Judas priest

Ah, blessed Jesus, how Thou art traduced by Thy ministers, even of those who by virtue of their sacred orders ought to belong entirely to Thee!

Melancholicus is both bitter and angry as he writes this.

It happened before, and now it has happened again, like the re-run of a bad movie.

Except we are not talking about anything as trivial as televisual entertainment; we are talking about the holy sacrifice of the Mass.

On the 17th Sunday of what newchurch calls ‘Ordinary Time’ (year B) the lectionary prescribes the reading of John 6:1-15 as the gospel of the day. This last occurred in August 2006.

The gospel passage in question recounts our Lord’s miracle of the loaves and fishes. On that Sunday, two years ago, Melancholicus was attending Mass (Novus Ordo, alas!) celebrated in the parish church of the town where his mother now lives. The Mass was celebrated by an occasional celebrant who makes only a few, infrequent, sporadic appearances, but whose approach to the liturgy is typically clean and reverent enough, so Melancholicus was happy to see him.

Happy to see him, that is, until he began preaching.

If, gentle reader, you are a Catholic, you will doubtless at some time in your life have experienced the exasperating phenomenon of Father celebrant ‘explaining’ away the Lord’s miraculous multiplication of the loaves and fishes as merely the crowd, moved by Jesus to generosity and neighbourly love, sharing their packed lunches with one another.

This is what the faithful in the pews received from this man on that Sunday in August 2006. But he didn’t stop there; he slowly and with great emphasis undermined the historical credibility of the evangelists and of the New Testament as a whole.

After this Mass, Melancholicus was so incensed that he published in The Brandsma Review an article denouncing the modernism of corrupt clergy, and so lanced the spiritual boil. The following week he was in a different parish, where he was witness to the most appalling liturgical abuses. He then proceeded to boycott all Masses in the Novus Ordo for the rest of that liturgical year.

On the 18th Sunday of ‘Ordinary Time’ (year A), which happened to be yesterday, the lectionary prescribes the reading of Matthew 14:13-21. This is quoted below, in the translation in use in the Irish Church:

When Jesus received the news of John’s death he withdrew by boat to a lonely place where they could be by themselves. But the people heard of this and, leaving the towns, went after him on foot. So as he stepped ashore he saw a large crowd; and he took pity on them and healed their sick.
When evening came, the disciples went to him and said, ‘This is a lonely place, and the time has slipped by; so send the people away, and they can go to the villages to buy themselves some food.’ Jesus replied, ‘There is no need for them to go: give them something to eat yourselves.’ But they answered ‘All we have with us is five loaves and two fish.’ ‘Bring them here to me’ he said. He gave orders that the people were to sit down on the grass; then he took the five loaves and the two fish, raised his eyes to heaven and said the blessing. And breaking the loaves handed them to his disciples who gave them to the crowds. They all ate as much as they wanted, and they collected the scraps remaining; twelve baskets full. Those who ate numbered about five thousand men, to say nothing of women and children.

The celebrant, as ill luck would have it, was the same priest whom we see on only a few occasions each year, and who delivered that scandalous homily two years ago. Melancholicus dreaded hearing the homily, since it was hardly likely that this priest had reformed himself in the intervening time.

So, gentle reader, can you guess what the homily was about?

You are most correct.

Except this time it was worse than before. The passage is from the gospel of St. Matthew but, in perfect conformity with the modernist insistence that the gospels are anonymous, Father celebrant never named the evangelist, referring to him simply as “the gospel writer”. He also accused St. Matthew—the anonymous “gospel writer”—of “getting carried away” in his account of the feeding of the five thousand. He then went on to deny that a miracle had taken place and, thanks to his modernist exegesis, the congregation were left in no doubt that the anonymous “gospel writer” was not at all a reliable witness to the historical Jesus.

If one can so blithely diss the miracle of the loaves and fishes, what of other miracles recorded in the New Testament—the virgin birth of Jesus, for instance, or His Resurrection? If we don’t have to believe the evangelist’s testimony in this episode, why should we trust any of it?

Da Vinci Code, anyone?

Melancholicus did not hear the end of the homily, for he rose noisily from his pew, strode purposefully down the central aisle, and walked out of the church. He was the only person in attendance who did so.

Once outside, he sat in his car, trembling with rage against that Judas priest and against the entire revolting edifice of the conciliar church.

Why do we tolerate the conciliar church, with its blasphemies, its heresies and its mania for fashionable secular causes? Do Catholics not realise how much the apparatchiks of the conciliar church despise them and their faith? As Hilary puts it so succinctly, Novusordoism isn’t Catholicism. Never was there a truer word spoken! The “church” inhabited by men like Father celebrant is not Catholic—it is a hideous changeling, an excrement-smeared counterfeit, a diabolical usurper, a blasphemous parody of the Catholic Church. The Catholic Church is founded upon Jesus Christ and His apostles; the conciliar church is founded upon the raving fantasies of insane men. The Catholic Church is the mystical body of Jesus Christ, the extension throughout time of the Incarnation; but the conciliar church is surely the very abomination of desolation in the holy place, the mystical body of satan.

Why do we in the pews tolerate the heresies of this man, and countless others like him? Why do we sit there in acquiescent silence while he feeds us with poison and destroys our faith? Why do we let him get away with it? Why do we not bestir ourselves with righteous anger? The fellow deserves no more than to be dragged from the sanctuary and pummelled with kicks and blows. Before he began preaching, he announced the first collection. I wonder how many persons in attendance still gave their money to this fellow once he had finished preaching and announced the second collection?

Melancholicus would put an offering in the collection basket even at Novus Ordo Masses in obedience to the precept of the Church requiring us to contribute to the support of our pastors, but in future he will give no more offerings to the conciliar church.

Since we have no other recourse, dear friends, let us hit these faithless traditores where it hurts them most: in their pocket, seeing as money is all they care about. Let us make a holy resolution to withhold all contributions to anything in the Church even remotely connected with the Novus Ordo.

So now Melancholicus refuses communion with this faithless and heretical priest. He shall not attend Masses celebrated by that man. He shall not participate in any liturgical or other religious function in which that man is involved in any priestly capacity. He shall not confess his sins to that man, nor shall he ever request of him absolution. He shall not receive holy communion from the hands of that man, nor shall he receive any sacrament or spiritual help of whatsoever kind unless, being in articulo mortis, he should be compelled by necessity. But except in such necessity, that man shall be to Melancholicus as the heathen and the publican.

And now Melancholicus is wondering what to do in the future. He knows that, come Sunday, he shall not be able to bring himself to attend the Novus Ordo. Due to circumstances he will be unable to make the long drive into Dublin to attend the Traditional Mass. That means a Massless Sunday, but better no Mass at all than to be stoked into fury by the blasphemies of a heretic. In fact, Melancholicus is considering a long-term boycott of the conciliar church with all its pomps and works, just as he boycotted the same for many months in 2006, and again in 2007. The first precept of the Church mandates attendance at Mass on all Sundays and holy days under pain of sin, but the obligation surely does not extend to the kind of degenerate fruit-and-nut fest that passes for Mass in so many parishes of this God-forsaken diocese, in which our beloved Saviour is denied and, so to speak, spat upon by the celebrant. Holy Mother Church is more kind and forebearing to her children than to insist on feeding them with such poisoned fare. As far as Mass and holy communion are concerned, Melancholicus shall go to Newtownmountkennedy, where the Old Mass is celebrated every Saturday by the parish priest. That shall have to satisfy for Sunday, for as yet there is no old rite Sunday Mass in the diocese within easy driving distance. There at least Melancholicus will be able to pray in an atmosphere of peace and sanity, and he will be able to receive holy communion.

But Sunday being the Lord’s day, he feels it apposite to sanctify that day with at least some communitarian worship, and this will involve stopping off at St. Bartholomew’s for choral evensong on his way back to Dublin in the evening. This beautiful service—which is unfortunately suspended for the summer break but should resume in September—is the outstanding contribution of the Anglican church to Christian liturgy. St. Bartholomew’s is a beautiful Anglo-Catholic church, and praying there at evensong in the latter months of 2007 brought much solace to Melancholicus’ tired and care-worn soul. He also acquired a new devotion—to St. Bartholomew!—for the church has an icon of its patron before which Melancholicus lit many candles and knelt in prayer, and he can declare without exaggeration that taking refuge in St. Bartholomew’s from the degradation of the Novus Ordo was spiritually very beneficial.

He wouldn’t be inclined to attend their communion service, though—Apostolicae Curae, and all that.

But whatever he ends up doing, Melancholicus shall give the wretched Novus Ordo a very wide berth indeed, and possibly will not return to it for the rest of this liturgical year.

Wherefore come out from among them, and be ye separate, saith the Lord, and touch not the unclean thing—2 Cor. 6:17

As the 1st Sunday of Advent approaches, however, he always feels tempted to recommence regular Mass-going—he did so in 2006 and 2007—so he shall probably do so again in 2008, whereat the whole cycle of recovery, then return, then disillusionment, then disgust, then a months-long boycott, will begin over again.

The Ascension of the Lord

THE INTROIT

O men of Galilee, why gaze ye in astonishment at the sky? Alleluia. Just as ye have seen him ascend into heaven, so, in like manner, shall he return, alleluia, alleluia, alleluia. Ps. All nations, clap your hands; shout unto God with a voice of joy.

THE COLLECT

Grant, we beseech Thee, Almighty God, that we, who believe Thine Only Begotten Son our Redeemer, to have ascended on this day into heaven, may ourselves also dwell in mind amongst heavenly things. Through the same Our Lord.

In the words of the Apostles’ Creed, He ascended into heaven, And sitteth on the right hand of God the Father Almighty.

Meditating on the mystery of our Lord’s Ascension reminds Melancholicus of a little paperback he once bought in a second-hand bookshop when he was in the first flush of his reversion to the Christian religion in 1997. This book was called A New Look at the Apostles’ Creed, and was edited by one Gerhard Rein. It was a translation of a work published originally in German, and featured contributions by such allegedly great theologians as Hans Conzelmann, Jurgen Moltmann, Gunther Bornkamm, Gerhard Ebeling and Karl Rahner. At the time, Melancholicus was young and very green, knew almost nothing of his catechism, was aware of this grave deficiency and was consequently reading everything that he could lay hands on pertaining to the Christian religion. He had as yet no idea of the controversies convulsing the Church as a result of modernism, rationalism and the fallout from Vatican II but, as the reader may have guessed, he was soon to find out.

This book first appeared in — yes, you’ve guessed it — the 1960s. Its very title is sufficient to alert the discerning reader to the kinds of heresies he may expect to find between its covers. Now while the youthful Melancholicus had no philosophical training and did not know anything about heresy, rationalism, naturalism etc., he at least had a brain and was able to spot principles and conclusions which were incompatible with the mysteries of faith. For in returning to the religion of his boyhood, Melancholicus was not looking for some pious myth or metaphor for mere intellectual consideration. No, he was seeking God, and he believed that God is transcendent and omnipotent, existing independently of the created order and, most importantly, existing independently of the mind of man. He also believed that the Lord Jesus is the Son of God, the second person of the Most Holy Trinity, and that consequently there is nothing inherently incredible about such things as the Lord’s Resurrection and Ascension, or His real presence in the eucharist.

Hence, in reading the discourse of these erudite theological giants on the doctrines enshrined in the Apostles’ Creed, he was first of all struck by how boring their writing was. He was also struck by the fact that these learned gentlemen seemed actually to be embarrassed by the supernatural content of religion, and that they sought to explain it away so as not to ‘offend’ the mentality of the great twentieth-century man who had at long last finally come of age, shaking off the shackles of obscurantism and superstition. Melancholicus was perplexed (and, if the truth be told, mildly outraged) by this attitude, but most of all he was amused at the spectacle of these purportedly great theologians fretting over the mysteries of faith and twisting themselves into knots in order not to have to affirm as supernatural any article of the Apostles’ Creed.

Was the earnest and simple faith of the young Melancholicus shaken in any way by this discovery? Not a bit of it. On the contrary, he quickly concluded that these theological giants were in reality theological pygmies, that their alleged scholarship and intellectual prowess was profoundly overrated, that their theories violated Christian doctrine and were not substantiated by anything more than their own prejudices and presuppositions, that as a consequence nothing they had to say was ever worth listening to, and not least that their writings were deeply, deeply boring — and so he laid the book aside and has never since returned to it except last year to consign it to a bag of paper and cardboard waste destined for recycling.

The problem with rationalising the mysteries of faith is, however, so glaring and so obvious that it doesn’t require specialised theological training or a turgid German brain to recognize it for what it is. It is so clear a child can spot it, much like the little boy who pointed out, correctly, that the Emperor had no clothes. Did these supposedly profound thinkers really believe — in their heart of hearts and brain of brains — that emptying the Christian religion of its credal content would make it either ‘relevant’ or ‘appealing’ to the thoroughly secularised modern mentality, instead of having precisely the opposite effect? Or does their approach not betray a certain obtusity, even stupidity, on their part? Were these learned gentlemen so intellectually advanced that they had no idea how the rest of us common folk think?

These great theologians are — or I should say were, since they’re nearly all dead; now they know whether there be a God or no — clearly upset that the Christian religion contains dogmas, for they would like it to teach only ethics. It is a fact, however, that the ethics of the Christian religion proceed from its dogmas as the consequence from the principle. These learned and scholarly heavyweights have failed to grasp this simple truth, but millions of ordinary people who were once Christians have understood it all too well. As a result, they are no longer Christians. Our erudite theological superiors are always banging on about the importance of “human experience”, whatever that means. Well, have they learned any lessons at all from the experience of the last forty years?

Take the dogmatic and credal content out of Christianity, and one is left with a hollow shell, a kind of pious agnosticism or Christian buddhism. But Christianity is not buddhism, nor was it ever meant to be, so the miserable leavings after the great theologians have done their work can satisfy no one, neither the Christian nor the buddhist, for the rationalised ‘religion’ invented by the scholars is neither one thing nor the other. As a result, no one is interested in this castle in the clouds at all, except maybe for the handful of towering intellectuals whose brainchild it is. But, like the seed in our Lord’s parable, having no roots it withers away.

The baffled incredulity of Anton Vogtle in his chapter on the Lord’s Ascension, in which he earnestly tries to convince his readers that the Ascension cannot be believed by ‘modern man’, deserves no more than our contempt, and its author deserves no more than to be utterly forgotten.

Letter from the abbé de Nantes to His Holiness Benedict XVI

From the October edition of the CRC journal:

Most Holy Father,

The pride of the reformers who, in past centuries, always came up against the holy fidelity of the apostolic Magisterium to Christ her Founder, has received today from the supreme Authority full scope to «renovate» our traditional Church and, by means of a conclusive «aggiornamento», to bring her back to the Gospel, to purify her of all in her that bore the trace of age-old imperfection, to correct all that repelled the modern world and contravened its demands. Thus, the glorious pioneers of this reform of the Church plan to present her at last to men in conformity with the Utopia of which they have long dreamt. The modern pioneers have succeeded the alleged Reformers of the sixteenth century, Protestants driven out of the Church on account of their schism and heresy, and thus reduced to attacking her from without. They have succeeded the Modernists who secretly plotted to change the Faith and the institutions of the Church by acting from within, but against a Hierarchy that reproved them – in the encyclical Pascendi (1907), in the Letter on the Sillon (1910), and in the encyclical Humani Generis (1950). Since 11 October 1962 these commissioned Reformers have succeeded. The work of these conciliar Fathers or periti (theologians) consists of reinterpreting the dogmas, revising morality, and modernising rites and discipline, and the Hierarchy itself considers it in its principle and in its most general form of «renewal» as inspired and directed by «the Spirit». The Roman Church, which yesterday was still «one, holy, Catholic and apostolic», is thus «in a state of permanent reform».

In this drift that is carrying her far from her place of origin, in this transfiguration (or disfigurement) of her historical being, in this opening to the world, one fact requires the attention of Your Holiness, that of the division of the Church, in hearts and in minds. The understanding of a concept cannot evolve without its extension varying to the same degree. The «people of God» of the New Reform is no longer exactly the same as the faithful Catholic people of not so long ago. Those who claim to find the rule of their mentality and of their new habits in Man’s Future necessarily separate themselves from those who have forever and fully found it in the Christian Past. Let us leave the indistinct mass of the flock that accepts everything – the old and the new – with blind obedience and blind faith. Their unthinking consent, whether passive or solicited by the authorities of the hour, proves nothing significant. The fact of the division is blatant at the extremes.

... This division is not material or superficial. It is spiritual and formal. There exist among us two religions in a single Church: the unchangeable dogmatic one and the modern pastoral one, that of Catholicism and that of ecumenism, that of the cult of God in Jesus Christ and, in the words of Paul VI, your predecessor, that of the cult of Man in the world. These two religions are not identical; the latter does not emerge from the former by logical development. Moreover, it claims to manifest better than the other one the true and pure Gospel.

... We must acknowledge the fact that there is a rupture in historical Tradition, by the superimposition or substitution of one religious faith for another. No «hermeneutic of continuity» can preclude the fact that there is a dramatic split in Catholic society between the adherents of the ancient allegiance and the devotees of the new.

Modernism cannot be brought into conformity with the deposit of the faith; the New Church is built on the ruins of the Ancient one. This Reform is opposed in general and in detail to Tradition, just as its so-called new “good” and pastoral “perfection” is opposed to the age-old “evil” and ancient “sin” of the Church. Thus, there is salvation only in casting into oblivion, abolishing, retracting all these worldly fashions and fables that will have momentarily overshadowed the divine Mystery of the Holy Church.

Retract the Second Vatican Council? Yes!

... The whole work of the Council was warped. Theologians, a council, even a pope, St. Paul would say “an angel”, no one has the inspiration nor the grace to reform what Jesus Christ himself instituted and to abolish what the Holy Spirit created throughout the centuries. The religious power of the hierarchy ends at the threshold of this sacrilege, which in itself is null and void. Guardians and Doctors of the faith, Pastors entrusted with bringing about the salvation of souls through the grace and the law of Christ, the reigning Pope and bishops alive today are not, according to St. Francis of Sales, the landlords of the Church but its administrators. They have not received, nor will they ever receive the mission to carry out the metamorphosis of her, and the revolutionary formula repeated everywhere of a “new Church for a new world” does not come from God. Christ is the cornerstone of the Church, and no one else. A single Pentecost sufficed; any other one could only come from another Spirit, from an Antichrist.

... One should leave no room for revolution. The wind from so many speeches will soon raise a storm that no one will be able to boast that he can calm. All that remains is to retrace one’s way from this whole programme of reform in order to disavow and abandon it as an unprecedented, impracticable and, what is more, illegitimate endeavour.

One does not reform the Church.

Read it all.

The centenary of Pascendi

... in September of this year has passed by very quietly, with almost no notice whatever being taken at official level of so important an encyclical.

In the time of St. Pius X, modernism was an underground movement, the adherents of which had to take careful note of what they dared say or publish. To support or promote this movement in 1910 took guts; rectors of seminaries, professors of the sacred sciences, theologians and a whole host of other clergy could be—and often were—removed from their positions on suspicion of modernism. By comparison, today’s soft modernists, who seem to have discarded every last shred of the Christian faith, have it easy. They are free to say and print what they like without fear of the consequences. Only a handful of the most egregious contemporary heretics has ever been disciplined by the Sacred Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, and in almost all instances, the punishment has been far lighter than ought to have been warranted by the offence. The doyen of heretical theologians, Hans Küng, was in 1979 deprived of the faculty to teach as a Catholic theologian. This amounted to little more than a slap on the wrist, since Küng’s teaching career was not affected; he continued to teach at the same university and as a theologian—just not as a Catholic theologian. Instead of accepting the penalty and reforming himself by abjuring his errors, Küng whined and complained—just as St. Pius X had said of the behaviour of the modernists whenever they were taken to task for their crimes—that he was being deprived of his liberty. There is no doubt, however, that Küng profited from his punishment, as his standing among the theologians of the heretical community was thereby immeasurably increased. His notoriety led to increased sales of his books. He was in ever greater demand in the secular media as a spokesman on Catholic affairs. He became one of a few privileged dissenters much sought after as a religious affairs consultant by the BBC. All in all, the trifling discipline meted out to Hans Küng only had the effect of turning him into a celebrity. To this day he is canonically a priest in good standing in the Swiss diocese of Basle.

More recently, the Sri Lankan oblate Fr Tissa Balasuriya published an heretical book which, in the words of the Sri Lankan bishops’ conference, “contained statements incompatible with the faith of the Church regarding the doctrine of revelation and its transmission, Christology, soteriology and mariology”, in other words, a medley of modernist errors. When called to task for this, Balasuriya actually dared to assert that the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith had falsified his position. Balasuriya continued to insist that everything he had written in his book was within the limits of orthodoxy. This was denied by the Congregation.

Melancholicus is not a trained theologian, but to his mind, if there exists such serious doubt about whether a given work is orthodox or not, then it clearly isn’t orthodox. Orthodoxy should be clearly and instantly recognisable as such. Fudging and ambiguity, both in speech and in writing, are characteristic of heresy.

Balasuriya failed to satisfy the Congregation on the disputed points and was declared in January 1997 to have incurred excommunication latae sententiae.

Guess what happened?

Balasuriya was instantly lionized by the news media, the Magisterium of the Church was ridiculed, and the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith was singled out for special attack. The excommunication was declared lifted in 1998 after Balasuriya had signed a profession of faith, even though he had not substantially modified his position, nor had admitted to the presence of error in his writings. The most he was willing to concede was that “serious ambiguities and doctrinal errors were perceived” in his writings—yes, merely perceived; not actually there. He also regretted the fuss, stating that “the entire episode has been very painful” for him, overlooking the fact that he had caused the fuss himself by publishing his book in the first place.

Balasuriya has been restored to full communion in the Church, and he continues to poison the minds of the faithful with his errors, none of which he was obliged to recant. He wormed his way out of trouble by denying that the error was there; it only appeared to be there. So the Congregation is now widely viewed as having been mistaken, not to mention dictatorial and cruel, and Balasuriya is lauded as a hero for his stand against a tyrannical Church.

That this state of affairs should even have been possible is owing to the fact that modernism—once described by Pius X as the “synthesis of all heresies”—has in the intervening decades mushroomed to such an extent that it covers the entire Church. Not even the See of Peter is immune from its poison, as the pontificate of John Paul II bears ample witness. Modernism is so entrenched that it is now the norm; orthodox Catholicism, once the faith of the entire Church, is now a minority position, widely regarded as the banner of disobedient reactionaries and dissidents on the right. The true situation is even more dire than that, as modernism is now generally regarded as the true orthodoxy, for there is something less than Catholic about the old religion in the eyes of many of our contemporaries.

Perhaps the conduct of those responsible for vigilance against modernism in the early twentieth century was, as is often claimed, over-zealous. It may be that many clerics who were otherwise innocent suffered as a result of being suspected of modernism. Persecution is not a pleasant thing; save that today, it is the modernists who hold all the reins of power and authority, and it is the orthodox who are persecuted. The wheel has come full circle.

Far from being a mistaken endeavour that damaged the Church or that restricted the researches of theologians and Scripture scholars, the encyclical Pascendi was in 1907 a necessary intervention on behalf of the supreme pastor. It is even more relevant today. It ought to be read thoughtfully and carefully by all preparing to receive holy orders or to make religious profession. It should be mandatory reading in every seminary and house of formation. One cannot do anything to solve a problem—much less a problem with a scope as vast as that of modernism—without admitting from the first that the problem exists.

It is necessary that the Church recognize that the ‘renewal’ of the Church in the wake of Vatican II was nothing of the kind, but a disaster without precedent in ecclesiastical history. It is necessary that the council be recognized as having opened the floodgates that permitted a resurgent modernism to overwhelm the Church. In the words of the Dominican theologian J. P. van der Ploeg, “the rise of neo-modernism is historically connected with the Second Vatican Council.” We shall have no peace in ecclesia Romana until this historical fact—and it is a fact, not a matter of interpretation or perspective—is finally generally recognized.

Sancte Pie X, ora pro nobis.