KASPER'S VISION: THE CHURCH OF MOB RULE

The notorious worldwide survey is complete and is now in Rome, and a Synod is going to take it, among other things, under discussion.

Cardinals like Kasper and Schonborn are thrilled with the survey; many laymen are stunned in disbelief and shock.  Kasper and Schonborn see the survey as a Manifesto.  To them, the people have spoken and the Church, in their eyes, must become a Democracy and no longer be the Monarchy it always was.  The survey shows that a clear majority of Catholics no longer believe in the tenets of their Divine Faith, and in the matter of morals can be said to have lost their marbles.  But Kasper and Schonborn and others who think as they do want to see this as the Document which will propel the Church into the new territories of their desire.

In short they want the Catholic mob to rule on Church teaching, the same mob they have created by their tragic failure to teach the truths of the Faith.

It will be their own uprising against constituted Authority, in this case divinely instituted Authority.  So who is it that the mob and their episcopal handlers are uprising against?  That answer can only be, God.

The logic here would appear to be very simple.  Jesus Christ, the Son of God, set up the Church while He lived and set Peter to be its head, giving him the charism of infallibility on matters of morals and faith.  Ergo, we can safely assume, logically, that the twenty-century teaching of the Church - God's only true Church - on moral matters comes directly from the Creator Himself.  Ergo, again, if we deviate from this Divine Teaching we are rising up against God.  I'm not sure how much more simple I could make that.

Even more simply, Cardinals like Kasper are abetting this rebellion against the teachings of God.  And if he is allowed by the highest Authority in the Church to go on this way.........??

Sandro Magister shows the on-again, off-again viewpoint of the current pontiff with regard to the issue of divorced and remarried Catholics.  One day, Francis is ambivalent; the next day, firm.

The answer to this may be to simply pray that Peter's head stops spinning long enough that it can settle down and face the reality of where we are.

There are those who want a Democratic Church, one ruled by the passions of unlettered mobs.  That unlettered rabble has dutifully handed over to clever revolutionaries like Kasper a new club with which to beat the Church.

THE CHURCH'S HUMILIATION

Last night the Catholic Church was dragged through the mud again.  A nationwide broadcast on the "Frontline" television series brought up all the old and some of the new scandals that are now pouring out of the Church it seems on a daily basis.

Many of the topics covered have been covered before but a few new ones came up, all interspersed with that trademark darkly sinister music in the background and the blurry, jerky images of which producers of these kinds of things are so fond.  Much time was given to the ubiquitous ambulance-chaser, Jeff Anderson, who struggled in his oily way to convince the viewers that he was only in this because he is "for the children".  The truth about him is that the only children he is for are his little children, $50, $100 and $500 dollar bills.  Those in the know can easily dismiss this individual as the cynical money-grubber that he is; only the easily misled will be fooled by his hypocrisy.  But it is not him that concerns this writer; it is the legitimate cases that were presented which show corruption at the very highest levels of the Church.

Now that this program has been aired it is natural for us to ask of our Churchmen: are you finally convinced now that there is a deep problem in Holy Church, a problem that indeed predates the woebegone Vatican 2, and that the time has now come to take a serious look at the disease that is spreading?  Are you aware, dear Churchmen, that the problem of homosexual depravity is only a symptom of a far greater problem, a doctrinal and liturgical one?  Has the sight of the Church being publicly humiliated by the mass media, abetted by treasonous clerics high and low, penetrated your hearts - and your minds?  Will you still hang on to your ugly new liturgy, your false ecumenism, your totally misguided optimism, your chummy relationship with the world?  Will you still refuse to bring to the true Faith heretics, schismatics, Jews and pagans?  Are you happy that these people will all die outside the Church?

Will you still promote nonentities, time-servers, sodomites, cowards and downright idiots to high positions in the Church of Christ?  In short, have you, now that such programs are being aired on national television, had enough?

I will tell you, dear Churchmen, that we Catholics have had enough.

In one of the most insane projects it has ever been my bewildered eyes to gaze upon, Churchmen around the world recently sent out via the Bishops a survey of the opinions of Catholics around the world.  Now, if their intention was to see just how misguided and un-Catholic their Catholic children are, well and good.  The survey that was produced showed as expected a majority of Catholics who cannot even be called Catholic anymore.  If the Bishops will use this information to begin to re-teach the Faith to their clueless flock, I commend them for conducting the survey.  If that is the case, my suggestion to them would be to throw into the trash the new Catechism of the Catholic Church, surely one of the poorest-written and ill-thought out documents ever to emerge from the Roman Catholic Church; throw it right into the garbage.  Replace it with an old, orthodox, non Vatican 2 catechism - the kind that built and nourished the Faith for centuries.  If I ever see Churchmen reverting to older and better catechisms then will I begin to believe that we are starting to see a return to sanity.

But the real reason for the survey my Lord Bishops, I contend, was a cynical one on your part.  You knew perfectly well what the answers would be like (one hundred years of poor catechesis does take its toll) and you will use the expected answers as a support for new and even worse changes to the one, true Church.

To be sure, some Churchmen who have not totally lost their sensus Catholicus will look upon the results of this survey with horror.  Whether or not there are enough such prelates to engineer a reversing of course remains to be seen. 

Fascinatingly, there was one aspect of the "Frontline" program that mirrored exactly the modus operandi of our current Catholic hierarchy.  That aspect can be described in three words:  Rembert George Weakland.  In the television program, in the section devoted to the Milwaukee scandals, those three words were most conspicuous by their absence.  Unless I missed it (and I could have, as I had to leave the room for a few moments to vomit), the name of Rembert Weakland never came up.  In short, this darling of the corporate media is still being protected even though he himself was a sodomite who brought shame and ruin to the Milwaukee Archdiocese.  This omission of any mention of this Archbishop mirrors exactly the attitude of the Catholic Church toward him: silence.  In all public statements coming either from the Milwaukee Archdiocese and/or Rome we hear nothing about Weakland, or if we occasionally do it is only diplomacy and praise.  When ever has a subsequent Milwaukee Archbishop or the Vatican publicly distanced themselves from this man?

No one could remain unmoved by watching and listening to one man after another speaking to Church officials about being molested when they were adolescents.  It was sick-making to watch.  And though the show deftly avoided mentioning the word "homosexual" (as does the Church, by the way) any one with common sense knows that when these men were altar boys and high school/college age young men and were being molested by male priests it was an act of homosexual buggery.

The unlikelihood that this evil is going to go away anytime soon was underlined by a story found today at Catholicism.org.  It tells us that the Dublin's Archbishop himself is promoting sodomy.  Read that once again:  Archbishop Martin of Dublin, Ireland is promoting unnatural sexual relations.  What is even worse than that is the fact that Martin has not been immediately sacked by the Pope....which tells us much not only about Martin but the Pope as well.

The Church stopped clear teaching on doctrine a long time ago.  That gave rise to the disaster known as Vatican 2, which gave rise to the disaster known as the new liturgy which gave rise to the collapse of faith and morals and which is the reality we face today.  If one-half of the stories we hear about a homosexual mafia in the Church are true then that would dovetail nicely with the lack of doctrinal teaching that has been plaguing the Church for such a long, long time that Our Lady of La Salette and Pope Pius IX in the 19th century, Our lady of Fatima and St Pius X in the early years of the 20th century felt the need to say strong words about a situation they described as long-standing.

Now we Catholics have to watch with profound sadness and dejection the humiliation of Christ's Church at the hands of her enemies both within and without.  It is like watching the procession to Calvary.  As in that sad day Christ's appointed Bishops ran away from him.

They are still running away.

ERIC HOLDER IMPEACHMENT UPDATE

Eric the Red

A group of courageous Negro pastors have called for the impeachment of Attorney General Eric Holder.

http://cnsnews.com/news/article/penny-starr/black-pastors-impeach-holder

We commend them for their forthrightness and courage and wish them every success in securing the impeachment of this despicable racist.  What is pleasing is that these pastors are calling for his impeachment based on his promotion of sodomite "marriage" and his arrogant ignoring of the rights of the States which have banned this outrage.

That Mr Holder is so obviously contemptuous not only of the Constitution but of the citizenry in general, and that he is so obviously a sociopathic individual bent upon twisting both justice and logic it is high time someone had the intestinal fortitude to propose his disgrace and removal from office.  His youthful Marxism has stayed with him into adulthood and he is now behaving every bit as belligerently as any Soviet commissar of years gone by. The United States has adopted the worst excesses of both the Communists and the Nazis and has added to it its own brand of despotic rule.  To call the current Department of Justice a department of justice strains credibility and invites laughter.  It is getting a little late in the day for Americans to sit back in a sort of complacent slumber and dream that all these problems will somehow go away.  They will not.

These black pastors have shown us the way.

God bless 'em.

FRANCIS: MR NETANYAHU IS ABOUT TO MURDER MORE INNOCENTS

Your Holiness:

Your Holiness' friend (?) Mr Netanyahu has just announced, via one of his top generals, that he is about to kill a few thousand innocent Lebanese civilians.

http://news.antiwar.com/2014/01/29/israeli-air-force-to-target-residential-areas-in-next-lebanon-war/

Many Catholics are wondering about the wisdom of the Holy See's 1994 about face vis-a-vis recognition of Israel as a Jewish-only state and the diplomatic relations that have been born of that.  Pope Saint Pius X refused to recognize the project of a Jewish state, a sound policy that was in full force until the pontificate of John Paul II.  St Pius' wise diplomacy prevented the Holy See from becoming a party to atrocities but ever since John Paul's reversal of that policy the Catholic Church has become too often the promoter, willing or unwilling, of Israeli aggression and injustice.  Perhaps now is the time to re-establish the old policy of not carrying on diplomatic relations with the illegal regime in the Holy Land.

Now that the occupiers of Palestine have formally announced that they are going to commit war crimes against Catholic Lebanon we Catholics are naturally awaiting some comment from you.  We are naturally assuming that the indiscriminate killing of numerous innocent Catholics and Muslims is an unspeakable crime in your eyes.  We also assume that Your Holiness is aware that preceding each and every Israeli onslaught against innocents -  Gaza, Lebanon, Syria, Egypt, etc. -  is a meeting between some Israeli dignitary and the Pope of Rome.   I am certain that Your Holiness does not want to be a mere fall-guy, a prop so to speak, used by Israel to sprinkle a little holy water over their murder raids.

Murder is a harsh word to use, Your Holiness.  But what other word can be found to describe what Israel is about to do?

Perhaps you could denounce this proposed killing in advance, as you denounced the one that was intended for Syria?

The lives of innocent men, women and little children are about to be snuffed out by Israel.  Can you find it in your heart to say something?  Your Holiness will travel to the Middle East in May.  There you will be meeting with many Orthodox.  This is a good and noble project.  You will be discussing with them the persecution of Christians in the Holy Land.  When you do, Your Holiness, Catholics ask you to pay especial attention to the ultimate cause of all this strife, namely the so-called state of Israel which committed and is still committing theft, murder, ethnic cleansing on a huge scale and in many ways are, ironically, acting even worse than the Nazis they so often condemn.  We hope and pray that you will listen to the people in the Holy Land and know who it is that stands in the way of genuine peace.

The Editor,
The Eye-Witness

JOHN CORNWELL, WRITER OF COMEDIES

Self-styled Catholic John Cornwell, showing the signs of the cancer within

What do John Cornwell and Dan Brown have in common?  They are both writers of bad horror stories.

Both take rickety aim at the Catholic Church when inventing their fantasies about beady-eyed priests hiding in dark shadows waiting to pounce on the innocent or the unwary.  At least Cornwell is the better writer of the two, his venom being at least readable compared with Brown's grade school vocabulary.  In their odd way they join the company of Professor Candida Moss (late of Tooting-by-Sea, England) the ancient history expert of Notre Dame University whose amusing iconoclastic assaults upon history (and common sense) ensured her a place of high honor at that once Catholic institution.

Live jackals feeding upon dead lions is an old story.  These days it is a very profitable business.  Trashing the reputations of people long dead by writers with meager talents has long been a low-risk/high gain endeavor, and so Cornwell, always keeping one eye on his bank balance, has given us a thrilling read about the dark doings of Saint Pius X, the first Pope to be canonized in the last 400 years.

Mr Cornwell's latest is called "The Dark Box".   Ooooh...drama....suspense...wow (cue the "Psycho" show-murder music!).  No, Mr Cornwell, Hollywood will not cast you as the villainous St Pius X when they make your book into a movie.  They will save that part for Russell Crowe or Leonardo diCaprio, even though you could out-act them.

Will the leaders of the Catholic Church defend St Pius against these Cornwellian libels?  Of course not.  He represents everything the Modernists in control of Holy Church despise.  To come to his defense now would expose the shallowness and stupidity of their program for the Church, the program that has been rolling along like a wheat-thrasher for nearly 100 years now and found its fruition in Vatican Council 2, otherwise known as the Triumph of the Modernists.  In any event the Church has done precious little to defend its reputation of late.  Sullied by cretins of every shade and color, Churchmen remain silent while the Bride of Christ's reputation is dishonored.  Silence indicates agreement.  So St Pius X will have few defenders in the Vatican.  To defend him would be to show the world that the Modernists have indeed triumphed, and that is why any defense that may come will be the usual slop of ambiguity, niceness and banality.  And the current leadership of the Church is very good at banality.

What was my First Confession like?  As best as I can remember from the year 1958, nothing particularly terrifying though, of course, opening one's soul to the priest in the confessional for the first time was a serious and daunting business.  It meant that we would have to reflect upon our short lives, which gave us the strongly-imprinted idea that we must not ever offend Christ.  It meant that we had to look at the reception of Holy Communion, our very first Holy Communion that was looming in the near future, as something devastatingly beautiful.  But Mr Cornwell, like a man unable to lift his eyes from the gutter and look up to the lovely row of trees and cottages, finds this all very dangerous.  Mr Cornwell can only see horse droppings where Catholics can see the horse.  For him it is all about terrorizing the young and innocent.  That is about the intellectual level of the man, and those like the aforementioned Brown and Mizz Moss, whose minds are so polluted by the culture and the boot-licking rituals they must go through to get their works approved for publication that they literally cannot see the forest for the trees.

Untroubled by facts Mr Cornwell makes many assertions about St Pius that, to put it simply, are lies.  What other word can we use about a man who writes a best-selling book in 1999 called "Hitler's Pope"?   (We anxiously look forward to the sequels that are forming in Mr Cornwell's bat-infested belfry: "Diocletian's Pope", "Lucretia Borgia's Pope", "Stalin's Pope" and "Obama's Pope".  And "Pol Pot's Pope" has a nice ring to it.)  The media lap dogs lap it up like dogs, the readers of Dan Brown novels revel in it.  One quaintly unhistorical assertion of Mr Cornwell in his new book would have it that St Pius X issued a "decree" in 1910 that lowered the age of First Confession from 10 to 7.  Don't spend too much time looking for that decree because it doesn't exist.

Mr Cornwell calls himself a practicing Catholic (he was thrilled with the resignation of Benedict XVI) who claims he is upset with the "filth" in the Church.  But I am at a loss to understand why throwing additional filth at the One, true Church, as Mr Cornwell does at every opportunity, will help with cleaning the pus out of the Church's wounds.  And using outright easily disprovable falsehoods about the Church does not seem to be a very productive way to end the problems in the Church which he claims to be concerned about.

But Cornwell's mendacious assertion about lowering the age of penitents serves multiple purposes, one of which is to uphold the myth that the sex crimes being committed by certain clerics are against small children rather than the truth which everyone knows, namely: that these are homosexual crimes committed against adolescent boys.  Cornwell is nothing if not resourceful.

Most Catholics know that age seven is and has been considered the "age of reason", which is the reason why Pius encouraged it.

With melodramatic titles like "The Dark Box" it is very clear to this writer that Cornwell's claim to be a Catholic is as trustworthy as his claim to provide serious scholarship (see Joseph Shaw's piece here.)

I would suggest that the Dark Box is the one inside poor Mr Cornwell's head.

WHEN INTERNATIONAL FINANCE WANTS SOMETHING DONE...

....it doesn't take any half-measures.

Kiev, 19 February 2014:

See here the work of International Finance, and the USA (or do I repeat myself?).  When they want something they don't fool around, and they care not a whit who gets killed, the innocent or their bought-and-paid-for agitators, armed to the teeth courtesy the US taxpayer.

RT reports:

http://rt.com/news/ukraine-street-warfare-firearms-658/

Mr F William Engdahl offers his usual pertinent observations here:

http://www.veteranstoday.com/2014/02/01/us-and-eu-brazen-intervention-in-ukraine/#_edn3

Pat Buchanan weighs in here:

http://original.antiwar.com/buchanan/2014/02/20/ukraines-crisis-not-ours/

Daniel McAdams:

http://www.lewrockwell.com/lrc-blog/ukraine-is-responsible-for-its-demise-but-we-all-may-suffer/

Some months back we wrote about this and it would seem that our initial suspicions were fairly close to the mark.

Reports have been coming in that various religious personages, Orthodox and Catholic, are supporting the protesters.  At first glance this would appear quite strange so we must ask what the nature of that support is.  If it is typical Christian concern for the well-being of people who are wounded or killed in this nonsense, well and good.  But if not, if they are actually in fact on the side of the protesters, then I cannot imagine what is going on in their minds and would most certainly welcome their views on the matter.  As it stands, this is clearly paid agitation by Big Money interests, represented by the USA.  Of that there is no doubt whatsoever.  But if there are other issues at play then we will anxiously look for additional information from the clerics on the ground, always remembering that no one is immune from propaganda, even religious.

Daniel McAdams offers the following comparisons between what is happening in Ukraine with what has been happening in Syria, pointing out that each time the Syrian and Ukrainian Presidents offered to calm the situation by compromise and forgiveness, the violence of the protesters became even worse.  (For your own amusement you might write to your Congressman and ask why we as a nation are supplying firepower and men to overthrow these two countries.  Be prepared for some funny boilerplate replies)

It is tempting to simplify matters, a temptation that this writer is hardly immune to.  But the reported sympathies of such exemplary men as Archbishop Shevchuk notwithstanding it seems foolhardy in the extreme to provoke Russia in this manner by intervening in a situation that is designed to benefit financial oligarchs.

Some Catholic sources are reporting that Russia is being turned into a police state by Vladimir Putin.  That may be as may be.  But this writer would require evidence first and not rely upon the ravings of the sodomites (as, apparently, some Catholic sources have) who are hysterically angry at Putin for signing into law a few tepid (but hopeful) measures reigning in their sexual anarchy.  These Catholics would be well advised to be concerned about a real police state being constructed right here in the so-called land of the free.   Along these lines let us consider some of the enemies Russia has made of late:

1. super-rich oligarchs whose predations upon Russia were severely curtailed by him (with many of them fleeing to Israel),
2. the USA, which is furious with Putin for thwarting their plans to attack Syria,
3. International Poofdom which will not tolerate any law that will protect children from their perversions,
4. the Poles, sadly enough, due to a long-standing tension between the two countries,
5. Israel, because of Russia's defense of Christians in the Middle East (also, see #1)
6. NATO, which being the European arm of the US will not brook interference in its war-mongering
7. The US Stasi, aka, Homeland Security, et al, for Russia granting asylum to Edward Snowden
8. Planned parenthood, enraged that Russia is taking a few baby steps to slow down the abortion steam-roller.
9. Large numbers of Ukranians themselves who have a long-held antipathy, some of it justified, towards Russia.

All in all an impressive list of enemies...all of whom (except the Poles and Ukranians), incidentally have one thing in common: an antipathy to Christianity in general and Catholicism in particular.

And speaking of defending Christians, where are the Catholics and "Catholic" nations in all this?  Every day horrors against Christians occur in Israel, and at the hands of the American-supported protesters in other Middle Eastern nations.  Who tries to help them in a concrete way?  The USA?  The only world leader who is actually speaking out against Christian persecutions is that ersatz dictator Vladimir Putin.  Some dictator he turned out to be.  (He isn't even in the same class as Mr Obama.)

If these words seem intemperate to some it is merely because it is frustrating to discover how many Americans still rely on the 5th Grade US history textbooks as a guide to world events.  Worse, there is a very strong strain of Yankeeism and and its illegitimate son, jingoism that plays a large role in the formation of American minds, lay and religious.  Misunderstanding about what is really going on in the Holy Land is endemic here.  A recent poll of US citizens reveals that an oppressive government like Israel is still viewed favorably by a majority of Americans.  Propaganda has played a big part in this, of course.  But so has the lack of curiosity on the part of my fellow citizens.  Outrage upon outrage committed against innocent Christians and Muslims occurs every day in Palestine but it goes unnoticed and unreported.  Let's be honest, do we Christians really care about the sufferings of our fellow Christians in the East?  If that poll is to be believed the answer is, probably not.

Our glorious Emperor has threatened "consequences" if things don't go his way in Ukraine.  As pitifully arrogant as that threat is we should not take it too lightly.  The USA McCainish war-mongers want their war, and they want it now.  Russia (and the prayers and fastings of a Pope) deprived them of their murder rampage against Syria, something the US establishment will never forget.  So the "suits" will now concentrate on Ukraine instead, in order to get them under the control of the IMF.  When that happens the real looting of Ukraine will begin in earnest.  After all, the international financial interests demand it.

They want what they want what they want.

And that means more blood.

SOMEONE IS IN CLOUD CUCKOO LAND

On September 16, 2013 Pope Francis told a group of priests,

“The Church has never been in better shape, and is experiencing a very positive moment.” 

[Catholic World Report]

I am certainly glad to hear that.

MAGISTER: THE VATICAN HIRES IT OWN ENEMIES

WORDS FAIL ME DEPT.

From Sandro Magister:

http://chiesa.espresso.repubblica.it/articolo/1350699?eng=y

The Vatican is hiring huge, expensive and decidedly anti-Catholic businesses to help the Church in her finances, public relations and administration, as Sandro Magister relates in the article linked.

The Roman Catholic Church is paying millions to the same financial oligarchs, its bitterest enemies, who are networked with the gigantic multinational corporations, who are the source of many of the economic woes and catastrophes that have been wounding families for decades...indeed centuries.  The same Church that is rightly concerned with the new worldwide poverty and hopelessness, and rightly condemns near-lunatic, unrestrained capitalism, is hiring the very same types of people who are the very instigators of the evils She supposedly condemns.  Here are corporations who facilitate abortion, sodomy, usury, war profiteering, murder and corporate arrogance, who battle the Church on every front, now being given the keys to the chicken house.  "Oh, but they do their job so well", I'm sure we will hear from Lombardi or some other talking head in Rome.  I am reliably informed that Jack the Ripper did his particular job very well, too.

In this writer's view it would be singularly reckless to allow an organization of the nature of this public relations firm to get too close to the inner workings of the Vatican.  Simple prudence demands, especially these days, that Rome keeps its cards fairly close to its vest when it comes to dealing with those whose agenda is at odds with Hers.

The Vatican ship of state still lurches from side to side and there are no signs as yet of a firm hand at the rudder. But that has been the case for decades now, where Popes do much travel but little governing, and where Christ's Vicars unwisely put their trust in the types of people they shouldn't.

It might be a good idea to put the Vatican on a suicide watch.

H.L. MENCKEN CELEBRATES PRESIDENTS DAY

"President's Day" is upon us hapless Americans once again so we, once again, offer our own tribute to the day.

[With thanks to the Sipsey Street Irregulars.]


“As democracy is perfected, the office of the President represents, more and more closely, the inner soul of the people. On some great and glorious day, the plain folks of the land will reach their heart’s desire at last and the White House will be occupied by a downright fool and complete narcissistic moron.” — H.L. Mencken, The Baltimore Evening Sun, 26 July 1920.

ETC., ETC., ETC.....

ANTHONY FRASER ON BRITAIN'S "REPRESSIVE TOLERANCE"

We reproduce here, from the Apropos web site, Anthony Fraser's interesting observations on a particularly pernicious vileness that is being imposed upon the western world by forces that can only be honestly described as preternatural in origin.

A Salutary Lesson from the Same-Sex ‘Marriage’ Bill

by AnthonyFraser

In the spectator of 14th June, 2013, Anne Applebaum, commented that she is often asked if her books on Stalinist Russia are a sort of metaphor for Obama's USA.  She replies that it is not so and would only change her mind were the government's opponents routinely arrested, beaten and imprisoned without trial, and were scoutmasters, newspaper editors and symphony conductors appointed only by permission of the State.

On a similar theme Peter Hitchens posted an interview of him by Nigel Farndale in which the latter noted:

'But when I suggest that he [Hitchens,] sometimes exaggerates his case to win an argument, I am given a glimpse of his darker, more bullying side. He glowers at me and asks that I give him some examples. Well, I say, comparing the liberal revolution in Britain to the Cultural Revolution in China. It is just too extreme. Much as they might have secretly liked to, the Labour Party has never paraded right-wing professors wearing dunce’s hats. They have never committed human rights abuses or censored the right-wing press or imprisoned, exiled or executed dissidents.

‘Is it too extreme a comparison?’ Hitchens asks. ‘How old are you, 34? Well I am 47 and I grew up in a Britain that has completely disappeared today. That is to say my father was a British naval officer and then he worked in private schools, places where the country retained a lot of its pre-revolutionary characteristics. So I am older in experience than I am in years. I know an England that people in their sixties would have known. And it has changed utterly. And the revolutionaries have been quite vicious in the way that they have excluded those that haven’t agreed with them. They don’t kill, they don’t reduce to penury or chuck into cesspits, they just exclude. You don’t read Kierkegaard do you?’

Er...

‘No, neither do I. But he said the most effective revolutions are those that strip the essence but leave everything standing.’

Both Applebaum and Farndale have both missed the point made by their interlocutors. One suspects that Ms Applebaum's questioners are quite well aware that there is no direct comparison between Stalinist Russia and Obama's USA although, to paraphrase Malcolm Muggeridge, one might want to tell that to the occupants of certain residential accommodation in Guantanamo.  But these interlocutors are aware that they are living in revolutionary times.

And the oft-maligned Hitchens hit the nail on the head. The revolutionaries of our day want to effect a revolution by cultural means.  True right-wing (i.e. those who accept the Social Kingship of Christ or at least the natural law) politicians or political observers, public officials, newspaper columnists are not imprisoned (yet). They are excluded or subjected to a pervasive liberal environment in which they self-censor (with a few notable exceptions).

I recall, as a young trade unionist, being howled off a platform - having the microphone cut off - for daring to oppose the homosexual liberation movement in the mid Seventies. What was then merely a minor pressure group in society, but strong within elements of the trade union movement, is now arguably the most influential lobby in the world, and now having power at the highest level of government through its influence, and that of its proxy minions in our liberal establishment parties. Interventions such as the one I made then would be unthinkable today if one wished to continue to support one's wife and family.  Such simple truths about the homosexual lifestyle would be considered as gross homophobia and evidence of one's unsuitability to hold a public post.

And whereas Ms Applebaum’s observations concerned Obama’s USA she might well be forced to change her mind in the years to come (French pro-marriage protestors are currently routinely beaten and imprisoned by the French police).  There is an increasing intolerance by liberal establishments of what is described as homophobia but which, in essence, is none other than acceptance of the natural and moral law.  And while the criminal law has yet to be invoked to any great degree – employment and civil law is being used and will be used to enforce anti-homophobic policies upon society at large. We already have the examples of the Christian Bed and Breakfast proprietors penalised for refusing to accommodate same-sex couples in double rooms. We have witnessed years ago nine firefighters disciplined for failing to participate in a Gay Pride March in Glasgow, (1) and  it will only be a matter of time before teachers, clerics, lecturers, health workers, public officials will be sacked or demoted unless they actively participate in Gay Pride Activities to show proactively  that they are not homophobic.

In support of this we refer to the document ‘ LGBT Inclusion at Work: The 7 Habits of Highly Effective Managers’, a resource from DOJ Pride, the Association of Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Transgender Employees of the U.S. Department of Justice and Their Allies. Although this finds its origins in the US, its sentiments are already implicit in the equality and diversity policies being implemented across the UK.  This document suggests that managers, ‘Attend LGBT events sponsored by DOJ Pride and/or the Department, and invite (but don’t require) others to join you.’  Elsewhere the document makes it clear that Managers are expected to proactively promote the LGBT agenda when it states:  ‘Don't judge or remain silent. Silence will be interpreted as disapproval.’ Managers are also exhorted to use terms in the workplace such as ‘partners’ rather than ‘gender-specific terms like “husband” and “wife”’. (2)  It doesn’t take much imagination to foresee  bullying, by the LGBT apparatchiks and their “straight” allies, being applied to those who are invited, but decline, to attend LGBT events, or who refuse to use the bastard term ‘partner’ to describe a true husband or wife and thus offend the sensitivities of ‘gays’ in the workplace.  The chilling term, ‘Silence will be interpreted as disapproval’ echoes the  accusation voiced against the character of St Thomas More in the film, A Man for All Seasons, who insisted, in his defence, on the legal precedent that "Qui tacet consentire videtur" (Silence breeds consent).  But, like the perjuring accusers of St Thomas, these modern Thomas Cromwells will not be satisfied until they can enter into the privacy of the human soul and conscience and force it to approve of their unnatural vice or exact a penalty – loss of, rank, job, pension or whatever. 

The Henry the Eighths of this world and the LGBT lobby are not content to indulge in sinful behaviour. They want us to admit that it is not a sin: that their behaviour is natural. They don’t want anyone to disturb their improperly formed consciences even through silent dissent.  They want to abuse our consciences.  They want us to lie to satisfy their erroneous consciences.  But as   Solzhenitsyn warned us in From Under the Rubble(3): ‘ DO NOT LIE! DO NOT TAKE PART IN THE LIE! DO NOT SUPPORT THE LIE!  … and then he explains ‘What does it mean, not to lie? It doesn’t mean going around preaching the truth at the top of your voice (perish the thought!). It doesn’t even mean muttering what you think in an undertone. It simply means: not saying what you don’t think, and that includes not whispering, not opening your mouth, not raising your hand, not casting your vote, not feigning a smile, not lending your presence, not standing up and not cheering.’ (4)

As the above DOJ document indicates, ‘not saying what you don’t think’ is not an option: it is tantamount to silence – a silence which the high priests of secular humanism will not tolerate no less than would Stalin, Henry VIII, or Herodius.

The nine Strathclyde firefighters were subsequently made to admit they were wrong in refusing to attend and provide fire leaflets at the Scotia Pride March (an event of the type at which Fireman are often treated as objects of an obscene ‘Gay’ desire,  and, if Catholic Firemen, are subjected to the grossly blasphemous and insulting antics of the ‘Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence’ and other anti-Catholic acts). These ‘guilty’ firemen were also sent on diversity training.  If this is not redolent of the Stalinist show trial and re-education camps then what is?

Colin Hart, campaign Director of the Coalition for Marriage, in an e-mail message headed, ‘Party Machines Push Through Bill’ bemoaned the fact that the Same-Sex Marriage Bill   was undemocratic from the start and at the end, ‘with the parties using their power to apply exceptional pressure on MPs and Peers. Whatever the parties may say, we know the votes on civil liberty protections were not truly free. There is a very good case for reasonable and necessary safeguards to protect the civil liberties of people like you – people that believe in traditional marriage. Several courageous Peers tabled good civil liberty amendments, which we supported. But the Bill’s backers – including the leaders of the Conservatives, the Liberal Democrats and Labour – saw to it that none of them were voted into the Bill’.  These protections were for teachers, workers, chaplains, free speech, and the right not to be subject to discriminatory action by Councils, for example, on the grounds that one or one’s organisation disagrees with same-sex marriage.

No doubt Mr Hart and his Coalition expected to be dealing with reasonable politicians those who would listen to reasonable pleas for toleration. Indeed the Scottish Bishops have made a similar plea for toleration to Scotland’s leaders in the absence of  protective legal safeguards in the Scottish same sex marriage bill.  The politicians, of course, save a miracle, will leave the lot of marriage supporters to the Equality Act and European equality directives etc. and will wash their hands when civil law and even the penal law is used to persecute those who wish to defend the traditional institution of marriage.  ‘We legislated in good faith’ they will say. But have they.

I think we are seeing Herbert Marcuse’s ‘Repressive Tolerance’ being deployed.       

Ralph de Toledano described it thus in his book Cry Havoc! (5):

‘“Repressive Tolerance” became the Ten Commandments of the repressive “academic speech codes” which it engendered. Marcuse argued in Orwellian newspeak that America’s supposedly neutral tolerance for ideas was in reality a highly selective tolerance that benefited only the prevailing attitudes of those who held wealth and power. Such “indiscriminate” tolerance, he argued, effectively served “the cause of oppression” and the “established machinery of discrimination”.  For Marcuse, as long as society was held captive by militarism and institutionalised pervasive social and economic inequality, “indiscriminate tolerance” necessarily would service the highly discrimininatory interests of regression.’ (6)

Just as Lenin considered that that which served the revolution was moral, Marcuse considered that ‘tolerance was moral and real only when harnessed to the cause of “liberation”’. (7)

As Toledano explains:

Marcuse’s aims included the withdrawal of toleration of speech and assembly from groups and movements which promote aggressive policies, chauvinism, discrimination on the grounds of race and religion [which includes, no doubt, opposition to same-sex marriage], or which opposes the extension of public services, social security, medical care etc.

For Marcuse “liberating” and “repressive tolerance,” unlike “indiscriminate tolerance,” would be “intolerance towards movements from the Right and toleration of movements from the Left no matter how repressive.” He turned thumbs down on “sacred liberalistic” principles of equality for the “other side.” “There are issues where there is no ‘other’ ‘side’.” (8)

The absolute and determined opposition of Comrades Cameron, Clegg,  Milliband and Salmond to include protection for pro-marriage supporters in the same-sex bills conform exactly to the Marcusian model of “liberating” and “repressive tolerance”.

Those who would still like to pretend that the British establishment parties are liberal or conservative or tolerant  must realise that these are revolutionary parties conforming to the Marcusian model of cultural revolution:  ‘One can rightfully speak of cultural revolution, since the protest is directed toward the whole cultural establishment, including the morality of existing society…There is one thing we can say with complete assurance. The traditional idea of revolution and the traditional strategy of revolution have ended. These ideas are old-fashioned…What we must undertake is a type of different and dispersed disintegration of the system.’ (9)

The destruction of the traditional family and the promotion of alternative ‘family’ types must be seen  not as some by-product of misguided government policies but rather as a deliberate policy directed against the morality of existing society and aimed at its disintegration; a policy which is supported by all establishment parties.  To lend these support is to take part in the lie.



NOTES

(1) http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/scotland/glasgow_and_west/5301334.stm

(2) Although were they to ape the Orwellian  Newspeak consequences of UK same-sex marriage laws, neither of these terms could possibly be regarded as offensive as in one particular piece of legislation ‘ “husband” here will include a man or a woman in a same sex marriage, as well as a man married to a woman. In a similar way, “wife” will include a woman married to another woman or

a man married to a man. The result is that this section is to be construed as including

both male and female same sex marriage.’

(3) Collins and Harvill Press, London 1975.  pp. 274 & 276.

(4) Ibid. p.

(5) Cry Havoc! – The Great American Bring-down and How it happened.  Published in 2006 by Anthem Books, Suite 1010, 500 Twenty-third Street N.W.,  Washington D.C. 20037, 

(6) Ibid., pp. 151-152.

(7) Ibid., p. 152.

(8) Ibid.

(9) Ibid., p. 152-153.

IT TAKES GUTS

GUTS DEPT.

Nick Hayek, CEO of The Swatch Group

Here at The Eye Witness we are starting an informal but ongoing series of news items about people who have the guts to stand up to the organized miasma of evil which is attempting to suffocate the whole world.  We admire these people and we think it is good to know that there are some, in religion, business, politics or wherever who are unafraid to tell the commissars to go straight to hell.

Here is our first entry, a story about the owner of The Swatch Group, the Swiss company.  That company is one of the sponsors of the Winter Olympics in Russia.  It seems that the usual suspects have demanded that he go on record condemning Russia's relatively mild (but most encouraging) containment of the homosexual steam roller.  Read the article:

http://www.lewrockwell.com/lrc-blog/im-rushing-out-to-buy-a-swatch/

Give that man a cigar.

Three cheers for Mr Hayek.  Let us hope he holds his ground and is not forced to apologize and grovel before Sodom like so many others have.

THE CLUELESS LEADING THE CLUELESS

This is what Rome sends to Milwaukee

The Archdiocese of Milwaukee, Rome's dumping ground for mediocre prelates, has decided to adopt the discredited, unhelpful, below standard, mentally damaging and idiotic program known as "Common Core", an educational/indoctrination system being encouraged by Washington and notable charlatans everywhere.

A Catholic school, by definition, imparts, at the very least, the Catholic faith whole and entire.  And although we well know that that is not the case these days we should at least refer to this on occasion when speaking with Catholic school officials and the Bishops that oversee them about the education of our Catholic children.  A number of dioceses in the USA are taking a serious look at Common Core.  Why they are doing so is anybody's guess considering the dreadful state of education in this country, Catholic or otherwise.

Milwaukee's Archbishop might be better employed seeing to it that the schools in his diocese start taking a serious look at what is well and truly broken in the system, namely the transmission of the Faith to school-age children (who will one day be adults).

Glancing over the history of the current incumbent in the Milwaukee Chancery I am not at all certain that passing along the pure and unadulterated Faith is high on the agenda.

Dad 29 has some tough words to say about it:

http://dad29.blogspot.com/2014/02/the-father-of-common-core-v-fr-joe.html

So do Catholics United for the Faith:

http://badgercatholic.blogspot.com/2014/02/catholics-united-for-faith-responds-to.html

So do I:

http://theeye-witness.blogspot.com/2013/11/rome-hates-milwaukee.html

As with much of everything else coming from the leadership of this diocese the adoption of Common Core is a disaster in the making.

See also this.

SOCHI AND THOSE QUEER LITTLE SPOILED BRATS

The petulant mincing ones say they are planning some "events" at the Winter Olympics in Sochi and have hinted that they will get help from US diplomats.

http://www.massresistance.org/docs/gen2/13c/NLGJA_Conference/disrupt-russian-olympics.html

Of course Russia, if provoked, will not do to them what should be done to them.  There will be no jackboots stomping on the ephebephiles nor any burnings at the stake (unfortunately).  Russia will let them make asses of themselves as they behave like 14-year-old school girls having a fit over not being invited to the prom. They are like dogs who want to mark their spots by urinating on them, though I mean no offense to dogs who are, according to St Francis Xavier, superior to sodomites.

But since they've telegraphed their intentions rather clearly I believe we should take them at their word.

On the off chance that anyone from Russia is reading this let me assure these Russian readers that not all Americans are like this and we consider the antics of these screaming sissies and their enablers in Washington and Hollywood to be repugnant to morals, to humanity and to common sense. 

UPDATE:

From Father "Z": http://wdtprs.com/blog/2014/02/nbc-promotes-homosexual-identity-during-olympics/

MR OBAMA PROVIDES EVIDENCE FOR HIS OWN IMPEACHMENT

Chairman BO

In his extremely tiresome January address to the sheeple, Mr Obama decreed that if he does not get what he wants legislatively - as in, by Constitutional means - he will simply do it by "executive order".  He has, therefore, announced publicly that he is about to commit impeachable offenses by completely bypassing and ignoring the legislative branch of government.  Not that he is the first power-mad US president to use dictatorial measures in this way.  In recent decades most presidents, republican or democrat, have done the same.  But B.O. (that's short for "Barack Obama") is just more brazen about it.

What will the republicans and/or democrats do about this usurpation?

Exactly nothing.

UN: DO WE HAVE THIS CORRECT??

Let me see if I've got this right.

The United Nations, which demands that its members protect in law homosexuals who bugger adolescent boys, is castigating the Roman Catholic Church because some of its priests are homosexuals who were buggering adolescent boys.  Did I get that right, or am I missing something?

http://www.catholic.org/national/national_story.php?id=54129


That the vaunted United Nations, a tool of the USA, multinational corporations and the spawn of the Pharisees is, with supreme impudence, demanding that the Church conform to its twisted world view should, one would hope, be a wake up call to the Main Man In Charge to start taking a serious look at the perverted moles who are inside the Church.  The Church merely lets itself wide open for these kinds of things when it does not publicly cashier some of the prelates and priests who have facilitated the sodomite infestation.  Only when the world sees that the Pope means business and starts removing and dealing with Bishops and Cardinals who are the main villains (along with their erstwhile lobby) will there be an end to this carping.  True, it wont stop the laughable hypocrisy of the pro-homo crowd demanding the Church's head for allowing homo priests to molest young men, but it will begin to save the wounded Church.

Will it take UN/NATO boots on the ground in St Peter's Square before some wake up to the seriousness of this sodomy business?  Popes have been hauled out of St Peter's by military force a few times before in history.  That UN/NATO boots would be used - with extreme hypocrisy and chutzpah of course - to attack the Church for the actions of some of its miscreant priests and Bishops, actions of which the UN would cheer on if it was anyone else, is not an entirely fanciful notion.  Has Rome forgotten that the NSA often listens in?

On the political scene Russia is very well aware that it is slowly being surrounded by the USA and its puppets.  Does not the Vatican understand that the same thing is happening to them?

MASS, FROM THE TIME OF CHRIST

If my readers will forgive a little fatherly pride, here is my son serving the Ancient Rite Mass at St Peter's, Rome

We are human and frail.  We sometimes forget.  We forget even when we try to discuss great questions which  plague the Church.  Because we live in the here and now we put aside the historical facts which brought us to our present position, not necessarily because of willful neglect but often mere forgetfulness.  But if we are to discuss these great questions with our friends and our families it is good to have the history solidly in our minds.  To put it more prosaically, we need to know what we are talking about.

With that in mind let us revisit once again the historical events which utterly changed the character of the Roman Catholic Church and the personages involved in this historical episode.

We have had over forty years of something that was suddenly thrust upon us and which many if not most in the Church now accept as the normal.  We refer to the 1960s construction known as the New Order of the Mass.  Nothing in the Church's long history has caused such turmoil and such shock.  Nothing has unsettled the Catholic mind more than this unprecedented shutting off of the Catholic Mass like a faucet, and the sudden imposition of something alien.

For many the shock value of that 1960s liturgical tsunami is still very much alive.

It is useless to approach a discussion of the New Order of Mass without a thorough grounding on how it came to be and the motivations of those who imposed it on the Church without mercy or pity.  So let us turn once again to the writings of the late, and very great Jean Madiran (1920-2013) who gives us a picture of the acts and the players of this sad drama. We republished this important piece a few months ago but thought it important to publish it again in light of a new onslaught of misinformation about the Ancient Rite which we have seen making the rounds lately.  And we once again express our sincerest thanks to Anthony Fraser at APROPOS for his permission to use the article which originally appeared in his father Hamish's publication, APPROACHES.

Let me add finally that we here at The Eye Witness make M. Madiran's position our own, wherein he states:

"We are irrevocably bound to the apostolic succession and the primacy of the Roman See: but not to the caprices and defections of its incumbents, who are not dispensed from the application of the principle that it is better to obey God than men."


THE ABUSE OF POWER
by Jean Madiran

(This is a translation of the editorial by Jean Madiran in the July-August 1976 issue of Itinéraires. It appeared in Approaches No 51-52, Nov. 1976, edited by Hamish Fraser (1913-1986). It is now posted on the Apropos website www.apropos.org.uk )

(1.) The Mass forbidden

This is a disastrous event, the most disastrous in the life of the Church since the promulgation of the New Mass and its Article 7 [of the Institutio Generalis]. It was not however an unforeseen eventuality. Our readers knew what we would think of it and what would be our attitude. We had declared our position in advance, as solemnly as we could, in our letter to Paul VI of October 27, 1972.

On that occasion we stated:

'Give us back the traditional, Latin and Gregorian Mass according to the Roman Missal of St. Pius V. You let it be said that you have forbidden it. But no pontiff, without an abuse of power, could prohibit the millenary rite of the Catholic Church, canonised by the Council of Trent. Obedience to God and to the Church would demand resistance to such an abuse of power, should it occur and not that it should be submitted to in silence .' (1)

But here, in the Consistorial allocution of May 24, 1976 is the very abuse of power [we had spoken of]. Until then, the New Ordo promulgated in 1969 had not been reinforced by an obligation enforcing its use and excluding the Roman Missal [of St. Pius V].

This was the first of our arguments A,B,C,D on the traditional Mass (2). At Pentecost 1971, i.e. more than two years after its promulgation, Cardinal Ottaviani still maintained that 'The Traditional rite of the Mass according to the ORDO of St Pius V has not been abolished so far as I know.'

It was forbidden only in France, by an illicit prohibition, i.e. by the juridically schismatic directive of the French episcopate dated November 12, 1969. There was no difficulty in ignoring the valueless decree of an episcopate which already no longer had any moral authority. During this period, Paul VI let it be said that he had forbidden or abolished the traditional Mass, but he did not say it himself. (He also let it be said, contrariwise - and it was by Cardinal Gut, the then Prefect of the Congregation for Divine Worship, that he allowed or had it be said - that in the matter of liturgical reform 'the Holy Father has frequently given in against his own will.’

Once more, at the beginning of the year 1975, in the procedure taken against Mgr. Lefebvre, the Pope's commissars told him [Mgr. Lefebvre] explicitly, that by order of Paul VI, liturgical questions were outwith the scope of their investigation. Which confirmed that in refusing to accept the New Mass Mgr. Lefebvre was guilty of no transgression which could be held against him juridically.


In June and in September of the same year, the letters of Paul VI to Mgr. Lefebvre still did not say a single word concerning the Mass. And under such circumstances, this omission was most significant. It reinforced the conviction of those who thought that in his heart of hearts Paul VI had no intention of prohibiting the Missal of St. Pius V, or that he recognised that he did not have the power to prohibit it. This has never been our point of view. It seemed to us that with all the strength of his own will, Paul VI was striving to effect the disappearance of the traditional Mass. But we observed that there was as yet no official ACT seeking to give the FORCE OF LAW to this wish. Paul VI had not dared [to go as far as that].

The shocking new feature of the Consistorial allocution of May 24 consists in the fact that for the first time he has dared to do so. Declaring that he was speaking ‘in the name of Tradition itself, and explicitly involving 'the supreme authority that comes to us from Christ’, he demanded that in obedience the traditional Catholic Mass be no longer celebrated. And there we have the consummation of a terrible abuse of power.

(2.) The pontificate of Article 7

The New Ordo, when it was first promulgated in 1969, included an Institutio Generalis i.e. an outline of principles serving as a general introduction, which spoke of the Mass as though it were no longer a sacrifice. This heretical tendency more or less present throughout it,
was expressed most clearly in Article 7, in which the Mass was defined as a prayer meeting and a memorial assembly.

An unforeseen development of such shocking gravity and on such a question, is to the best of our knowledge without precedent in the history of pontifical documents. What seemed to come nearest to it was the error of Pope Honorius I, a long time previously, in the VIIth century, who after his death was condemned as a heretic by the Third Council of Constantinople and by Popes St. Agatho and St. Leo II. (3)

But the heretical formulas signed by Honorius I concerned the question of the two wills of Christ, a question which at that time had not yet been explicitly ruled upon by the Magisterium. There is no such excuse in the 20th century concerning the question of the holy sacrifice of the Mass. That is why it seems to us that the quite extraordinary affair of Article 7 is truly without precedent.

The demands, the protests concerning it were very determined. The next year, Paul VI corrected Article 7 and also several others (Articles 48, 55, 56 and 60) in order to introduce some mention of the holy sacrifice. This correction brought some solace which led to an ignoring of the lasting effects of the quite extraordinary incident of Article 7.

It was noted, moreover, that that the new doctrine of the Institutio Generalis in 1969 was in contradiction with the other documents of Paul VI, which had been happily traditional - e.g. the encyclical Mysterium Fidei of September 3, 1965 and the Profession of Faith of June 30, 1968. This observation had a tranquillising effect on many people.

They indicted the [Vatican] bureaucrats, accusing them of having tricked and taken surprise advantage of the Pope's good faith by means of Article 7.

It is true that the various Vatican bureaux colonised in depth as they are by Modernism, Freemasonry and the Communist Party, are very active and guilty. But the supposedly pious hypothesis of surprise was scarcely reassuring. For in effect it meant supposing that Paul VI had either signed without reading, or read without understanding, the most formidable transformation of the Mass that had ever been enacted in the entire history of the Church. No matter how one looked at it, it was incredible, outrageous and most certainly disquieting. The pontificate which had promulgated Article 7 had by so doing accomplished something that all Catholics prior to 1969 considered to be absolutely impossible. The moral authority of this pontificate could not remain intact thenceforth save among those who no longer had the faith.

(3.) The insufficient correction

Since 1969 it is the doctrine of the first version of Article 7 which has been disseminated throughout the Catholic world - with the Holy See doing nothing to counter it save for this surreptitious correction of the Institutio Generalis, without any correction of the rite itself, of the new rite that was established in conformity with the doctrine of this first version [of Article 7].

It is in conformity with the first version of Article 7 that the French episcopate has taught as an alleged reminder of the Church's doctrine in the new missals that the Mass is no longer a sacrifice and that at Mass 'it is simply a question of recalling to mind [the Sacrifice of Calvary]’. Paul VI has let this be done. He did not intervene by means of a magisterial document. His two documents which have been cited concerning the holy sacrifice of the Mass, the encyclical Mysterium Fidei and his Profession of Faith are ANTERIOR to his Article 7. There is none posterior to it designed to contradict the erroneous doctrine of the first version of Article 7. And that is a second anomaly, as formidable as the first. For when so radical an error is disseminated at all levels in the Church, that is not the moment to cease encyclicals and professions of faith concerning this matter. It is the moment when it is necessary to reiterate them.

Although he was responsible for the first version of Article 7, Paul VI has done nothing apart from its surreptitious correction, to arrest the diffusion [of its errors]. He has not explained; he has not taught. The truth is that he has remained absolutely silent. Apart from the two brief allocutions of November I969, in the course of seven years he has not spoken of the Mass. Yet this was the period in which the Mass suffered the greatest upheaval ever known. This was the period during which the doctrine of the first version of Article 7 was established more and more each day within the Church, claiming for itself a legitimacy of which it has never since been deprived.

We have had these observations continually in mind. But hitherto we have given expression to them only with discretion and only in case of necessity. However, the situation now created by the Consistorial allocution of May 24, 1976 compels us to insist more than we would have wished and more than we have ever done concerning the legitimate suspicion attaching to the actual incumbents of the apostolic succession.

In so far as innovations, especially concerning the Mass, derive from the same source as Article 7, we prefer to have nothing to do with them.

Even when they are supposedly licit or anodyne, we refuse to accept them so long as this legitimate suspicion remains. We have shown this more by our deeds than by our words, as for example in the case of the liturgical calendar which we have preserved and reproduced each year as it was in force at the death of Pius XII.

Given the great uncertainty actually prevailing concerning authority, we take note of its suspect functioning, and we confine ourselves to what the Church has always taught and has always done. If reforms are necessary, they can wait. It is a pity, but it is inevitable. They will await the guarantee of a restored authority. As for the pretence today, seven years after the event, of forbidding the celebration of the traditional Latin Gregorian Mass according to the Roman Missal, it is not acceptable. The authority responsible for this prohibition is the same as that responsible for the first version of Article 7.

(4.) Conciliar evolution

On May 24, 1976, by his supreme authority, Paul VI has taken full responsibility for conciliar evolution as a whole. Invoking his position as successor of Peter and Vicar of Christ, he orders the acceptance of 'the teaching of the Council itself, its application and the reforms that stem from it, its gradual application by the Holy See and the Episcopal Conferences under our authority willed by Christ'.

'With the same, supreme authority that come from Christ Jesus, we call for the same obedience to all other liturgical disciplinary and pastoral reforms which have matured in these years in the implementation of the Council decrees.’

It is indeed all and everything [that must be accepted]. And it is that indeed which is at issue.

The Salleron-Lefebvre interview

In the course of his January 15, 1976 interview with Mgr. Lefebvre, Louis Salleron asked him the question: 'What difficulty do you find in making the public act of submission that is being asked of you: i.e. submission to the Council, to post-conciliar reforms and to the orientations to which the Pope himself is committed.’

There could be no more opportune moment for once more reading Mgr. Lefebvre's reply attentively. (4)

‘I find the difficulty of equivocation bordering on falsehood’, replied Mgr. Lefebvre. 'From the "Council" one proceeds to "post-Conciliar reforms” and from there to the "orientations to which the Pope is himself committed". One no longer knows what precisely is involved. What is to be understood by the "orientations to which the Pope is himself committed"? Must we understand it to mean such of the orientations as involve the Pope personally (and what are these?), or the ACTUAL orientations of the Church, to all of which the Pope is committed?

When one sees what is happening in France - to speak only of our own country am I to think that, in its collegiality, the episcopate has submitted "to the Council, to post-Conciliar reforms, and to the orientations to which the Pope is himself committed"?

Logically, I must think so, since no public act of submission has been asked of the French Episcopate by Cardinal Villot or the Sovereign Pontiff. It is therefore to the destruction of the priesthood, to the changing or the negation of the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass, to the abandonment of moral values, to the politicization of the Gospel and to the constitution of a national Church centred on the episcopal conference and the secretariat of the episcopate that I must subscribe to bear witness to my Communion with the Catholic Church and the Vicar of Christ? It is absurd. My Catholic faith and my duty as a bishop forbid me to do so.'

Paul VI stands surety for, guarantees and in the name of obedience imposes as obligatory the entire process of Conciliar evolution that coincides with the self-destruction of the Church which he deplored on one occasion in a few words, but to which he has since made no further reference for years. He no longer speaks out as he did on one occasion against this execrable ‘post conciliar mentality’ (such were his actual words) that he found guilty of 'propagating the vain hope of giving the Christian religion a new interpretation’ (5) .

Yet it is this new interpretation which dominates the Church Militant, by the words and deeds of those whom Paul VI declares to be and keeps in commission with him; but from which communion he excludes only Mgr. Lefebvre. After making this clear, he proceeds in his Consistorial allocution of May 24, 1976, to complain of the errors of those at the other [liberal] end of the spectrum. But only to point out that those who subscribe to these errors 'are not very numerous…but they make a lot of noise’.

It is not therefore the immense post-Conciliar drift of entire episcopates that he calls in question; nor does he proclaim the few responsible for so much noise to be 'outside the Church'.

All this is coherent, arranged and calculated: yes, Paul VI protects and imposes Conciliar evolution as it has been put into operation by the episcopal conferences. It is not therefore a question of examining whether or not the Council could in theory have been or should be interpreted and implemented in a manner different to the way in which it has been interpreted and implemented. The interpretation now taking effect, the implementation now under way, such as they are, fully correspond with the will of Paul VI.

It is he who has made the Council and it is he who is interpreting it: it is he who promulgated the Conciliar texts and it is his authority that guides their implementation. We were not unaware of this. But until now this factual state of affairs had not received explicit confirmation by a demand for entire submission formulated in the name of the supreme authority
.
That too is an event which makes the year 1976 as black as the year 1969. [Hitherto] the
entire moderate opposition insinuated that prevaricating, falsifying, deserter-Bishops were no longer in communion with the Pope. But on May 24 Paul VI replied that he is in communion with them.

It is with Mgr. Lefebvre that he is not in communion.

Our position

We are irrevocably bound to all that Conciliar evolution disowns, despises or destroys. We are irrevocably bound to the historic entity of the Church by which divine revelation has been transmitted until our time, to this historic entity of the Church that is systematically insulted by modern impiety, by the filial impiety of Churchmen and by Conciliar impiety.

We are irrevocably bound to the universal stability of the words and sacraments of salvation which transcend time and space. We are irrevocably bound to the Roman Catechism, to the Catholic Mass, to the traditional faith: to the only guarantees, the indispensable guarantees, that our prayers and our hope are not going adrift, dreaming of a mythical Saviour, a creature of our imagination and our passions, displacing the real and living Jesus Christ Our Saviour.

Conciliar evolution is each day going further away from the word, the doctrine and the law of Jesus Christ. It is open to the world, open to Communism, open to nothingness.

We are irrevocably bound to the apostolic succession and the primacy of the Roman See: but not to the caprices and defections of its incumbents, who are not dispensed from the application of the principle that it is better to obey God than men.

Let us say, calmly, gently, without anger but not without resolution in this ghastly aftermath of consummated disaster: behind the Conciliar evolution there is the hand that guides it. We have known for a long time whose is this hand. We have always avoided striking at it. But it is indeed necessary to repel it or at least to escape from it if it now comes itself to strangle us.

Jean Madiran

Appendix

The facts concerning the prohibition

Here are the terms in which Paul VI expressed himself concerning the Mass on May 24:

‘It is in the name of Tradition that we ask all our sons and daughters, all the Catholic communities, to celebrate with dignity and fervour the renewed liturgy. The adoption of the new Ordo Missae is certainly not left to the free choice of priests or faithful. The instruction of 14th June 1971 (6) has provided for, with the authorization of the Ordinary, the celebration of the Mass in the old form only by aged and infirm priests, who offer the divine Sacrifice sine populo. The new Ordo was promulgated to take the place of the old, after mature deliberation following upon the requests of the Second Vatican Council. In no different way (7) did our Holy Predecessor Pius V make obligatory the Missal reformed (8) under his authority, following the Council of Trent.

With the same supreme authority that comes from Jesus Christ, we call for the same obedience to all the other liturgical, disciplinary and pastoral reforms which have matured in these years in the implementation of the Council decrees.’.

Paul VI thus invokes the precedent of St Pius V in his reform of the Mass, he (Paul VI) has proceeded 'in no different way' ('haud dissimili ratione') to St Pius V, he can in turn 'in no different way' make his reform obligatory.

But this is precisely the point: the manner in which he acted is not the same; nor is the obligation.


I. The manner of acting

(1.) In his revision of the Missal, St. Pius V at no time signed and promulgated so incredible an anomaly as that of the Institutio Generalis which he required to correct surreptitiously the following year. His moral authority remained intact. But not that of the Pontiff responsible for Article 7. It is the actual abuse of power by Paul VI that leads us to underline this point of such capital importance. When one has signed and promulgated a definition of the Mass that makes it a simple prayer meeting and a memorial assembly,
it does not suffice thereafter to add a further correction.

Here for example is what I read in a journal of June 6: 'Liturgical problems have given rise to strange attempts, as for example, the first version of Article 7 of the Ordo. The Pope had it corrected.'

Such a presentation of the facts does not conform to the truth. There was not a 'strange attempt', then on the other hand a saving intervention by Paul VI imposing a correction. It is Paul VI in person and in his capacity as Sovereign Pontiff, who signed and promulgated the first version of Article 7. If one wishes one can choose never to speak of this article. But if one does speak of it, it is not permissible to create the impression that Paul VI's intervention in this matter consisted only in correcting an Article 7 for which he bore no responsibility. The [person] responsible, the signatory, the promulgator of the first version of Article 7 was indeed Paul VI himself.

Why did he do it?

The first hypothesis, the most obvious one, is that he did so because this Article 7 either expressed his own thought or at least did not offend it.

People may dismiss this hypothesis as unworthy of examination, they may do so wrongly: but, if they do dismiss it, it is then necessary to admit that Paul VI had signed it without reading it, or read it without understanding it. Which is scarcely better.

We point this out in order to establish the fact, made clear by the phenomenally extraordinary business of Article 7, that Paul VI in no way acted in the same manner as St. Pius V.

After Article 7, prudent virtue would not be so presumptious as to impose on the celebra-tion of the Mass the greatest upheaval in the course of its history.

(2.) The revision of [the Mass by] St Pius V, in conformity with the requests of the Council of Trent, did not have the objective of confecting a new Mass, but simply the unification and regulation of the traditional Mass. The difference is abysmal.

(3.) St. Pius V did not have the Missal revised with the help of heretical experts, called together in their capacity as heretics rather than as experts, with the intention of arriving, as in the case of Paul VI, at a reform which they [the heretics] could accept.

II. A parenthesis: the word ‘canonised’

In passing, let us define a term. In our letter of October 27, 1972 to Paul VI, we spoke of the millenary rite of the Catholic Church canonised by the Council of Trent. It seems that there could be misunderstanding concerning the word 'canonised'.

'Canonised'! Yes, but not in the sense in which a Pope canonises one who is Blessed and inscribes him in the catalogue of the saints.

No more than it means canonised in the manner of one of the books of Scripture: i.e. included among the books said to be canonical.

But canonised in the sense of established by legal title. I said canonised simply canonised (and not invented) in order to recall that the requests of the Council of Trent, put into operation by St Pius V, called for a regulation of the existing Mass and in no sense for the fabrication of a new Mass.

There is yet another difference, it is indeed the essential difference, concerning both manner and method, between the Missal of St Pius V and that of Paul VI.

The Council of Trent had as its intention that of 'arresting the process of Protestant disintegration of the rites of the Mass', a disintegration that was 'encouraged by the innumerable varieties in Catholic missals and by abuses which the (Conciliar) fathers called by name under these headings: superstition, irreverence and avarice'. (9) It particularly sought to avoid 'that the people should be offended on scandalised by new rites'.

It specified that ‘legitimate customs' would remain secure.

As for the traditional Mass, abandoned and 'de-canonised’ as it has been by the hierarchs of self-destruction, even if it were left no more than the right of immemorial custom, that at least could not be taken from it. It could be done only by a judgment declaring this custom to be abusive and evil: which is moreover the implicit if perhaps unconscious but inevitable implication of the actual prohibition.

III. The obligation

St Pius V did not abolish, on the contrary, in matters appertaining to rite, he confirmed legitimate customs having more than two centuries of existence.

In particular, he confirmed the right of Churches or communities having a Missal of their own, approved from the time of its institution. It is thus that the promulgation of the Roman Missal of St Pius V allowed the Dominican rite, the Lyonnais rite, the Ambrosian rite (at Milan) to subsist.

These rites have been preserved until today: but they too have just been suppressed, or, more precisely, forbidden, by the Consistorial allocution of May 24. I do not know what is and what will be the situation at Milan. But the Dominican rite and above all the Lyonnais rite have been used up to this year at the Lausanne Congress of the International Office of Associations for Civic formation.

Paul VI does not except them. He imposes his Missal as an obligation which does not tolerate the legitimate derogations stipulated by St Pius V.

Moreover, the obligation imposed by St Pius V was clearly and normally enunciated in the Bull quo primum tempore of July 19, 1570, which promulgated the Missale recognitum. On the contrary, the acts of Paul VI in 1969 are characterised by extreme confusion and uncertainty concerning the obligations which they indicate or do not indicate. Nowhere does there appear the explicit will of conferring on the new Missal an obligation excluding use of the previous Missal. Juridically, by the constitution Missale Romanum of April 3, 1969, Paul VI merely authorised and established a new Mass (without suppressing the old), by virtue of a title of particular derogation concerning the non-abrogated prescriptions of the Bull Quo Primum. Hence the circulars applying it stipulating under what conditions or on which dates the cele-bration of the New Mass would be permitted. (In France obligation derived only from the episcopal directive of November 12, I969.) Seven years after the event, in the Consistorial allocution of May 24, 1976, Paul VI invokes his 'supreme authority that comes from Christ’ to declare that the celebration of the traditional Mass is forbidden. Such a prohibition had already been enunciated but only either as an opinion (that of Solesmes) or as an administrative instruction. The FIRST ACT of Paul VI himself in this sense is that of the Consistorial allocution.

Two additional observations

To this it is necessary to add two observations both of which are conclusive:

1. No ACT of Paul VI ABOLISHED the Bull Quo Primum of St Pius V. It is not by way of abolition, but by way of replacement, that the Missal of Paul VI seeks to take the place of the Missal of St Pius V in an obligatory manner. ‘Novus Ordo promulgatus est, ut in locum veteris substitueretur’. (The new Ordo was promulgated to take the place of the old.’ ' Paul VI in his Consistorial allocution.)

There is therefore no reason for asking to what extent Paul VI WOULD HAVE a right to abolish the Bull Quo Primum: the fact is that he HAS NOT abolished it. He has therefore not abolished the indult granted in perpetuity to all priests, regular and secular, without exception for both sung and low Masses.

In the words of the Bull Quo Primum tempore:

'Furthermore, by these presents and by virtue of Our Apostolic authority We give and grant in perpetuity that for the singing or reading of Mass in any church whatsoever this Missal may be followed absolutely, without any scruple of conscience or fear of incurring any penalty, judgment or censure, and may be freely and lawfully used. Nor shall bishops, administrators, canons, chaplains and other secular priests, or religious of whatsoever Order on by whatsoever title designated, be obliged to celebrate Mass otherwise than enjoined by Us. We likewise order and declare that no one whosoever shall be forced or coerced into altering this Missal.

No ecclesiastical superior can interfere with this privilege by any kind of prohibition, by neither internal nor external jurisdiction. This indult has no need of any subsequent approval, permission or consent. No regular or secular priest (says Quo Primum) can be validly 'obliged to celebrate Mass otherwise than enjoined by us'.

2. A custom, and above all an immemorial custom is abolished by the Church only if it is not a legitimate custom. Even if it did not benefit from the indult granted in perpetuity by St Pius V, the traditional Catholic Mass would at least benefit from the right of immemorial custom. To suppose that it could be forbidden it would be necessary to suppose it to be evil. But if the traditional Mass is supposed to be evil to the point of requiring to be forbidden, the new Mass put in its place would necessarily be another Mass; not the same [Mass] preserved in substance and improved in manner of presentation, but a Mass substantially different.

Let us suppose (by hypothesis, or for the sake of argument) that the new Mass of Paul VI were excellent in all respects and that it corresponded happily to all the legitimate pastoral requirements of our time. In this case, one could at the most reproach the Old Mass for its archaic language, its old-fashioned vestments and other similar features. This was precisely the reproach made concerning it by Paul VI in his allocution of November 26, 1969 when he spoke of rejecting, by his reform of the Mass, 'the antiquated silk vestments in which it was regally adorned’.

Yet the accepted French translation somewhat softens the bitter irony of the original Italian text of this declaration. But even in its attenuated form, it is painful enough to have to reproduce it, insulting, peculiar and shallow as it is. But to continue, let us suppose, as we have said (by hypothesis or for the sake of argument), that in the Old Mass there were obsolete trappings and that the reform of the Mass was limited to the bringing of these features up to date. Well then, even if this could justify the creation of a new Mass, it could not in any case justify the prohibition of the Old.

If [the Old Mass] were supposedly incapable of pleasing other than old folk, it would be necessary to leave it for people supposedly old: such is the Catholic way concerning all reforms designed not to correct an evil but to get rid of something out of date.

Consider this most carefully: if the Old Mass and the New were substantially the same Mass, if it were merely a question of bringing language and appearances up to date, there would be no reason for its prohibition.

Conversely, if the New Mass makes inevitable the prohibition of the Old, it is implicitly
but necessarily because it is deemed foreign to it, incompatible with it, and is seen as the expression of another religion.

The only reason there can ever be why one Mass should require the prohibition of another, is a reason in terms of religion, of faith.

On the one hand, Paul VI gives an assurance that Conciliar reform preserves intact the substance of the faith, of the Mass, of the Sacraments; and that it changes only the presentation, formulation and trappings. But on the other hand he condemns as placing themselves outside the Church those who cling to the old trappings, formulation and presentation. But if it were a question of no more than external appearances good in themselves, there would be no matter or motive for condemnation.

That Paul VI condemns and prohibits the traditional Mass while he does not condemn the French Mass at which, in conformity with the first version of Article 7 [ we are assured] ‘it is simply a question of recalling to mind the unique sacrifice already consummated, the perfect sacrifice in which Christ offered Himself’’ (10): this poses a question not of pastoral tactics or aggiornamento but of religion.

That Paul VI considers the French and Dutch episcopates to be in communion with him, and Mgr Lefebvre not to be in communion with him: that poses a question not of discipline but of faith.

Jean Madiran


NOTES:

1 'Letter to Paul VI' in our book 'Réclamation au Saint-Père, the second volume of l’Hérésie du XX0 siecle' (Nouvelles Editions Latines).
2 On this point and on those which follow see the special Itinéraires supplement, ‘La messe, état de la question’.
3 Concerning the details of these events cf. Itinéraires No. 177 of November 1973, pp. 300-305 (and also the article in Approaches No. 14, Infallibility, Old and New, by G.A. Lawman.)
4 [This interview was reported in full in the June 1976 issue of Approaches, 49-50, pp.49-56.]
5 In his exhortation 'Petrum et Paulum' of February 22, 1967.
6 This instruction …was in reality a Notificatio which was published in a suspect and lamentable manner, without either date or the author’s name. We examined the unhappy circumstances attending its publication and the unhappy elements of its contents in Itinéraires No. 159 of January 1972 (p.136 ff.). The only Roman document to which the Consistorial allocution makes reference is therefore the latter, which is so outstandingly defective. On the other hand, it is to be noted that Paul VI makes no reference to his apostolic Constitution Missale Romanum of April 3, 1969, which promulgated the new Missal. This Apostolic Constitution in fact decreed no obligation, no prohibition.
7 Haud dissimili ratione
8 ‘Recognitum’ says the Latin text, as it has always been said of the Missal of St Pius V. But it is important to note that the Italian text, which is from Paul VI's own pen, says ‘riformato'. Hence the French translation of La Croix ‘ de la même façon que la réforme de Saint Pie V avait été rendue obligatoire.’ [which is substantially the same as the above English translation cited from L’Osservatore Romano of June 3, 1976].
9 Abbé Raymond Dulac, Itinéraires, No. 162, April 1972
10 [This statement which appears in the New Missal for Sundays issued by the French Hierarchy is manifestly heretical. For canon 3 of The Council of Trent’s statement concerning the Mass states: ‘ If anyone says that the Sacrifice of the Mass is a …simple memorial of the sacrifice offered on the cross and not propitiatory… let him be anathema.’ Yet while Mgr. Lefebvre is suspended a divinis because of his fidelity to the Catholic theology of the Mass, this scandalous and unashamed heresy on the part of the most influential episcopal conference in the Universal Church has not even caused the mildest of ripples on the complacent waters of the Rhine-polluted Tiber. Note by Editor, Approaches.]

Again, my son at St Peters, with Msgr Richard Soseman