respice stellam

ELEISON  COMMENTS  DCCCXXIX  (June 3, 2030) :  DEADLY  MODERNISM

It may not seem so, but there is a thread running through the last five issues of these “Comments”: 

624 (April 29) Modernist Rome’s “excommunicating” of all six bishops who took part in the ceremony of    Consecration of four priests of the SSPX in Econe, Switzerland, in 1988, was intrinsically invalid.

625 (May 6)    Archbishop Lefebvre saw this clearly. His successors do not see it so clearly.

626 (May 13)  Rome pretends that a modernist accepted inside the SSPX can solve the problem,

627 (May 20)  or that an ex-SSPX priest who is a close friend of the Pope can do so, but no compromises,

628 (May 27)  however clever, can reconcile such irreconcilables as Tradition and Modernism.

Clearly, the whole sequence depends upon those “excommunications” of June 30,1988, being, by the nature of things, or by the nature of the Catholic religion, “intrinsically invalid”. This was the position taken by the Archbishop on the grounds that for the Church to survive it must have bishops capable of defending the Traditional Faith (which he in no way invented) against the deadly error of Modernism, invented by churchmen whose excessive admiration for the modern world had corrupted their Catholic faith, and who imposed their corruption on almost the entire Church by means of their corruption being supported by the mass of the Universal Church’s bishops at the Second Vatican Council (1962-1965).

So, immediately after Vatican II the official Church had made itself virtually incapable of providing in the long term bishops capable of defending Catholic Tradition, which is why the Archbishop consecrated four such bishops against all the appearances of disapproval by Rome. Time has shown, after his death in 1991, that he was right. Without his action, where would Tradition and the true Church be today ?  But, for us to save our souls, we must grasp why Modernism is so deadly for Catholic Tradition. If the reason is not clear in our heads, we may tomorrow be tempted, like today’s successors of the Archbishop, to seek some false reconciliation with the modernists in Rome, or we may the day after tomorrow refuse an offer from God of the supreme gift of martyrdom at the hands of the ever more criminal New World Order.

Now Modernism is the error of wanting to adapt the one and only true religion of the one true God to the world around us, which is essentially godless. What most deeply underlies Modernism is Protestantism, which, with Luther, threw off the one true religion.  By throwing off the Catholic Church and a large part of its essential doctrine, the Protestants opened the door to Liberalism, because wherever they prevailed against Catholic resistance in the ensuing wars of religion, they broke the monopoly of Truth in people’s hearts and minds. As a result, untruth in religion was now established and set up in significant parts of Christendom, formerly united in religion, in such a way as to be able to compete with the Catholic truth.

Thus arose the next major false religion, best known as Liberalism. The message of Liberalism to Catholics and Protestants alike was, “Stop the religious wars, stop fighting one another, stop taking religion so seriously. Peace on earth is better than peace in Heaven. Live and let live. Tolerance !”  This message was popular. Embodied in Freemasonry, a secret society launched in London in 1717, it spread rapidly to the English colonies in America and to France, where it had a huge influence in the American and French Revolutions of 1776 and 1789 respectively. Both of these Revolutions played in turn a key part in removing the old Catholic order to make way for the New World Order of today. This principle, of “religious liberty”, turns minds to mush, for if religious ideas are not serious, what ideas are serious ?

Taken together, Protestantism and Liberalism had made a “brave new world”, against which the true Catholic Church fought a brave rearguard action, especially Pope St Pius X in the early 20^th century, but in the end even Catholic churchmen blessed religious liberty at Vatican II with their Council document “On Human Dignity”.  Protestantism and Liberalism had generated Modernism. Modernism had conquered. But it is absolutely opposed to the Catholic Faith. The two are absolutely irreconcilable.

                                                                                                                                       Kyrie eleison

If there is truth, I can’t always be tender.

I must make war. The Devil won’t surrender.

ELEISON COMMENTS DCCCXXVIII (May 27, 2023) : CONSECRATIONS STRUGGLE – II.

More than once these “Comments” have highlighted the importance of bishops for the whole Catholic Church. If the bishops are Catholic the Church will be Catholic. If the bishops are not Catholic the Church will not be Catholic. Ever since Vatican II (1962–1965) the bishops and the churchmen have been, broadly, modernist instead of Catholic. Archbishop Lefebvre (1905-1991) founded the Society of St Pius X to defend the true Catholic Faith, and all that goes with it, against the unprecedented corruption of that Faith by the unprecedented heresy of Modernism, which attacks no one dogma in particular but which, by totally undermining all sense of truth, finishes by undermining every single dogma.

In other words, the modernism of today’s highest officials of the Church, and true Catholicism, are as necessarily and intrinsically opposed to one another as ice and sunshine. As soon as the sunshine becomes hot enough, it cannot not melt ice exposed to it. As soon as modern people’s loss of objective truth becomes strong enough, it cannot not undermine their Faith. If there is no reality outside my mind, nor truth inside my mind corresponding to that reality outside, then for me there is no reality or truth. If there is no reality or truth, how can there be a real or true God ? And if there is no true God, then all Catholicism and all Faith are obviously fairy tales. That is how radically opposed to one another are today’s all-engulfing godlessness and that true Faith without which I cannot save my soul.

Now, a battlefield can change while the same war continues. Between the Catholic Faith shielded by Archbishop Lefebvre and modernist Rome arose, necessarily and intrinsically, war. Now, that same war can continue on different battlefields. Thus in the 1970s and 1980s the battlefield was the Mass. By the grace of God when the Archbishop died in 1991, the war had been essentially won on that battlefield of the Mass. Remarkably, in the circumstances of the almost unanimous opposition to the true liturgy of the Mass on the part of the Church’s Shepherds (Popes, Cardinals and Bishops), the true Mass had recovered sufficiently in Catholics’ minds and hearts, that it was not done away with as the modernists had so fought to achieve. Instead it has regained a footing in the Church which it will only lose again under the Antichrist. But the implacable war between Catholicism and Modernism was not over. It merely shifted to a new battlefield which was the appointment of bishops. Hence the fight in 1988 over the Consecrations.

This is the fight in the Church of 2023, as clearly shown by the latest rumours or news (we cannot yet be sure which). The rumour is that Rome is offering to the SSPX three bishops of Rome’s own choosing, but very cleverly chosen for purposes of undermining the remains of the Catholic Faith of the SSPX. These three men were all once priests of the SSPX. All three left the SSPX at some point in the last, let us guess, 20 years, for different reasons, in which the true Faith played more or less of a part. Now Rome is mocking the SSPX by refusing any candidates of the Society itself and offering to Consecrate candidates who left the Society. But also Rome is without any possible doubt retaining control of these “Bishops for the SSPX”. Thus the Romans can reassure the modernists that they are not Consecrating Bishops “of the SSPX”, but Bishops capable of deceiving Traditionalists that Rome and Tradition can be reconciled.

And very possibly, these three bishops will succeed in deceiving many Catholics who still dream of ice which will not melt in the sunshine; of Modernists who really want to serve the Church; of bishops able to serve two opposed masters at once. But Catholics who understand what Modernism really is will not be deceived. They will say that by abandoning the Archbishop’s famous principle of “No practical agreement without a doctrinal agreement”, and by consequently begging from faithless Romans for their protection of the true Faith, the SSPX has been essentially betraying that Faith. Catholics wanting to preserve the true Faith have no business to be begging for favours from faithless Romans. Followers of the Faith wanting to save their souls must put their trust not in men but in God. Not even Modernists are capable of outsmarting Almighty God. He will save His Church, when He will, and how He will.

Kyrie eleison.

Most souls today have let reality slip.

Their faithless la-la-land has lost all grip !

ELEISON COMMENTS DCCCXXVII (May 20, 2023) : CONSECRATIONS STRUGGLE – I

When it comes to the Catholic Church, nothing is more normal, in a manner of speaking, than fights over
the choice of future bishops, because on the Church hangs the future of mankind, and on the bishops
hangs the future of the Church, for two main reasons. Firstly, the bishops are the Church’s administrative
pivot, through their dioceses, between the Pope and his worldwide flock. The Pope is Viceroy Of Christ
the King, but each diocesan bishop is – or should be – Prince in his own right over his own part of that
flock. And secondly, the Cardinals will normally be appointed from among the bishops, and the Pope will
be elected from among the Cardinals, so that the large majority of Church leaders will have come from
among the bishops. Humanly speaking, which way the bishops go, normally the Church will go.
So it is perfectly normal that in 1988, under the official rule of churchmen wholly in the grip of the deadly
heresy of modernism, Archbishop Lefebvre saw that he had to consecrate bishops of his own even
without Rome’s approval, because his Society of St Pius X would not be able to survive with only the
bishops that the modernist Newchurch would provide. In the SSPX’s General Chapter of 2012, it was
equally normal that the death of their faithful Founder and another 24 years of coexistence with the ever
more deadly modernists in Rome should have blunted the SSPX’s awareness of the danger of Rome. In
2023 it is equally normal that the Newsociety is struggling to find, with the sly Romans, candidates for
the bishopric that they can both agree on. Given original sin, the Romans will normally win the struggle.
On the surface, such a struggle rages back and forth in the details, reported here, reported there, with more
or less reliability. For instance, it seems now that there never was any question of the Society “seeing
more clearly” in the way suggested by these “Comments” two weeks ago, it was merely twisting and
turning on the hook of its own making – if I insist on respecting villains, I am going to be a victim of
villainy. I cannot sup with the Devil without a long spoon. On the other hand it does seem that Rome is
offering the bishopric to a former Bursar General of the SSPX, but who fell out with the Superior General
some years ago, and then took refuge with his friend in Rome, Pope Bergoglio himself. After all, how
could the SSPX complain about such a personal friend of the Pope being placed at their disposal ? In
truth, the SSPX has got itself into a boxing match with these modernists where it does not belong.
Between 1988 and 1991 when he died, was not the Archbishop’s last great lesson for the priests of his
beloved Society to have nothing more to do with the modernists until these return to the Faith ?
However, it is not the surface details that make the struggle underneath. That struggle is what matters,
and there is nothing merely rumoured or uncertain about it. The Good Lord created our universe for
human souls as a trampoline on which to bounce for the brief duration of our earthly lives until we
bounce to Heaven, with or without a spell in Purgatory according to how we have freely chosen to spend
these lives. But He wanted to give us only a truly first-class Heaven, and that meant necessarily allowing
for us some first-class adversaries on the way to Heaven, notably the world, the flesh and the Devil. Their
moral evil, whenever it would be a question of evil, He could never Himself cause directly, but He would
need to allow it. Therefore He created multitudes of angels, even knowing that Satan and his followers
would fall away from Him, even knowing that they would tempt, to fall with them, the majority of the
men He would create afterwards. And His Justice created the Hell needed to punish angels and men thus
falling.
Hence the real struggle over the choice of Catholic bishops is fought between God wishing to populate
Heaven, and the Devil seeking to populate Hell. And the real fighters on the side of God in this cosmic
struggle are less those who resort to tanks or rockets or submarines, than those who resort to supernatural
prayer and sacrifice, for instance with a 50-bullet pocket machine-gun which truly stops the Devil dead.
May God bless every one of you, specially those using it three times a day. You will have a handsome
reward.

Kyrie eleison

If only souls could see the real fight !
Then they would turn to God, and not take fright.

ELEISON  COMMENTS DCCCXXVI  (May 13, 2023) : CONSECRATIONS,  INSIGHT

Last week these “Comments” expressed a pious hope that the Society of St Pius X might be once more taking the heroic stand of its Founder in 1988, when for the survival of the Faith he consecrated, against Rome’s explicit prohibition, four of his priests as bishops to defend and protect the Faith. Alas, it is better to stay with reality than with fond illusions. The reality is that on Maundy Thursday of last Holy Week, in the Society’s priestly seminary in Zaitzkofen, South Germany, the episcopal ceremony of Consecrating the Holy Oils was performed by a bishop himself consecrated in accordance with the doubtful rite of the Newchurch, and not with the certainly valid rite of Catholic Tradition. 

Now it is an exaggeration to claim that that new rite is automatically invalid, in other words, in all cases invalid. Like all the new sacramental rites imposed on the Church in the 1960’s and 1970’s, in the wake and in the name of Vatican II (1962-1965), it is ambiguous in spirit and in nature. That is to say that it is open both to God’s Tradition and to man’s modernity.  For instance Our Lord’s Church is a monarchy, but the bishop portrayed in the new rite is democratic in spirit. So the new rite was designed to include both new and old, and to exclude neither, and this was how it had to be if the Conciliar revolution was to succeed.  For if the old and true religion had been too clearly excluded, Catholics would have seen what was going on, and would never have accepted the revolution, whereas if the modernist religion of Conciliarism had not been sufficiently included, the revolution could not have taken place either.

Hence ambiguity was, and still is, the order of the day, in order to corrupt believing Catholics and put them on the slide to losing their belief. Because if any Traditional Catholic says that Bishop Huonder has never been properly Consecrated, the answer is, “Oh no, the new rite is perfectly valid”, whereas if any modern Catholic complains that Bishop Huonder is betraying the Council by behaving like a Traditional bishop, then the answer is, “Oh no, he agreed beforehand with the Pope to be doing what he is doing”. And the “good” Bishop himself no doubt sees no contradiction in serving at one and the same time both the Pope in Rome, and episcopal Tradition in Switzerland.  But ambiguity is not of God.

Here is the heart of the problem for millions of Catholics, still today : centuries of modern philosophy and liberalism and religious liberty have steadily washed out of their minds, at least in matters of religion, all sense of any objective Truth corresponding to reality, imposing unity, and excluding contradiction. To the modern mind, any such “truth” is not a liberation from error but a mental tyranny, a deprivation of liberty, a refusal of human dignity, and so on. Here is Thomas Jefferson, hero of a famous Revolution, writing to a friend in 1800, “I have sworn upon the altar of God eternal hostility to every form of tyranny over the mind of man”.  The quotation is enshrined inside the Jefferson Monument in his nation’s capital.

Obviously, the problem of Truth being made to serve freedom instead of freedom serving Truth does not date from yesterday or yesteryear. It goes back at least as far as Martin Luther (1483-1546), “the first modern man” (Fichte), who so threw up against the Catholic Truth his volcanic “Me – Man !”, that the Catholic Church needed a whole Council to define its dogmatic truths from God, needing for the first time to be defined because they were being so shaken by the rise of Subjectivity for the “rights of man”.

Here is where our modern world began, which is so deeply engulfed in the defiance of God – “Here I stand, I can do no other”, cried Luther.  So maybe a Bishop Huonder can hardly be blamed for seeing no contradiction in what he is doing ?  Nor a Pope Bergoglio for commissioning him to act as a Trojan Horse within the SSPX ? Nor the successors of Archbishop Lefebvre at the head of the SSPX for failing to recognise a Trojan Horse ?  Maybe… God alone so knows all, that His judgment of subjects is infallible. As for me, I need not judge their Subjectivities, but I am absolutely bound to judge objectively, as best I can, in order myself to die not as a Protestant but as a Catholic, so as to save my soul.

                                                                                                                                                Kyrie eleison.

To judge-condemn, God may, while I may not,

But judge-discern I must, to flee the rot.

ELEISON COMMENTS DCCCXXIV (April 29, 2023) : “EXCOMMUNICATIONS” — HINDSIGHT

On March 16 of this year, Fr. Edward MacDonald, virtual head of the Catholic “Resistance” in Australia and New Zealand, wrote an excellent article for his people on the so-called “excommunication” of the four bishops consecrated by Archbishop Lefebvre on June 30 1988 at Econe in Switzerland. The article shows clearly just how the modernists in Rome outwitted the Archbishop’s successors at the head of the SSPX, and in effect crippled the SSPX’s defence of the true Catholic Faith, unless it is willing to return in action and not just in words to the Archbishop’s clear putting of the integral Faith above false “obedience” —

In any SSPX-Rome agreement the crucial question has always been: who appoints henceforth the SSPX bishops ? 1The reason is that the history of the Catholic Church is littered with examples of the struggle between the friends and enemies of God – normally Church and State respectively – for control of the appointment of Catholic bishops, because, the Catholic Church being a monarchy and not a modern “democracy”, then it is the bishops who form the Catholic people and not the people who form the bishops.

Both Archbishop Lefebvre and Cardinal Ratzinger understood this well when they met near Rome in 1988 to negotiate such an agreement. The wily Cardinal nearly wrested control of the appointment of SSPX bishops from the Archbishop in the Protocol (sketch of an agreement) signed by them on May 5, but by God’s grace the Archbishop realized that he was imperilling the Faith, took back his signature on May 6 and, assisted by Bishop de Castro Mayer, consecrated on June 30 four of his priests as bishops in “Operation Survival”. He saidhe was breaking no Church law: “We are convinced that all these accusations or penalties of which we may be the object,are null, absolutely null and void, and we will take no account of them” 2.The SSPX explained why the Archbishop was correct in a brochure:“Neither Schismatic nor Excommunicated”.

However, about 20 years later, Bishop Fellay felt that the null and void “excommunications” should be taken seriously after all, because he felt as though he was outside of theVisibleChurch 3. As for Cardinal Ratzinger, he had never admitted that Archbishop Lefebvre had bested him in 1988, so now as Pope Benedict hewas still determined to control the appointment of SSPX bishops. One pre-condition set for admitting the SSPX into the Visible Church was that Pope Benedict would lift the “excommunications” on the four SSPX bishops. The SSPX prayed that this would happen and rejoiced when the “excommunications” were indeed “lifted” by the Pope. Unwisely, the SSPX expressed gratitude to the Pope for his good will and generosity.

But by 2023 the SSPX has now multiplied its ties with the “Visible Church”. Its bishops are older and the health of some of them has deteriorated. The faithful wonder, why are no new bishops forthcoming? It is because the SSPX have painted themselves into a corner. By asking for the lifting of these null and void “excommunications”, the SSPX implicitly recognised that they were real, and implicitly they promised that they would never again consecrate bishops without Rome’s approval, as the Archbishop had done in 1988. That would show a great “ingratitude” to Pope Benedict, and they would deserve to be re-excommunicated.

Thus during his lifetime Archbishop Lefebvre won the battles with Rome, but his successors, lacking the clarity of his faith and insight into the treachery of modernism, were not the warriors that he was, and did not see how the (objective) deceits of wily Benedict / Ratzinger had wrested control from them of their future bishops, thus, in effect, crippling the SSPX. Here is how Pope Francis or his successor will choose the next SSPX bishop or bishops, and these will form the priests and faithfulof the SSPX, finallyintegrating them into the Conciliar Church. Probably there will be only a whimper of protest, as the SSPX faithful are being all the time more and more sweetly misled into believing in the “renewed” Catholicism of Vatican II.

[Notes: 1 Eleison Comments #116, September 26, 2009. 2 https://sspx.org/en/1988-episcopal-consecrations-sermon. 3 Many “Christian” churches are visible, so that visibility is not a Mark of the one true Church, to distinguish it from false “churches”. Catholics must be where the four Marks are, i.e. One, Holy, Catholic, and Apostolic. And if any visible “church” does not have all four Marks, it is anathema. We must avoid it.]

Kyrie eleison.

“Good” modernists no longer know the Church.

“Good” Cardinal Ratzinger left us in the lurch.

ELEISON  COMMENTS  DCCCXXII  (15^th April, 2023) : RESURRECTION  REFLECTIONS

“The Resurrection,” says modern man, “oh yes, it’s a lovely idea, it gives comfort to weak souls to think that there may be something after death, especially something nice, like some kind of heaven, but of course it’s not true. Once people die, they don’t come back to life, science knows that that just doesn’t happen. Death is the end. We need to stop dreaming. We need to get on with our lives on earth and live them to the full, for as long as we can, and accept that we will all die, and that’s it. It’s over. Nothing.”

That is how many a man would like to think, because of course it gives him permission, so to speak, to live life just as he likes, without having to worry about anything after death. He need not care about the Ten Commandments, or God, or Heaven or Hell, or eternity or anything like that. He believes in Science, Science says that all that religious twaddle cannot be proved, it is just pious nonsense. Unfortunately for such a man, it is not he who created himself in his mother’s womb, it is not he who built the framework of life on earth into which he was born, it is not he who set the conditions on which he lives and dies.  “Know ye that the Lord, He is God: He made us and not we ourselves. We are His people and the sheep of His pasture” (Ps. IC, 3). (As for “Science”, it cannot make an ant live, let alone a human being.)

And a large part of the conditions on which we live is that we are composed of body and soul, and death consists in the two being separated. Then the body normally decomposes and rots, as we can observe, but,  whether we like it or not, the soul lives on because it is immortal, pure spirit, with no material parts to fall apart and decompose. At that moment of death the soul comes before the divine Judge, as neither we nor Science can observe, but as is certain in many places of the Word of God (e.g. Mt. XXV, 46; Jn.V, 29). If the soul goes to Heaven, it rises for eternal life; if it goes to Purgatory, it rises for purgation of remaining sins until it is fit for Heaven; if it goes to Hell, it rises from death to fall into eternal live punishment. In any case the soul by itself lives on without its body until that body rejoins it at world’s end, for eternity.

“Well,” says our modern friend, “if those are the conditions on which I find myself here, I do not accept them ! When I was conceived in my mother’s womb, I was not consulted as to whether or not I wanted to be born, and if I had been consulted, I would have said NO to living for ever. I protest !  It’s not fair !”

My good friend, firstly, it’s too late to protest. You now exist, your soul exists, and it can never cease to exist, except if God were to annihilate it, which He could do but never does, as His true Church has infallibly told us. And secondly, it’s unfair to protest, because His one and only purpose in giving you life as a sheer gift, without your being consulted, was that you should go to Heaven to enjoy everlasting and unimaginable bliss by seeing Him spiritually in all His dazzling glory. Now the brute animals have a soul,

but it is a purely material soul, incapable of spiritual bliss, so for you to share in His bliss He needed to make you a rational animal with intelligence and free-will.

However, if God did give you free-will, He and you ran the risk of your misusing it, but that would not be His fault. In fact every single soul in Hell remembers, all too clearly, how relatively easily it could have been saved, if only it had wished, and this memory is a large part of its unending torment. In life, God’s help had always been “closer than the door” (Irish saying). It is only the soul that chose not to want it. True, the soul was not consulted before it was given existence with no possibility of not existing for ever. But the possibility of seeing God is so magnificent that it is protesting against it which is unfair.

Therefore, if we have been baptised, we should have risen with Christ from the spiritually dead to a new life, says St Paul. Let Catholics but lead that new life, and their example can save whatever can still be saved in our poor world.

                                                                                                                                                 Kyrie eleison

If Catholics lived by their risen life within,

They could yet save a world drowning in sin.

ELEISON  COMMENTS  DCCCXXI (April 8, 2023) :    C H A R I T Y  !

Dear Readers, you or I may be the greatest of Restradcats (“Resistant” Traditional Catholics), but if we have no true charity towards our fellow-men, then in the words of St Paul, “we may have all faith so as to move mountains”, but without charity we are a noisy gong or a clanging cymbal… we are nothing…” (I Cor. XIII, 1-3) – dear friends, do you by chance come across any gongs or cymbals on the Internet ?

If you do, it is understandable.  “Strike the shepherd that the sheep may be scattered” is a quotation from an Old Testament prophet (Zechariah XIII, 7) applied by Our Lord to His own situation in the Garden of Gethsemane (Mt. XXVI, 31), when He was so being struck by the servants of the Temple that all eleven Apostles remaining, after Judas’ betrayal, were utterly confused, and abandoned their divine Master.  So if today Pope Bergoglio is struck down by the same modernism that struck his five Conciliar predecessors, that makes – 1965 to 2023 – 58 years of deep confusion at the very top of the Church. Then who can be surprised if the Catholic sheep are scattered ?  Or if they turn on one another, and bite ?  Is not our eternal salvation at stake ?  So the temptation to turn on our neighbour and start clanging like a gong or cymbal is clear, but it must be resisted. Let us try for a moment to put ourselves in the place of Almighty God.

From eternity God knew that Adam and Eve would fall, and that mankind would only decline from then on, unless He intervened to have mercy upon them, before and after His greatest intervention of all, which was of course the Incarnation of His own Son and the foundation among men of His one true Church. That Church, He decreed, was to rise for about 500 years, the Ancient World; to triumph for about 1000 years, the Middle Ages; and then to decline over another 500 odd years, the modern world. At the end of these approximately 2000 years He decreed not another triumph of 1000 years but, as His own Son told us, the virtual disappearance of His Church – “When the Son of man comes, will He find the faith on earth ?” (Lk. XVIII 8). (We may not understand this decree of God, but that quote says what it says.)

However, how could His Church virtually disappear if it always had good Popes, bishops and priests ? Especially Popes, because He Himself built His Church on Peter (Mt. XVI, 18; Jn. XXI, 15-17). It would follow that towards the end of the world it would be God Himself who decided from eternity to allow a sequence of half a dozen (objectively) bad Popes, such as we have seen since Vatican II. These six Popes in particular have not been the fault of God but of all the human beings, especially Catholic priests, who down the ages have built up today’s worldwide apostasy, to eject the Creator from His own Creation and to take His place. However, the apostasy could never have happened without His permission.  But it was God Himself who chose to make His Church depend on Peter, in which case He obviously foresaw how His own permission of defective Popes would scatter the Catholic sheep. In that case, how can He not have a special measure of understanding and mercy for them, unless they too want to get rid of Him ?

And even then, does not the Sacred Heart say, “I have compassion on the crowd” (Mk. VIII, 2) ?

In which case, following the divine example, must not “Restradcats” have all the more compassion, especially on our fellow Catholics (Gal. VI, 10) ?  And let us bear in mind that many non-Catholics are being driven by the apparently insoluble problems of today’s world to be thinking of God, so that many of them may easily finish among the last that will be first, while if we ourselves do not practise charity, we could easily count among the first that will be last (Mk. X, 31). Our Lord told His Apostles that they would be recognised as His followers by the charity they would have for one another (Jn. XIII, 35). Are there not a number of Traditional Catholics presently scandalising souls by our lack of charity towards one another ?  We will answer for it before the judgment seat of God, especially after the gifts we have received from Him to be keeping the Faith today.

                                                                                                                                                 Kyrie eleison.

Truth is quite indispensable, supreme !

Yes, but it’s nothing, if love be off our screen.

ELEISON  COMMENTS  DCCCXX  (April 1, 2023) :   PROSPERITY ?   BEWARE !

If godlessness is the great plague from which the world is now suffering, one remedy is to read not only the New Testament of the Bible but also the Old Testament, because one and the same God was the main writer (using the human writers as instruments) of both Testaments, and both together constitute, so to speak, His one autobiography. His enemies try to drive a wedge between the justice of Jehovah in the O.T. and the mercy of Jesus in the N.T., but His friends have no difficulty in showing how one and the same God Incarnate is implicit in the O.T, explicit in the N.T..  Nevertheless, it is surely true to say that Jehovah is in the forefront of the Old Testament while Jesus is in the forefront of the New Testament. If then one can also say that today’s worldwide godlessness consists not so much in the rejection of Christ as in the materialistic denial of the very existence of God (Jehovah), then here lies the interest of knowing the Old Testament, where Jehovah thunders, in a manner of speaking, on every page. Take for instance this passage from Deuteronomy VIII, 11-20 : —

[11]  “Take heed lest you forget the LORD your God, by not keeping his commandments and his ordinances and his statutes, which I command you this day: lest, when you have eaten and are full, and have built goodly houses and live in them, and when your herds and flocks multiply, and your silver and gold is multiplied, and all that you have is multiplied,  then your heart be lifted up, and you forget the LORD your God, who brought you out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of bondage, who led you through the great and terrible wilderness, with its fiery serpents and scorpions and thirsty ground where there was no water, who brought you water out of the flinty rock, who fed you in the wilderness with manna which your fathers knew not, that he might humble you and test you, to do you good in the end.

[17] Beware lest you say in your heart, `My power and the might of my hand have gotten me this wealth.’  You shall remember the LORD your God, for it is he who gives you power to get wealth; that he may confirm his covenant which he swore to your fathers, as at this day. And if you forget the LORD your God and go after other gods and serve them and worship them, I solemnly warn you this day that you shall surely perish.  Like the nations that the LORD makes to perish before you, so shall you perish, because you would not obey the voice of the LORD your God.

Almost the whole book of Deuteronomy is taken up with the last instructions of the great man of God that was Moses. He has led the Israelites out of Egypt, through the Red Sea, through 40 years in the desert, and now they are on the brink of entering the Promised Land, which he himself will not enter. As he is 120 years old and about to die, he is giving to the Israelites his very last instructions. Read the whole Book of Deuteronomy to see how his immense preoccupation is to prevent the Israelites from turning away from God, after they had been privileged by God with the special mission of preparing for the coming of the world’s Messiah. Again and again Moses warns them of how they will be punished by God if they are unfaithful, but specially blessed and protected by God if they are faithful. In the passage above, Moses is warning of the particular danger of material prosperity making them forget the Lord their God.

Now apply Moses’ warning to the New Testament. Ever since the death of Our Lord on the Cross, which instituted the New Testament, Catholics know that by faith they are the real People of God, and no longer the Israelites by race. Over Catholics’ 2,000 years of history, have Catholics not been entrusted by God with bringing all peoples of the world to believe in Christ ?  When they were faithful, did they not spread “Christendom” far and wide ?  But from the end of the Middle Ages onwards they began to be unfaithful, culminating in Vatican II, in a process of turning from things spiritual to things material, which did achieve worldwide an unprecedented material prosperity. For never before have so many men been so well fed, so well housed, so well provided with material goods. But where is the Lord their God in their lives ? Virtually nowhere. And instead, where are we ?  On the brink of nuclear Armageddon.  God, have mercy !

                                                                                                                                                Kyrie eleison

Moses is out of date, long gone. Farewell ?

Whoever thinks so, wends his way to Hell !

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 !