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 !                                                                                                                                            

ELEISON  COMMENTS  DCCCIX (14 January, 2023) :  RUSSIAN  BUILD-UP

An immense advantage of having a strong and well-informed Catholic faith is that not even news of a huge armaments build-up by Russia, almost guaranteed to lead to the Third World War, will leave one alarmed. The will of God is being worked out in the world, and even His enemies are contributing to that working out of the divine will. If they wish to stop Him from populating Heaven with the souls that love and obey Him, they rage in vain, in fact they help Him. They instrumentalise the world. He instrumentalises them.

For details of the massive expansion of the Russian armed forces just announced by President Putin, see on You Tube an excellent presentation – Russian military prepares for conflict with neocons and NATO

https://www.youtube.com › watch . In the weeks before Christmas a series of top-level meetings of leading Russian politicians and military personnel were held in Moscow, where Putin explained that the West is so set upon destroying Russia that Russia has no choice but to prepare itself for a major confrontation with the European nations of Nato, with the Americans behind Nato and with the so-called “Neocons” behind the Americans.

As for Nato, it is an alliance of European nations originally set up with and by the USA in the Cold War following on World War II, to enable Europe to defend itself against the very real threat of invasion by Communist Russia. Then Nato was essentially defensive, but once the Cold War was over in the 1980’s, Nato had to justify its existence by turning offensive through an eastward expansion towards Russia. This alarmed the Russians because their former enemies in Europe would now be sitting on their western borders. For the same reason the Russians did not want the Ukraine to join Nato’s military alliance, just as in the 1960’s the USA did not want Russian missiles on Cuba, and threatened WW III to prevent them.

As for the “Neocons”, that is one of many expressions to avoid naming that race of people to which four members out of five belong in the Democrat cabinet of President Biden, now ruling the USA. Why avoid naming them ?  Because their mere name evokes that hostility towards them which has caused them to be thrown out of one host nation after another, over 80 times in all, all over the world. Anybody might suspect that by dominating the USA and instrumentalising its military strength, they might have in mind once more to establish their Communist dictatorship over the entire world, by which every one of them would be a king and every one else a slave. No wonder they wish their name and action to be unknown.

But such an ambition is insane ?  Not for the remote descendants of that race once chosen out by God to be the race of the Messiah, and the launching ramp of His New Testament and Catholic Church. But when their Messiah came and of course refused to serve their worldly ambitions, creating instead a People of God chosen by faith, not race, then they turned against Him, crucified Him and have done their best ever since to destroy that continuation of His Incarnation which is the Catholic Church. Then let us suppose that “Holy Russia” is the last serious obstacle standing in the way of their New World Order, and we have a deep and ancient motive for the “Neocons” to drive the USA to drive Nato to destroy Russia.

But Russia is not Catholic ?  True, but in recovering from Communism (1917-1989) it is turning to Christ.  To recover also from the errors of Orthodoxy, it absolutely needs that Consecration to the Immaculate Heart of Mary by the Catholic Pope and bishops which She referred to at Fatima in 1917. Only then will “a period of peace” be given to our tormented Church and world.                                                                                                         

                                                                                                                                              Kyrie eleison 

So let us pray, let us pray,

Fifteen Mysteries every day.                                   

ELEISON  COMMENTS DCCCVIII  (January 7, 2023) : NATIONS, BEWARE !

The Old Testament collection of 150 Psalms have, like the rest of the Bible, Almighty God as their primary Author, while the various human beings that He inspired to compose them, notably King David, are merely the Psalms’ instrumental author. For the horrors of trench warfare in World War I, Great Britain sent each of its soldiers to war with a copy of the New Testament and the Psalms in their pocket. For the threatening horrors of World War III, readers of these “Comments” will be wise to make themselves quite familiar with God’s own manual of prayer – the Psalms. They are not at all out of date.

Here for instance is Psalm 2 which goes straight to the point of World War III – the nations had better pay attention to Almighty God and His only-begotten Son, the Messiah, Our Lord Jesus Christ, because God exists, He mocks their foolish efforts to defy Him and to drive His Son out of His world, and the nations will pay for it if they do not soon come to their senses. The Psalm has four parts, headlined below.

I   The nations plot in vain against God and Jesus Christ

 1  Why do the nations conspire, and the peoples plot in vain?  2  The kings of the earth set themselves,
and the rulers take counsel together, against the Lord and his anointed, saying, 3 “Let us burst their bonds asunder, and cast their cords from us.”  From 1717 onwards, Freemasonry was created by enemies of God, essentially to destroy the Catholic Church. With its slogan of “Liberty, Equality, Fraternity”, it so successfully infected men’s minds with godless humanism that in 2023 few modern men can still even imagine that turning their backs on God is their huge problem. They will have to learn by suffering.

II   All such plotting is doomed to failure, and to punishment

4  He who sits in the heavens laughs; the Lord has them in derision. 5  Then He will speak to them in His wrath, and terrify them in his fury, saying,  6  “I have set my king on Zion, my holy hill.” Modern man, having no idea of God, has no idea of how ridiculous before God is all his posturing and warmongering.  But modern man had better watch out, because if he goes on angering God, WWIII will be devastating. God’s solution is the “holy hill” of “Zion”, i.e. Jerusalem of the Old Testament, standing here for the “holy hill” of the New Testament,  i.e. the Catholic Church.

III  The divine Decree, by which Jesus Christ is King of kings, and Lord of all nations

7   I will tell of the decree of the Lord: He said to me, “You are my Son, today I have begotten you. 8  Ask of me, and I will make the nations your heritage, and the ends of the earth your possession.  9  You shall break them with a rod of iron, and dash them in pieces like a potter’s vessel.”  The divine Father begets from eternity the divine Son, and once the divine Son is incarnate in human history, then He has only to ask, and the Father will give Him “all power on Heaven and earth” (Mt. XXVIII, 18). Such power, that if men’s sins make it necessary, not only the Ukraine but all the world’s nations could be smashed to pieces.

IV  Practical conclusion: nations, behave;  blessed are the godly    

10 Now therefore, O kings, be wise; be warned, O rulers of the earth.  11  Serve the Lord with fear, and rejoice unto Him with trembling.  12  Embrace discipline, lest he be angry, and you perish from the just way, for his wrath is quickly kindled.   13  Blessed are all who take refuge in him.  The fear of God is the beginning of wisdom. Modern man’s scorn of God can have terrible consequences. But souls that rightly fear God have, even in 2023, nothing else to fear.

                                                                                                                                          Kyrie eleison

O little flock, says God, be not afraid,                                                                                                         For by Himself your littleness was made.

ELEISON  COMMENTS  DCCCVII  (December 31, 2022) :  STRENGTHENING  TRADITION

(With apologies for the late appearance of this particular EC)

Early in the New Year there is due to be ordained, on the Emerald Isle another priest for Catholic Tradition, by a bishop who is well-known in that country as a priest but not as a bishop. This is because he was consecrated in private nearly two years ago, in January of 2021, when the false Covid crisis with all its travel restrictions was in full swing. It then seemed that Éire might be completely cut off from England for an indefinite length of time, and then what would have continued to protect in the Land of Saints and Scholars those Catholics who understand the dangers for their Faith both of the Newchurch and of the Newsociety of St Pius X ?  These Catholics may not be numerous, but by their rare grasp of the unchanging Catholic Faith they have for the future of the Church a rare importance. The precious consecration might have remained private for longer, were not circumstances seeming to become steadily more hostile to Catholic Tradition.

Now as Catholic bishops are, by the power of their sacramental Orders to ordain priests and to consecrate bishops, essential for the survival of the Church, so Traditional bishops have been essential to the survival of Catholic Tradition.  When Archbishop Lefebvre consecrated four bishops in 1988 without the clear permission of the Church’s official leaders in Rome, let nobody think that he was simply defying those leaders, because they had in fact given permission in principle for at least one to be consecrated. But when it came to fixing a date for that one consecration, Cardinal Ratzinger so avoided naming a date that the Archbishop saw clearly that he would never in practice be able to use the permission granted to him in principle by Church Authority. That was the decisive moment for the Archbishop to understand that Catholic Truth would never be properly defended by the modernists ruling in “Rome”, and so he went ahead with the consecration of four of his own priests as bishops, to ensure “Operation Survival”, as he called it, the very survival of Catholic Tradition.

At the time, many believing Catholics did not understand his action, and roundly condemned it, but today, after Pachamama, and after Traditionis Custodes pretending to abolish the Traditional rite of Mass, and after a host of other heresies coming from the summit of the Newchurch, many of those same Catholics now admit that it is thanks to those consecrations of 1988 that the true Church survived. In the unprecedented crisis of the Church precipitated by its own leaders splitting their Catholic Authority from Catholic Truth at Vatican II (1962-1965), Archbishop Lefebvre never scorned or defied the true Authority of the Church, he merely put the Truth of Tradition in front of that Authority as embodied in neo-modernists, and by his so doing, more and more Catholics still have a Tradition to which they can rally.  Honest souls among them acknowledge Mother Church’s immeasurable debt to the Archbishop.

Now in the early 2020’s, Almighty God has still not yet seen fit to reunite Catholic Truth and Catholic Authority, so that the neo-modernists are still in control of “Rome”, and the Faith needs still to be sustained despite “Rome”. Therefore what the Archbishop began by putting Truth before Authority must be continued.  However, while Catholic Truth must be preferred in the last resort to Catholic Authority if “Authority” opposes that Truth which it was only instituted by Our Lord to defend, nevertheless Truth in a fallen world does need that Authority to protect it, so that without that Authority on high, Truth has real difficulties. For instance the Archbishop’s successors had such problems in ruling the Society after his death that by a policy of deferring to “Rome” much more than he would ever have done, they so changed the Archbishop’s Society that it needs a new name, e.g. the “Newsociety”. And just as the mass of Catholics after Vatican II followed their leaders from the Church into the Newchurch, so the mass of followers of the Archbishop’s Society have followed his successors from his Society into what one can call the “Newsociety”, because it strains after official approval by the neo-modernists of “Rome”.

Therefore as in 1988, or even more today, for the survival of Catholic Tradition, the necessity arises for the consecration of bishops without Roman Authority, so to speak, to maintain the Archbishop’s defence of the Faith above all. Hence the consecration in private of Fr Giacomo Ballini, here in England on January 14, 2021. The on-going Covid crisis showed how bravely he looks after the Mass and the Faith of all time.

                                                                                                                                                  Kyrie eleison

Today’s “Rome” will not properly care for sheep ?

We must have shepherds who will the true Faith keep !