride. They know they are destroying the Catholic Church, and they are defying God to do His worst. God, have mercy! Archbishop Lefebvre understood what they were up to, but not all his followers understand.

Kyrie eleison

LEFEBVRE post 1988 – I

LEFEBVRE post 1988 – I on September 14, 2024

A liberal is a wolf, dressed like a sheep.

Judge by the fruits – sheep corpses in a heap.

For what use is it to him to be “free,”

If by God’s tenfold Law still bound he be?

“To Hell with Heaven! I will do as I like!

And let God with His Hell for ever strike!”

After consecrating four bishops in June of 1988, Archbishop Lefebvre saw more clearly than ever that the Conciliar Romans are no servants of the Catholic Faith. In 1989 he gave a long interview in France, cruelly shortened below. For the complete original, see https://sspx.org/en/one-year-after-consecrations-30335

Why the consecrations?

For several years I had been trying to get Rome to understand that as I was advancing in age, I had to ensure my succession. They were afraid that I would consecrate bishops, so they alluded to the possibility of our having a bishop who would be my successor.

I went to Rome for conversations, but without any confidence in their success. I wished to go as far as possible to show what good will we had. Very soon, however, we realized that we were dealing with people who are not honest. Rome brought up the question of the Council, which we did not want to hear of. A formula for an agreement was found which was at the very limits of what we could accept. I obtained only one bishop, whereas I was asking for three. That was already virtually unacceptable. And, when, even before signing the protocol, we asked when we could have this bishop, the answer was evasive or null.

The accumulation of distrust and reticence impelled me to demand the nomination of a bishop for the 30th June. Either that, or I would go ahead and consecrate. Faced with such a choice, Cardinal Ratzinger said, “If that’s how it is, the protocol is over. It’s finished, and there is no more protocol. You are breaking off relations.” It’s he who said it, not I.

Lefebvre should have stayed in the Church

What Church are we talking about? If you mean the Conciliar Church, then we who have struggled against the Council for twenty years, because we want the Catholic Church, would have to re-enter this Conciliar Church in order, supposedly, to make it Catholic. That is a complete illusion.

Danger of schism?

To say that we are not the “visible Church”, that we are quitting the “visible Church”, which is infallible, all that is just words which do not correspond to reality. It is incredible that anyone can talk of the “visible Church”, meaning the Conciliar Church, as opposed to the Catholic Church which we are trying to represent and continue. We are against the Conciliar Church which is virtually schismatic, even if they deny it. In practice, it is a Church virtually excommunicated because it is a Modernist Church. We are not making a parallel Church. We are what we have always been – Catholics carrying on. That is all.

Each of these recent popes is truly two popes in one. It was John XXIII who launched the opening of the Church to the world. From that point on, we were framed within ambiguity and duplicity, i.e. the two-faced way of acting proper to the liberal.

We are not against the pope insofar as he represents the values of the Apostolic See which are unchanging. But we are against the pope insofar as he is a modernist who does not believe in his own infallibility, who practises ecumenism. So long as in Rome they stay attached to the ideas of the Council: religious liberty, ecumenism, collegiality, they are going the wrong way.

Reconciliation?

I do not think it is opportune to try contacting Rome. I think we must still wait. Wait, alas, for the situation to get still worse on their side. But up till now, they do not want to recognize that fact.

Kyrie eleison

ROSARY BLAST 2024.

ROSARY BLAST 2024. on September 7, 2024

Our Lady knows exactly why we’re bleeding,

And, better than anyone else, what we are needing.

Both at Fatima in Portugal in 1917 and at Akita in Japan in 1973 Our Lady said that only She can help us henceforth. In Akita She added, “from the imminent calamities,” the calamities hanging over our heads. If anybody has been watching events in the Ukraine over the last two years, he must be blind, either naturally or wilfully, not to see a nuclear Third World War coming, and bringing with it calamities without number. Our Lady of Akita also told Sister Agnes Sasagawa that all those who put their confidence in Her will be saved, by which She almost certainly meant, saved for eternity and not just for this brief life on earth, which is so much less important.

In any case it is Our Lord Himself – in complete control of coming world events and allowing the calamities only for our own greater good – who has told us that to reward His Mother for the special part She has played in the saving of souls, especially in modern times, He wants it to be the Immaculate Heart of Mary which will take the credit among men for the eventual rescue of mankind from its present dire straits. For indeed mankind will be rescued in the Triumph of Our Lady’s Immaculate Heart, a brief Golden Age for the Church, following on the Chastisement, and constituting the greatest world-wide victory of Our Lord’s Church in all its history. Then sin will return, with the run-down to the Antichrist and to the fiercest persecution of Christians, generating some of the greatest Saints in all Church history.

Into this cosmic drama preceding the end of the world fits Our Lady as its queen and our guide, as appointed by Her Divine Son Himself. At Akita half a century ago, She did warn us, like a good mother, of “fire falling from Heaven which will eliminate a large part of mankind, both the good and the bad, sparing neither priests nor laity, and leaving survivors so desolate that they will envy the dead. At that moment you will have two weapons left: the Rosary, and the sign left by My Son (It is not yet certain in what that sign consists). Pray the Rosary for the Pope, for bishops and priests.” Indeed the primary problem today of our storm-tossed Church and world is the defection of the Catholic churchmen, deceived by the diabolical Second Vatican Council of the 1960’s.

Accordingly, the little “Resistance” movement in England is organising again this year a pilgrimage to Walsingham in Norfolk, from Thursday 26th until Sunday 29thSeptember, but based this year in Swaffham, about 30 minutes away by car. As in previous years, the main business of pilgrims will be daily Mass and the praying of full 15-Mystery Rosaries, possibly as many as ten in the four days inclusive, from the Thursday to the Sunday. That may seem a great deal, but nobody complained in previous years, on the contrary they were rewarded with the realisation of how relatively easy the full Rosary can be. And they well knew they were not wasting their time, by doing exactly what the Queen of Heaven is asking all of us to do. At the heart of the distress of our times is a spiritual and not material problem. The problem is mankind turning its back on God, for which all the latest and best of warplanes, submarines and tanks are relatively useless. See Psalm 32–33 – “The war-horse is a vain hope for victory . . . . Behold, the eye of the Lord is on those who fear Him.”

For all practical details of how to get to Swaffham, for accommodation (not expensive if you can bring your own bedding and towels) and so on, please e-mail respicestellam2015@gmail.com. Mass will take place each day at a former Convent in Swaffham, followed by a simple breakfast, and kitchen facilities are available to cater for an evening meal. Do notify as soon as possible by email this same address if you mean to take part, because organisers would like to have ahead an idea of numbers.

And do think of doing a great service to Our Lady, to your country, to your family and to yourself by taking part in the “Rosary Blast.”

Kyrie eleison.

LAW DEFINED

LAW DEFINED on August 3, 2024

And if I don’t see the monstrosity, I must pray,

As often urged, full fifteen Mysteries a day!

The desperate attempts of Pope Francis to use all of his papal Authority to crush the Tridentine rite of Mass and eliminate it from the Catholic Church once and for all, are rightly gaining less and less traction from among Catholics. Just how Almighty God can have allowed His own Authority that He entrusts to His Vicar on earth to be so misused, remains a mystery, because of course He gives it into the hands of men to build up His Church and not to pull it down. Many Catholics are so agonised by the problem that they are resorting to the simple solution of sedevacantism, because by that theory of there having been no valid Pope since John XXIII (1958–1963), all six Popes since Vatican II (1962–1965) have not been Popes at all. But that theory, which seems to solve the problem of the Conciliar Popes with such ease, takes many contradictory forms, and can lead to Catholics abandoning the Faith altogether, on the grounds that there can be no valid priesthood left at all, so they might as well stay at home rather than go to Mass. Thus sedevacantism can raise rather more problems than it seems to solve.

Such fruits suggest that sedevacantism may well not be the right solution to the serious problem set by all six Conciliar Popes, one after another, and culminating in the special horrors of Pope Francis. It may be a good moment to remember the fruitful solution of Archbishop Lefebvre (1905–1991), Traditionalism, of which he was the outstanding pioneer in its opposition today to the modernism of Vatican II.

Tradition is Catholicism, he said, and Catholicism is Tradition. “Jesus is the same, yesterday, today and for ever” (Heb. XIII, 8). Centuries of Protestantism and Liberalism have created a modern world which is so glamorous and seductive that in the end even the Vicars of Christ on earth have allowed themselves to be persuaded that Jesus needs to adapt himself to modern man, and not the other way round. But Jesus and His Church need no modernisation, all they need is to be presented as Catholic Tradition always used to do in times past. And the astonishing success of the Archbishop’s Society of St Pius X all over the world, at least until he died in 1991, proved that the Traditional version of Jesus and His Church can still flourish, despite modernity.

Then what did the Archbishop say about modernist Catholic Authority? He said that even Catholic Popes remain by themselves fallible men, unless they engage their infallible Authority, which they can only do on the four strict conditions clearly laid down in the solemn Definition of infallibility of 1870. If all four of those conditions are not present – and the Conciliar Popes never presented all four in their promotion of the Conciliar novelties – then Popes are as capable as any normal human being of making mistakes. And so all the modernist novelties of Vatican II in no way come under the protection of papal infallibility, which is highly restricted in its practical application.

But what about the Pope’s papal commands to abandon the Traditional rite of the Latin Mass? Are we not bound to obey him? No, we are not bound to obey him because it is not a lawful command, as Archbishop Lefebvre always said, and as the Catholic Church has always said. The Pope has no power from God to command just anything that comes into his head. The definition of law is that it is a command of reason for the common good made by those who are responsible for the common good. So if it is not for the common good, like any law pretending to legalise abortion, then it is no law at all.

Therefore when it comes to the sacrifice of the Mass, of which Padre Pio said that our planet earth can sooner do without the light of the sun than without that sacrifice, to replace its most venerable and dignified rite in Latin, centred on God, with a new rite in modern languages, doctrinally doubtful, without dignity, invented to centre on man, is so clearly opposed to the true common good of the Catholic Church that it cannot possibly be the object of a true law of the Church. Therefore no such pretended law need be obeyed, however many times Pope Paul VI or Pope Francis or their successors may try to impose any such monstrosity.

Kyrie eleison.

VIGANO COMMENTARY

VIGANO COMMENTARY on July 20, 2024

Tell not of so much gloom – I cannot cope!

The end of lalaland is one great hope.

Last week these “Comments” (July 13, # 887) gave a summary of Archbishop Vigano’s June 28 long justification of his decision not to respond to a Newchurch summons to appear before one of its courts to defend himself against a charge of schism. The summary took the form of 44 lines, one line for each of the 44 paragraphs of the original text, which gave to readers at least an overview of the entire content of the Archbishop’s text, but it hardly made any comment on what he wrote, except for the final couplet –

With some of the arguments one may not agree,

But here is a Catholic spirit, faithful and free.

In this week’s “Comments,” let us elaborate on last week’s rhyming verdict.

The first thing to notice about the original text is its wealth of arguments, not marshalled in any clearly recognisable sequence, but all bearing on the Archbishop’s central and most valuable message – the so-called “renewal” of Vatican II (1962–1965) wrought such a sea-change in the Catholic Church, that while appearances of the pre-conciliar Church could be maintained to deceive Catholics who were not on their guard, nevertheless the substance of the Catholic Church was so altered that it was no longer the true Church but a clever false church, so radically false that it had to be given a new name for Catholics to be no longer deceived. The Archbishop himself does not call it the Newchurch, but that is what these “Comments” will call it, for brevity and clarity.

Then the Archbishop’s main reason for refusing the summons of Rome is easy to express: between the Newchurch and the true Church there is such a contradiction (13) that while the true Church has such a divine Authority that it can demand from souls obedience on pain of eternal damnation (Mk. XVI, 16), on the contrary the Newchurch has no such authority because by all its false doctrines it has given up that Catholic Truth, the defence and protection of which is the very purpose of divine Catholic Authority. From the moment that Adam and Eve fell, mankind lived in a fallen world where God’s Truth no longer needed only to be presented in order to be accepted.

But by the time that the Word became flesh some 4000 years later, mankind had become so corrupt that to save any significant number of souls, Our Lord had to institute a hierarchy to impose the saving Truth: a Pope (Peter), bishops (Apostles), and disciples (priests). Men might still choose to disobey God’s own hierarchy and Truth, but His hierarchy would still, broadly, uphold it – until Luther let the corruption loose again, culminating in Vatican II, where Our Lord’s own hierarchy, broadly, abandoned God’s Truth. That split between God’s Truth and God’s Authority caused, sure enough, an unprecedented crisis in all Church history, beyond all human repair, where God alone will be able to restore His Papacy. But He will do that, to make possible one final triumph of the Catholic Church before the descent to the Antichrist.

Here is the basic reality of our situation in Church and world today. Archbishop Lefebvre recognised it, and by not underestimating the problem he did what was still possible for men to alleviate it. Archbishop Vigano mentions his example (2), and does what he can to follow it, by refusing, for example, to appear at the summons of apostate Rome, with a wealth of arguments to justify his refusal. One may disagree with some of his arguments, for instance on the vacant See in Rome. But those are details which pale in comparison with his grasp of the overall gravity of the crisis, nullifying the hierarchs’ authority. Here is the true faith of the Church’s martyrs down all the ages. May Archbishop Vigano’s courage and teaching open many more eyes for as long as God gives him life.

Kyrie eleison.