Cattolici tradizionalisti e papato di Roma, la posizione del vescovo Richard Willamson

Dinoscopus

Saturday, January 24, 2009

The “Re-Incommunication”

Eleison Comments LXXXII

As of course a large number of readers already know, a Decree dated Jan. 21 from the Congregation of Bishops in Rome (not Ecclesia Dei) “remitted” the “excommunicating” Decree of July 1, 1988, so that the four Society of St. Pius X bishops then declared to be “excommunicated” are now “re-incommunicated”. In my opinion this latter Decree is a great step forward for the Church without being a betrayal on the part of the SSPX.

It is a great step forward for the Church because if the Church’s problem ever since Vatican II has been a separation of Catholic Authority from Catholic Truth, with this Decree Catholic Authority has taken a decisive step back towards their re-union. Just as after the Motu Proprio of July, 2007, nobody could any longer say that the true rite of Mass was banned by Rome, even if they can still behave as though it is, so too now nobody can any longer say that Catholics holding to Tradition are “outside the Church”. Certainly a number of Conciliarists will go on behaving as though they are, but they clearly no longer have the Pope on their side only. The difference is enormous!

Of course there is still a long way to go before the neo-modernists in Rome, conscious or unconscious, realize – if ever! – how they mistake the Faith, but as the old proverb says, “Rome was not built in a day”, and it will not be repaired in a day. Nevertheless “Half a loaf is better than no bread” – ask a hungry man! – so meanwhile let us know how to thank God for this major shift of the rudder of the Conciliar Church. Let us then thank the Blessed Virgin Mary whose intervention will have been decisive, thanks to the nigh on one and three quarter million rosaries offered to her for this intention, by a number of yourselves amongst others. And let us thank and pray for Benedict XVI and all his collaborators who helped to push through this Decree, despite, for instance, a media uproar orchestrated and timed to prevent it.

However, by asking for and accepting such reconciliation with the Conciliar Church, is not the SSPX threatening to lead the way back into Conciliarism? In no way! No doubt some Conciliarists in Rome are hoping that the Decree will serve to draw the SSPX back into the fold of Vatican II, but the Decree itself, as it stands, commits the Society to nothing more than to entering into those discussions to which the Society committed itself in 2000 when it proposed the liberation of the Mass and the ending of the “excommunications” as preconditions in the first place.

Then are such discussions without danger? Certainly not! But St. Peter says we should always be “ready to satisfy every one that asks you for a reason of that hope which is in you” (I Pet. III, 15). How can the SSPX not rejoice in the opportunity to lay out in Rome, before the Roman authorities themselves, the profound doctrinal reasons which we believe to be at the root of the Church’s present distress? Woe unto us Catholics of Tradition if we were not ready to give reason for that hope which is in us for the rescue of the Church! So continue to pray the Rosary, dear Catholics, for the possible realization and outcome of such discussions, so that they may serve first, last and foremost, the interests of God, of God, of God. Kyrie eleison.

La Reja, Argentina

Tuesday, January 20, 2009

His Excellency ordains in Argentina, December 2008

photos

Saturday, January 17, 2009

Third Position

Eleison Comments LXXXI

When I am out driving somewhere in unknown territory and I come to a fork in the road, and I take the road to the left and it turns out to be a dead end, and I take the road to the right and it turns out to be a dead end, then unless I give up going anywhere, will I not turn back to the last previous fork or junction and look for any other road than the one I just came down?

To save “capitalism” in the USA, the outgoing Republican Administration has resorted to such a massive degree of Government intervention and control as to resemble more and more closely a “communist” government. And, just before the incoming Democrat Administration comes in, it gives all the appearances of resorting to the same “communist” solution for the “capitalist” problem. But ever since the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989, has not Communism been evidently a loser? In which case do not both Administrations resemble the motorist who turns from one dead end to another?

Of course just as diehard Communists will claim that “true” Communism was never given a fair trial, so many believers in “Capitalism” will today claim that only abuses of the system are forcing it to morph into Government control. But just as the worst horrors of Communism do not contradict, but follow from, its basic principles, so, given poor old human nature, was not free enterprise Capitalism bound to morph into that finance Capitalism now obliging the Governments to take over ? After all, cannot Capitalism, named from capital – money – be defined as a maximizing of freedom for all citizens to make as much money as they will and can ? And how could that not end in the stronger devouring the weaker until they become TBTF: too big to fail?

Then in what direction might one look for a third road, leading to neither implicit nor explicit atheistic materialism ? How about the Sermon on the Mount? – “You cannot serve God and Mammon”… “Seek ye first the kingdom of God and his justice, and all these things (economic goods) shall be added unto you”…(Mt. VI, 24, 33). But who wants the solutions of God? Kyrie eleison.

La Reja, Argentina

Saturday, January 10, 2009

Thrift Matters and Come, Lord!

(His Excellency’s previous week’s posting was foiled by a blog snafu. Hence, a double edition. Enjoy! -Ed.)

Eleison Comments LXXIX

Another brief visit to the United States gives me to think that a large part of the population, while concerned about the financial and economic state of their nation, are going about their business as though there is nothing too much to worry about. Perhaps there is not much else they can do. Perhaps it is only human to go on “eating and drinking, marrying and giving in marriage”, until the catastrophe hits (cf. Mt. XXIV, 38).

However, my own best understanding, from the commentators who make the most sense to me, is that a major catastrophe is on its way, which will go way beyond mere finance and economics. The best commentators see what stands to reason, namely that if the problem is deep and human, its roots are moral and, ultimately, religious. Let us back up with one commentator from today’s effects to yesterday’s causes (within the USA) :

Regulators and financial institutions “woke up too late” to the collapse of a pyramid of debt, partly because in its last stage it had been too profitable to them. In this last stage “liar loans” in the form of SIVs (Structured Investment Vehicles) had been invented to deal with borrowers on housing not repaying their debts. SIVs did this by packaging good mortgages with bad, and selling the packages as “investments” to gullible investors who did not do their homework. Everything seemed good until housing values fell, as they were bound inevitably to do. Then borrowers repudiated their debts, confidence cratered, investors and huge financial institutions were bankrupted, from the USA outwards to much of the rest of the world.

And why had housing in particular brought down the house of cards ? Because housing, second most important part of the whole US economy, had become an investment as well as a home, and collateral for house “owners” to take out still further loans. Moreover since the 1970s, the US government had been subsidising mortgages for people normally unfit to borrow (but who vote!), and it had been bullying lenders to make loans according to “equality” and not according to their better judgment.

Further back still, the government had set households the example (taught by the Englander John Maynard Keynes – “Tomorrow we are all dead anyway”) of living beyond one’s means, as though endless borrowing could ensure an endless increase of prosperity. Financial responsibility was made to seem a thing of the past. Such reckless behavior on the part of the government had been greatly facilitated by the disastrous founding in 1913 of the private bankers’ Federal Reserve, enabling the government, amongst other things, to rob the mass of citizens without their realizing it, by means of inflation – five cents then bought what only a dollar can buy now. But let us make no mistake – broadly speaking, citizens have from God the governments they deserve, especially when they are convinced that their government is “democratic”. Kyrie eleison.

Eleison Comments LXXX

If the rolling crash of finance and economics will help to pull families together and even impose some hunger, it will be a blessing, a blessing in disguise maybe, but still a blessing, if one listens to what a family physician practising medicine in the Eastern United States has to say about the current state of his patients. Here are a few of his observations (more may appear in an upcoming issue of the “Angelus”) :

“There is a war on fertility taking place. A soft eugenic war (choosing who lives) is being waged against the American people, according to a Fabian program of gradualism and incrementalism, to get rid of social problems, e.g. poverty and old age, by getting rid of the people! Contaminated food and water serve in this war. Also anti-depressant pills, all of which stop the reproductive function. Sperm counts are way down.

“Our food is no good, and people know it. The more natural diet of poor people is healthier than that of the well-to-do. When deer face a choice between natural corn and manipulated corn, they make straight for the natural corn! Hispanics and blacks still have some common sense, but the disintegration of the family amongst the white people is causing a loneliness, loneliness, loneliness, which is pushing them to eat their unnatural food for comfort. Cases of diabetes have doubled in the last ten years. Recently I had in my office a 14-year old weighing in at 393 lbs ! And youngsters like him are more and more common. People are overfed yet undernourished. Children fed like they are being fed today will not live. Drugs like Ritalin only calm them down externally because they stimulate them internally. Modern pills are dangerous, liable to upset people’s brain-chemistry for ever, like in the Soviet Gulag. As a patient said to me recently, ‘I just don’t feel right any more’.

“But the genocide is not only physical. People are being deprived of their faith as of their nutrition. The slow, rich, Catholic culture is going, going, gone, to be replaced by a toxic Protestant anti-culture, pushing frenetic parents, for instance, to orchestrate their children’s lives at such a fast pace that they cannot grow normally, and their attention span is destroyed. People are profoundly out-matched by this anti-culture. They do not stand a chance. They cannot listen any more. They can only believe what they see on television. They are despondent, but it is tough for anyone like me to go up against what is supposed to be “science” in the attention-deficit culture.

The Novus Ordo religion is no help because it is part of the problem! It is saturated in female hormones, and has nothing with which to go up against the anti-culture. I completely understand that to get through to the modern world, Heaven may need to resort to a miraculous world-wide Warning, such as we were told of at Garabandal in the 1960s. Such a warning fits the condition of my patients like a key fits a lock.” End of doctor’s quote.

Come, crash ! Come, Warning ! Come, Lord Jesus ! (Apoc. XXII, 20) Kyrie eleison.

Kansas City, Missouri, USA