respice stellam

ELEISON  COMMENTS  DCCCXIX  (March 25, 2023) :  BIG   PICTURE

For all readers who have access to the Internet and who want to keep their heads free of the pack of lies that make up the official narrative on the Russia-Ukraine war, there are, still accessible on You Tube at least four notable truth-tellers who, at least up till now, have proved to be reporters on whom one can rely to know what is really happening in the unfortunate Ukraine. They are three Americans, Colonel Douglas MacGregor, Scott Ritter and Gonzalo Lira, and a team of two Greeks who go under the name of The Duran, Alex Cristoforou, and Alexander Mercouris who lives in London.  At    youtu.be/021JkYHJy1Y  can be found the Duran in a fascinating conversation dating from just before Christmas of last year, but not out of date, on the whole background of the war.  Here is a summary of the conversation –

The West’s objective in Ukraine is to destroy Russia. The supply of long-range missiles and drones by NATO is not about Ukraine achieving a military victory. It’s about creating chaos and sowing unrest and division in Russia.

The crisis in Ukraine was engineered by the West on the basis that there would be a colour revolution in Russia and regime change. Sanctions would knock the Russian leadership off balance and the Russian people would rise up and overthrow Putin as the economy collapsed. However, the opposite has happened. The Russian economy is stable, Putin’s popularity remains high and Russia is now embarking on a major military build-up to crush Ukraine.

Former German Chancellor Angela Merkel recently admitted that the Minsk agreement (signed by Russia and Ukraine in 2014) served only to buy the West time to re-arm Ukraine. Russia has determined that direct confrontation with the West is now inevitable. Either NATO dissolves and the EU breaks up, or there will be a conflict. Does NATO continue to expand towards Russia, or face reality?

However, the neo-cons in Washington are leading the West into a trap. They are going for broke to drag the war out to the last Ukrainian. They are calling for “whatever it takes”, including US boots on the ground, as the path to a Ukrainian victory (this demand has already been made in London by the Guardian journalist Simon Tisdall). US troops deployed in Ukraine will mean World War 3. Will the Pentagon resist the neo-con strategy? Possibly, but it may depend on who is in power in the US if the war drags on.

The main obstacle for the neo-cons is not Russia but China. China has a much bigger economy than Russia with a far larger military. The neo-con strategy is for the US to go in hard and fast in Ukraine, take out Russia with regime change and then have a clear pathway to war with China. It’s a reckless “winner takes all” gamble. We are coming to the final act of the play. The deliberate sabotage of the Nord Stream gas pipelines demonstrates the lengths to which the neo-cons will go. If you are prepared to blow up a gas pipeline then where do you stop?

The great advantage of this presentation of the war in the Ukraine is that it gives the most convincing answer to serious questions : why is this war, so damaging to so many nations, being fought at all ?  Who is ultimately behind it, and what is their motivation ?  To punish the apostate Gentiles all over the world, God is using as His scourge a race of men (“neo-cons”) in their drive to achieve that tyranny over the world which they believe is their right. They are wreaking damage unimaginable, but they can never go any further than He allows, and nothing less will change men’s ways.

                                                                                                                                         Kyrie eleison.

God says to wicked men, “This is your hour,

But I alone grant to your darkness power.”           (cf. Lk. XXII, 53)   

ELEISON  COMMENTS  DCCCXVIII  (March 18, 2023) :  ENCOURAGING  CONSIDERATIONS

Fr. Chad Ripperger is a Catholic priest and exorcist of many years’ good standing in the archdiocese of Denver, USA, and he is still not yet cancelled despite the fact that he is telling much truth from the pulpit. The Newchurch must be longing to cancel him as they have done in recent years to so many good priests all over the world, but perhaps they dare not do so because he knows too many of their hidden secrets. Be that as it may, here below is an adaptation and summary of many points that he made in a sermon entitled “On the State of Evil in the World”  and accessible on You tube, unless it too has been cancelled. We lay out Fr. Ripperger’s  problem in Church and State, and then his solution.

In the Church : the modernists’ take-over of the official Church in the 1960’s has proved to be an unmitigated disaster, but officially Vatican II remains the elephant in the room which no priest is allowed to mention without his running the serious risk of being “cancelled”, or deprived of any standing or activity in the Newchurch (not Fr. R’s own term, he might rather call it the “Deep Church”). Here the modernists are becoming ever more draconian, because they have lost the argument, and there remains for them only force by which to ram the disaster down Catholics’ throats. The Church is in survival mode, it is only getting smaller, and if events turn really ugly, then even more Catholics will give up. That high churchmen are positively evil, is proved by their fruits which invariably maximise the damage they do to the Church. Our Lord’s own words to His Apostles, “Going teach all nations” (Mt. XXVIII, 19-20), clearly signify that the State has no power over the Church or over its doctrine, yet the Conciliar bishops lie down under the State authorities, as they did with the Covid scamdemic, and they are silent even on horrors like transgender, leaving the laity with no guidance to save their souls. As a result, Catholics behave just like non-Catholics and can no longer be distinguished from the world.  However, if 98% of the laity go on practising contraception, as research found them to be doing 30 years ago, with the silent approval of bishops and priests, then God may well take away from Catholics their spiritual gifts to give them to others more deserving, and the laity may lose even their good priests. Bad priests can be the sign of a special punishment from God.

In the State :  all four sins taught by the Church to be crying for vengeance, are rife !  Wilful murder we see in abortion, euthanasia and the Culture of Death. Defrauding the labourer of his lawful wage is to be found in excessive government taxation, far beyond the Biblical tithe, or one tenth of their subjects’ income. As for sodomy, not even in Sodom was same-sex marriage flaunted and promoted like today. Lastly, an example of oppression of the poor can be seen in how Communism everywhere eliminates the middle class.  Here the Deep State shows its control, which can shut down the world economy in two weeks, and effectively silence any truth-tellers, just as in the parallel Deep Church, or Newchurch. Our supposed political leaders are mere puppets of evil, but its present triumph can only mean that the triumph of good is coming. If bad predictions can come true, so can good predictions…

Fr. Ripperger’s good news :  At Fatima Our Lady promised an era of peace, an incomparably glorious triumph of the Church. We see already preventive graces preparing for graces to come. The demons know that their time is coming, when God will say, “Enough !” Many of the younger clergy are more Catholic than their elders. Governments are not persuading people, but are ramming the evil down our throats. Many a young priest wants Catholic doctrine, liturgy, and the truth. The older generation, fixated in the revolutionary 1960’s, is dying out. The more suffering there will be of priests cancelled and silenced, the more they will be orthodox. Many young married folk are having large families again. Things are changing slowly. The remnant will be more solid. Those who persevere under persecution will go high in Heaven. To suffer is a sign of God’s favour. Our Lady has said that when Communism seems to have won, it is then that God will intervene. The ensuing Chastisement will be for our sanctification. We must focus on God, and peace and joy will be ours.

                                                                                                                                               Kyrie eleison

                                                                                                                                                                     Had souls but prayed for Russia’s Consecration,

What ills would have been spared to every nation !

ELEISON  COMMENTS  DCCCXVI  (March 4, 2023)

Despite the one and only official narrative acceptable in today’s world of lies, whereby Adolf Hitler was the Devil incarnate and the Nazis were alone responsible for all war crimes of World War II, nevertheless  few people deny that between 1933, when the Nazis came to power, and 1939 when World War II broke out, there was in Germany a remarkable economic revival for the benefit of the entire German people. This was unquestionably due in large part to Germany’s escaping for a few years from the international banksters’ economic stranglehold upon almost all nations of the world, by which they impose usurious debts to keep those nations under their political control. In fact one major motive for the same banksters to organise World War II was to prevent Germany from permanently escaping out from under their control, and after Germany had been crushed in 1945, that control was immediately restored.

However, one economist who worked for that temporary escape from the Money Masters was a high-up but little-known member of the Nazi party, an engineer turned economist, by name Gottfried Feder (1883-1941). In an extract from a Manifesto he wrote in 1919 it is interesting to observe both the strength and the weakness of how he analyses the problems facing a modern nation, caught between Capitalism and Communism. Here is that extract –

“Our greatest social task is the abolition of interest slavery. This responsibility to abolish interest slavery towers above all other issues of the day. It is the only solution to the greatest problem of our time. The breaking of interest slavery is the most important moral imperative in social terms, it rises in its general significance far beyond all questions of the day, it is the solution of social questions, it is the only way out of the terrible confusion of the time. The abolition of interest slavery will deliver us from ultra-capitalist domination while avoiding both Communist destruction of the human spirit and Capitalist degradation of labour. The abolition of interest slavery opens the way to a truly social economy, by liberating us from the overwhelming domination of money. It opens the way to a state based on creative work and genuine accomplishment”.

On the economic level Feder is surely right on target. It is by their mastery of money, by interest slavery  in particular, which is the modern form of damnable usury, that the banksters have succeeded in building up their worldwide supremacy on the way to imposing their worldwide tyranny over all mankind, their New World Order. On the level of politics Feder also sees clearly the inadequacy of Communism or Capitalism to solve the social problems of a modern nation, and an honest observer of the Third Reich in the years leading up to World War II must admit that the Nazis did blaze a trail for other countries in our time, showing how to build “a state based on creative work and genuine accomplishment.” But as soon as  war broke out, all such accomplishments were buried beneath the opprobrium heaped upon Germany all over the world, in order to discredit utterly the very idea of “abolishing interest slavery.”  Yet it was the temporary relief from that slavery that had played a large part in those accomplishments.

What had happened to smother the truth ?  What had happened was that Germany’s real problem was neither economic nor political, but religious. Luther (1483-1546) broke Germany in two, undermining the  Catholic Church immediately in North and East Germany by Protestantism, in South and West over the long term by the liberalism that his Protestantism alone made possible. To reunite Germany Hitler had to bypass religion and rely on patriotic politics. But to try cure godlessness by more godlessness is like trying to put out a fire by pouring petrol on it. The best of patriotism or of economics is powerless to cure a loss of religion.  Now read again the paragraph of Feder above, and see how emphatically he repeats the supreme importance of the economic problem. No wonder he and the Nazis and Hitler wrought not the salvation of their country, but its destruction, like that of Ukraine today. God is not mocked (Gal. VI, 7).

                                                                                                                                                Kyrie eleison

If to apostasy a man is blind,

His family, country in ruins he will find.

ELEISON  COMMENTS  DCCCXV  (February 25, 2023) :  INVIGORATING  VIGANO

In another tremendous text of January 21st from Archbishop Vigano, in the name of the true God, the true Church and the true Mass he castigates the Newchurch of Vatican II with its counterfeit “Mass”. Here is a cruelly short summary of the long original, accessible under         Lifesitenews/opinion/abpvigano  

Vatican II, not being a dogmatic Council, did not intend to define any doctrinal truth, limiting itself to reaffirming, often unclearly, doctrines previously defined clearly and unequivocally by the infallible authority of the Magisterium. It was unduly and forcibly considered as “the” Council, the “superdogma” of the new “Conciliar church,” to the point of redefining the Church in relation to that event.

In the history of the Church, until Vatican II, it had never happened that a Council could, in effect, have more authority than twenty dogmatic Councils. Yet it happened, amid the silence of the majority of the Episcopate and with the approval of five Roman Pontiffs, from John XXIII to Benedict XVI. And in these fifty years of permanent revolution, not one of these Popes has ever questioned the “magisterium” of Vatican II, or dared to condemn its heretical theses or clear up its double-talk.

On the contrary, all the Popes since Paul VI have made Vatican II and its implementation so central to the programme of their Pontificate that they subordinated and tied their papal Authority to whatever the Council dictated. Their “magisterium” begins with Vatican II and ends there, and succeeding Popes have proclaimed their immediate Predecessors to be Saints for the sole fact of having convoked, concluded, or applied the Council. Theological language has also been adapted to the double-talk of the Conciliar texts, going so far as to adopt as defined doctrines things that before the Council were considered heretical, such as the State being above religion.

For once, Pope Bergoglio is perfectly right when he claims that the Tridentine Mass is an intolerable threat to Vatican II, because indeed that Mass is so Catholic that it undermines any attempt at peaceful coexistence between the two “forms” of the same Roman Rite. Indeed, it is absurd to conceive of an ordinary Montinian “form” and an extraordinary Tridentine “form”. The Novus Ordo is the expression in worship of a quite different religion – that of the “Conciliar church”. It is a spurious, equivocal rite, so “favouring heresy” that it deserves only to be suppressed and done away with.

I would not be surprised if, in the very near future, those who are abusing the Pope’s Authority in order to demolish the true Church will not only limit the celebration of the ancient Mass, but prohibit it altogether. If Rome were to forbid the celebration of the ancient Mass, Catholics who believe that they can serve two masters – the Church of Christ and the Conciliar church – will discover that they have been deceived. They will have to choose between either disobeying an illicit order in order to obey God, or else bowing their heads to the will of the tyrant while betraying their duty as ministers of God.  

This is no less than the battle between Christ and Satan. A battle for the Mass, which is the heart of our Faith, the throne upon which the Divine Eucharistic King descends, the Calvary on which the immolation of the Immaculate Lamb is renewed in an unbloody form. This battle must be fought over the essential difference between the God-centred vision of the Tridentine Mass and the man-centred vision of its Conciliar counterfeit. Let us ensure that however unworthy we may be, we shall deserve the future praise of the Church while we prepare ourselves for those trials in which we testify that we belong to Christ.

                                                                                                                                       Kyrie eleison

At last, a high-up churchman speaking clearly,                                                                                                For which we love Archbishop Vigano dearly.     

ELEISON  COMMENTS  DCCCXIV (February 18, 2023): “NICENESS” –  HERESY ?

Thanks be to God for all the good that the Society of St Pius X has done and is still doing for souls, but it has changed from what it was under Archbishop Lefebvre (1905-1991).  Here is an interesting testimony from somebody who knows  the Society –

Over a certain number of years I have noticed a change of approach to formation and to the ideal priestly candidate which is currently fostered in an SSPX seminary. For instance, am I right in distinguishing between sound doctrine (which the SSPX still manifests) and a “niceness” that has developed in its presentation, which seemingly pervades, yet handcuffs, the SSPX’s ability to combat errors and preach the doctrine uninhibited by human respect ?  The “nice” presentation of sound doctrine can get one out of many a tight spot, because if one is accused of compromising, one can always answer that the doctrine is not being changed, it is only that the situation demands a more gentle approach. This answer smacks of liberalism, but if it is veiled by faithfulness to the doctrine, then a man can think that there is no compromise. However, is there not a loss of that simplicity by which souls know exactly what needs to be said or done ?  I feel as though I cannot quite put my finger on exactly what this new mindset is. Do you think there is any merit in my concern that the orthodoxy may eventually be undermined ?

And here is a second question not unconnected with the first.  In seminary formation for the priesthood, should not seminarians be appreciated and encouraged if they want to go beneath the surface of things to penetrate to all the consequences of the truth? In recent years, SSPX priests or seminarians seem to have become suspect if they ask questions or seek to understand the reasoning behind decisions. Even if one shows the utmost prudence and respect, the simple fact of questioning something is met with concern on the part of the SSPX authorities.  Thus stronger personalities are the more closely scrutinized, and even if they have vocations, they seem to experience a more trying time in the apostolate.

So do you think it is naive of me to wonder if good men who seek to preach Christ the King effectively, without political correctness, will still be able to bear fruit in the  apostolate, given that the focus (at least on the surface of the SSPX) is more on the image of Tradition than on the fight for souls? I want to offer my life for God, but might someone in my position experience difficulty, given the current SSPX approach ?  Of course God can do with us what He wants, and we do not know the future, nor should we, but I do ask you if you think the warrior type is being neutralized by a spirit that practically avoids confrontation and dissuades any independent analysis.

Applying principles of the Faith to the secular realm is surely linked intimately with the reign of Christ over the whole of society, and not just with one’s personal spiritual life.

                                                                                                                        Kyrie eleison

“Niceness” must often be left well behind.

When men are soft, being cruel can be kind.

The priestly ordination of Fr Elias —

https://cristiadatradicinalista.blogspot.com/2023/02/ordination-sacerdotale-de-labbe-elias.html

ELEISON  COMMENTS  DCCCXIII  (11 February, 2023) :  MORE  DOSTOEVSKY

 

In his last novel, The Brothers Karamazov (1879), the famous Russian novelist, Fyodor Dostoevsky (1821-1881) put into the mouth of a Russian monk, Father Zossima, further profound thoughts about the failure of the liberal West and the possible future significance for the world of the Christian East, of  Russian monasticism in particular. Time will tell, but as America and Russia both shape up for the full outbreak of World War III, so the Consecration of Russia as requested by Our Lady of Fatima takes on more and more importance, while Fr. Zossima’s line of thought takes on ever more interest. Here is just one extract, freely adapted and abridged from the novel, Book VI, Chapter 3, Section (e) : –

From these meek monks, who yearn for solitary prayer, the salvation of Russia will come perhaps once more! … in their solitude, they keep the image of Christ fair and undefiled, in the purity of God’s truth, from the times of the Fathers of old, the Apostles and the martyrs. And when the time comes they will show it to the tottering creeds of the world. That is a great thought. That star will rise out of the East.

….Look at the worldly “elites”, and all who set themselves up above the people of God. Has not God’s image and His truth been distorted in them?  They may have science; but in science there is nothing but what is the object of sense. The spiritual world, the higher part of man’s being, is rejected altogether, dismissed with a sort of triumph, even with hatred. The world has proclaimed the reign of freedom, especially of late, but what do we see in this freedom of theirs? Nothing but slavery and self‐destruction!

For the world says: “You have desires and so satisfy them, for you have the same rights as the most rich and powerful. Don’t be afraid of satisfying them, and even multiply your desires.”  In that they see their “freedom”. Yet what follows from this right of multiplication of desires?  That the world is getting more and more united, more and more a global community, as distance is overcome and thoughts fly through the air ?  Put no faith in any such freedom, because it distorts men’s God-given nature, by fostering in the upper and middle classes many senseless and foolish desires and habits and ridiculous fancies. Men then live only for mutual envy, for luxury and ostentation, which come to be looked upon as such a necessity that they will even commit suicide if they are unable to satisfy such foolish desires. As for the poor, they are liable to drown their unsatisfied need and envy in drunkenness, but soon they will be drinking blood instead, because they are being led on to World Wars. I ask you, are such men free? 

Objection: they will be fighting for humanity !  Answer, they cannot hold out for long.  Instead of gaining freedom they have sunk into slavery, and instead of serving the cause of brotherly love and the union of humanity they have fallen, on the contrary, into dissension and isolation. …. Hence the service of humanity, brotherly love and the solidarity of mankind, are appearing more and more hollow. For how can a man shake off the habit of satisfying the innumerable desires that he has created for himself ?  Isolated as he is by his “freedom”, what concern will he have for the rest of humanity?  Such men may possess more “stuff”, have a greater mass of objects, but the joy has gone out of their lives.

The monastic way is very different. Obedience, fasting and prayer are laughed at, yet only through them lies the way to real, true freedom. I cut off my superfluous and unnecessary desires, I chastise my self-will with obedience, and with God’s help I attain spiritual freedom and joy …The salvation of Russia comes from the people. And the Russian monk has always been on the side of the people …The people will meet the atheist and overcome him, and Russia will be one and Orthodox. Take care of the peasant and guard his heart. Educating him quietly is your duty as monks, for the peasant has God in his heart.

                                                                                                                                                 Kyrie eleison   

The Consecration of Russia cannot wait.                                                                                                Alas, Our Lord has said, “It will be late.”

                 

ELEISON COMMENTS DCCCXII (February 4, 2023) : RUSSIA CONVERTING ?

Russia is very much in the news because of the war in the Ukraine still raging in the New Year, and
Russia is getting from our vile media a uniformly bad press. This is no doubt partly deserved because
Communist Russia (1917-1991) did indeed, in the words of Our Lady of Fatima, “spread its errors all
over the world.” However, there is certainly more to the enormous land of Russia than meets the eye.
Winston Churchill (1874-1965) was a brilliant politician but he was baffled by Russia, calling it “a riddle
wrapped in a mystery inside an enigma”. On the contrary Our Lady of Fatima called for the Catholic
Pope and bishops to Consecrate Russia to Her Immaculate Heart, and then “a period of peace would be
given to the world.” But why Russia ? Why not much more Catholic countries like Italy or France ?

Surely the key to Russia is that it is a deeply religious people, known for centuries after its conversion to
Christianity in 988 as “Holy Russia”, with a corresponding capacity for great good, or great evil. Here is
what may have baffled a modern materialist like Churchill. Thus too Russians have called Moscow the
“Third Rome”, suggesting it is the successor of Rome itself and then of Byzantine Constantinople, as
though Moscow has a central part to play in Christianising the world. A famous Russian adviser of
President Putin, Alexander Dugin, speaks clearly of the war in Ukraine as though Russia is fighting to
stop the New World Order from dechristianising mankind. Putin himself has often been defending what
are natural and Christian values against the immoral perversions of the rotten West, thereby cutting the
figure of a real statesman amidst the puppets who posture today as leaders of the Western nations.

It has happened before in history that Russia acted to save Europe from the demons of liberalism. By
1812 Napoleon had set up the French Revolution in many countries of Europe, and in that year he put
together a huge army of 600,000 men to invade Russia and bring it also within his ambition for a new
world order, yet to be born. The Russian winter is usually credited with Napoleon’s defeat, but it was
Russians who by their patriotism and courage at the battle of Borodino inflicted a body blow on the
invading army. In 1814 Tsar Alexander I was in Paris with his soldiers to make peace with France and to put together the “Holy Alliance” to help Europe to keep the Revolution at bay. Even in 1941 Stalin re-opened churches in Soviet Russia to enable the people’s religion and patriotism, not their Communism, to do most of the hard fighting necessary to crush Nazism for the temporary benefit of the entire world.

A famous Russian novelist, Fyodor Dostoyevsky (1821-1881), puts into the mouth of a character in his
novel entitled “The Demons” or “The Possessed” (1871) an astonishing vision of the future madness and
conversion of “beloved Russia”. The character is an old and silly liberal, but as delirium and death close
in on him, he has moments of sheer insight into the future – he sees Russia being filled with devils (like
the man in the Gospel (Mk.V, 1-20) possessed by a legion of devils, and then being freed of them all and
sitting quietly at the feet of Our Lord. Was not Dostoevsky foreseeing Russia possessed by the madness of
Communism and then finally freed by tomorrow’s Consecration to the Immaculate Heart of Mary ? —

A great number of ideas keep coming into my mind now. You see, that’s exactly like our Russia, those
devils that come out of the sick man and enter into the swine. They are all the sores, all the foul
contagions, all the impurities, all the devils great and small that have multiplied in that great invalid, our
beloved Russia, in the course of ages and ages […] But a great idea and a great Will will encompass it
from on high, as with that lunatic possessed of devils … and all those devils will come forth, all the
impurity, all the rottenness that was putrefying on the surface … and they will beg of themselves to enter
into swine; and indeed maybe they have entered into them already! They are we, we and those … young
revolutionaries … and I perhaps at the head of them, and we shall cast ourselves down, possessed and
raving, from the rocks into the sea, and we shall all be drowned—and a good thing too, for that is all we
are fit for. But the sick man will be healed and ‘will sit at the feet of Jesus,’ and all will look upon him
with astonishment…. but now it excites me very much…. (“Demons”, Pt. III,
Ch.7.2)

Kyrie eleison

To the Immaculate Heart of Mary we all must pray
For Holy Russia its saving role to play.

ELEISON  COMMENTS  DCCCXI  (January 28, 2023) :  PRIESTHOOD  APPRECIATED  –  II

The conclusion of these “Comments” last week was somewhat provocatively expressed and may need some explaining. Those “Comments” introduced a young student of “psychology” to whom God gave real light to enter the Catholic Church while he was studying. But as he began practising, not without success, the profession of a “psychotherapist”, he realised that it should be a Catholic priest to be saying to his patients what he found himself saying to them. Those “Comments” concluded with a couplet grieving for modern men, who on the one hand take very seriously psychology and psychiatry and psychotherapy and so on, yet on the other hand have no belief in any spiritual soul, or “psyche” – Greek word for “soul”.

Now first of all, let no practitioner of “psychotherapy”, honestly striving to help his fellow-men, take offence at anything that follows here in this week’s “Comments”, which are merely intended to show to Catholics how, with the least grasp of their penny catechism, they have a better handle on reality than many supposed “experts” in all kinds of domains, coming from all kinds of so-called “universities”. Let us begin by framing man in the universe as Number Three of the six categories of beings that exist –

1   The Creator of all other beings, GOD, Infinite Spirit, with not a trace of matter or materiality in Him.   

2   Created ANGELS, finite spirits, but also purely spiritual, with nothing material in their being.

3   Created MEN, finite spirits by their spiritual soul, but also material animals by their physical body.

4   Created ANIMALS, entirely material, with life and movement but nothing properly spiritual in them.             

5   Created PLANTS, entirely material, with life but no movement nor anything spiritual within them.  

6   Created MINERALS, most material of all, without life, movement or any quasi-spiritual element.

Notice on this six-part gradation of all beings how they climb from the purely material to the most purely non-material, or spiritual. Minerals have only existence. Plants have existence but also life which is not purely material insofar, for instance, as it baffles all attempts of our materialist scientists to reproduce it artificially. Then come the brute animals which have in addition sensation and self-movement, further steps out of materiality without attaining spirituality, which is reserved among material creatures to man, and which by its nature equips him with a spiritual soul in itself free of matter, but in man intimately and mysteriously united to his material body. This soul is what gives to him, but not to the brute animals, the faculty of reason, i.e. mind and will, and the capacity for supernatural life by which every man ever alive was, is or will be, like the angels, destined for Heaven, if they freely wish. All other material creatures are created by God to serve man to fulfil this spiritual destination. In the spiritual realm, finite angels retain what is like a last trace of materiality in that there are multitudes of them as there are multitudes of the material creatures, whereas the Supreme Being is infinite spiritual being Who can only be One. 

But what if man turns his back on the Supreme Spiritual Being ?  Then he will disregard every being that shares in spirit, which is the angels and men, he will discount even the faintly spiritual animals and plants, he will be most at home with minerals because their perfect predictability makes them the best subjects of his knowledge. Thus for modern man, the more material a science can be, the more truly “scientific” it is. On the contrary, the least admixture in any branch of knowledge of spiritual free-will, and the more it will be scorned as “unscientific”.  Real Catholic theology would be a prime example.

Alas for our “scientific” modern man, people are interested in people and need people, and need them not as mineral machines, but as people, with all their spirituality and free-will. This is because the great drama and purpose of all people’s lives is how each of us with his free-will is preparing his eternity, and this has nothing to do with pure matter.  Therefore the most “scientific” sciences are the most uninteresting, but materialists are bound to be interested in concerns human even while they will have to pretend that their human interests are nevertheless “scientific”. Hence “psychology”, “psychiatry”, and all the other “psy-s”, and “sociology”, etc, etc. –all scratching around for the remains of a disappeared God !

                                                                                                                                                 Kyrie eleison.

To get away from God, men adore machines.

To become inhuman beings, is what that means.

ELEISON  COMMENTS  DCCCX  (January 21, 2023) :  PRIESTHOOD  APPRECIATED  –  I

Here is another fascinating testimony from modern youth, showing how desperate today’s world is to fill in the gap left by its having spurned Almighty God and His divine Son, Jesus Christ, and His Catholic Church. Studying “Psychology” at university, he received a great grace of conversion by which he came to see that anything a “psychotherapist” can do, a priest can do better – where there is the Faith. Read on —

I have devoted five years to studying psychology at a modern university. I am only 23 years old, so those five years were a good chunk of my life. I was converting during this college, and at the same time as I began at this university, I became convinced of the Preambula Fidei(reasons leading to Faith), and took my first steps towards Catholicism. Then, halfway through this university, I was already a Catholic, but one who had not yet realized the problem of the Newchurch. However, by the time I left university, I had realized that the Newchurch represented a new religion, and I broke away from it.

As I grew up in religious instruction and Thomistic philosophy, I realized that what they call Psychology is not Psychology, but a group of subjects that serve so-called “Psychotherapy”. Among these subjects is certainly Psychology, but the main subject is in fact Ethics. What a psychologist does, even if he has a knowledge of the small useful part of modern science, is rather Ethics, and it is the same thing that priests in the old days did, using theological Ethics. It is exactly a part, though not the main part, of spiritual direction.

I realized, after I started taking care of patients, that mental disorders always boil down to an ethical or religious problem, to capital vices, and their cure always depends on virtue, even if the vices of some patients have come from their bodily condition, some physiological or psychiatric illness, etc.. So, after that, I saw that to lead my patients to healing always required saying things that should rather be said by a priest in spiritual direction. I try not to give orders as a priest might give in spiritual direction, and I always propose things in the manner of suggestion. In fact, the less faith any patient has to resort to a priest, the more I “take the reins”; and the more faith any patient has to trust in a priest, the more I tell him to refer the matter ultimately to a priest, especially when the patient needs some practical advice.

But I am not sure that this profession, which is modern, should exist, or be exercised by lay people. I may have had, despite my personal weaknesses, some good results, always looking at things from the angle of the Ethics of St. Thomas, but sometimes I have to do or speak things that previously should have been done or said by a priest. It is true that the number of priests is very small, and spiritual direction nowadays is something that can only be had with a lot of luck, because Traditional priests have crowds of people to attend to. True, I can sometimes see things from a different angle which the priest cannot always see, but the fact remains that I have neither the grace of state nor the prerogatives of a priest.

I know that in 1953 and in 1958, Pius XII spoke to Psychologists and Psychotherapists, and in these allocutions, he implicitly approves of the profession. But especially in the allocution of 1958, the pope seems to be working from some wrong premisses. He shows a certain lack of understanding of what science is, confusing it with modern science, and also a certain naiveté regarding Modern Psychology. So I wonder if his approval is truly justified. In brief, can a layman be a psychotherapist ?  And what would his prerogatives, responsibilities and limits be ?    (End of testimony)

Answer:  any “psychotherapist” still possessing some common sense and post-Christian love of neighbour can do good to souls in distress, but the good will be done much more by his charity and common sense than by any of his pseudo-scientific mumbo-jumbo. He has the prerogatives, responsibilities and limits of any one man towards his fellow-men. Let him not pretend to be any kind of priest or “scientist” in the true sense of the words.  He is a pseudo-scientist, and a godless substitute for a godly priest.

                                                                                                                                                  Kyrie eleison.

Poor moderns, with their  endless psy-, psy-, psy- !

They’re sure the soul, or “psyche”, is a lie !