Will the Holy Father Try to Suppress the Traditional Mass?

 

What are we to make of the reports, from apparently reliable sources, that Pope Francis is in the process of repealing Summorum Pontificum?

Personally, I have been expecting a move like this almost since the beginning of his pontificate.  I figured he'd wait until his predecessor is out of the picture before making it, but Benedict XVI goes on living and living, God bless him, and his enemies are growing restive and impatient.  There are those who point out that it would be stupid and destructive of the good of the Church for Summorum Pontificum to be repealed or restricted, but the good of the Church hardly ever seems to factor into any decision made in her upper echelons these days.  I for one doubt it will have any influence on this issue.

The first attempt to suppress the Mass of Tradition half a century ago ultimately failed, thanks to men like Archbishop Lefebvre who clung tenaciously to the faith as they had had it handed down to them, and as they had always known it.  According to Benedict XVI, these men and their followers were right: the traditional Mass was never abrogated, and what was good and holy for previous generations cannot suddenly be condemned.  Can a second attempt by the same enemies of the faith, now mostly octogenarians, succeed?

A decade and a half after Pope Benedict brought it out of mothballs, the Mass of Tradition has captured the hearts and imaginations of the young.  Where the TLM flourishes, there also flourish young Catholic families with lots and lots of babies, and more on the way.  Very many, if not most, of the people flocking to the traditional Mass are too young to remember the salad days of the boomers who led the assault on tradition in the wake of Vatican II, and too young to have any baggage from that dark time.  Traditional priestly societies have large numbers of seminarians.  Above all, last year's alleged pandemic has exposed the utter bankruptcy of the post-conciliar modernist experiment within the Church.  While liberal bishops cut off their flocks from the Sacraments, traditional pastors doubled and trebled their exertions.  Also, the live-streaming of traditional Masses probably exposed a lot of people to that form of the liturgy, and also to solid Catholic preaching, who otherwise might not have been.  It would be a mistake to assume that nobody noticed the difference.  We saw clearly who in the Church takes the faith seriously and who does not.  Maybe the octogenarians have waited too long.

Or, maybe they haven't.  Whatever the case may be, in reading and listening to what people have to say on this subject, it appears that many on both sides act as if the modernists and liberals are invincible.  Every time they suffer a setback, there is always somebody on our side trying to throw cold water on any rejoicing: the setback, they argue, is just a part of the Big Plan, just another play in the Long Game.  There is no doubt that the liberals are more determined and -- unconstrained by moral considerations -- more ruthless and daring than those genuinely devoted to the Catholic faith; but they are still capable of miscalculating, of overreaching, of underestimating, and of being just plain stupid.  Indeed, since sin makes you stupid, they are more apt to err than we give them credit for.  Basic stupidity, as an inevitable consequence of vice, is one of the instruments God uses to set limits on His enemies.  He may allow them to wreak destruction, but while they destroy everything around them, they pull down their own houses too.  Look at any evil regime in history, and you find stupid people in positions of responsibility that ultimately contributed to its fall.  Look around anywhere in the world right now, and there is stupid as far as the eye can see.  There is no question that the stupidity creates untold suffering; but it also necessarily carries within it the seeds of its own fall.

Another thing people fail to factor in is prayer.  There are an awful lot of people who don't pray, but this is by no means true of everybody.  Have you stepped up your prayer game in response to what has been going on, and the realization that God has permitted all of it?  If so, what makes you think you're the only one?  How do you know the failures of our enemies, like the collapse of the coronapanic narrative and the collapse of antiseptic totalitarianism in certain parts of the world, weren't answers to specific prayers?  Even if it is too late to prevent a divine chastisement, that does not mean the chastisement cannot be mitigated by prayer and penance.  If there is something you particularly want to see happen, or not happen, are you praying and fasting for it?  

Which brings us to the third misconception: that God does not somehow factor into the equation.  Even the bad things that happen, happen because God allows them to.  I don't know about you, but the single most sobering thing to me about the world-wide cancellation last year of public Masses, especially during the holiest season of the year, was the realization that God permitted this wholly unprecedented event, and He must have permitted it because we are not as wonderful as we think we are, and we have provoked His wrath.  If the Pope and his allies in the hierarchy do succeed in once again quashing the traditional Mass, it will be because God has allowed it, and we will need to ask ourselves why.

As Bishop Athanasius Schneider has pointed out, God ultimately will intervene and put an end to this crisis.  He certainly will rescue His Church.  This may not happen as quickly as we want, or in the way we want, or without our having to suffer even more than we already have, but it certainly will happen.  That does not mean that we just get to sit back and not do our part to resist the evil that we see before us.  Indeed, we do not have any excuse not to resist, having as we do some great predecessors who showed us how it's done.  But it does mean that God's inevitable triumph is the real Big Picture we have to keep our eyes on, and not despair.

Happy Lenin’s Birthday!

 Earth Day is really Lenin’s birthday — an anti-feast if ever there was one.  Here is Lenin in a mugshot from 1895, looking every inch the punk kid brother of satan.

Let us also not forget that the founder of Earth Day was Ira Einhorn, a guy who murdered his girlfriend, Holly Maddox, in 1977 and then hid her body in a trunk in his closet.  He jumped bail, fled to Europe on the eve of his trial, and was extradited back to the United States in 2001.  Although he had previously been convicted in absentia, he received a new trial upon his return.  At his trial, he blamed the CIA for her murder, saying they framed him because he knew too much about their paranormal research.  The jury disagreed and convicted him.  Last year he died in prison, a real hero of our times.

Today I am happy to be able to burn some light bulbs and run an internal combustion engine several times in honor of Earth Day.

Outrage

 

Jonathan Brady/AFP/Getty Images

This is the image of a moral outrage, an elephant in the room that ought on no account to be ignored or glossed over amid praise for how moving was the funeral of Prince Philip.  It is a sign of how far the West has fallen, that the fear of a virus with an almost 100% survival rate has moved us to cast out kindness, charity and compassion.  This is the brave new world our owners and masters are preparing for us.  For over a year, bereaved families all over the world have been severely hindered if not completely prevented from paying their last respects to their beloved dead; now we see that not even the most venerable and highly-placed people — at least those who represent the last remaining shreds of authentic Christian civilization — are exempt from these appalling strictures.  Elizabeth II, Queen of England, age 94, the longest-reigning monarch in British history, sits all alone at the funeral of Prince Philip.  Newly widowed after 73 years of marriage, she is deprived of the consolation of her family and her subjects.  Miles away from any other human being, she is compelled to mask up.  That there is no way, seated all by herself, that she could possibly catch or communicate the coronavirus, is further proof that the face muzzle is really a yoke of submission and has nothing whatsoever to do with stopping the spread of disease.  Even in her grief, Elizabeth Regina is pressed into the service of furthering the agenda of the godless antiseptic dictatorship.

On a human level, the treatment Britian’s political class is meting out to their Sovereign is an outrage, even after two centuries of revolutions and regicides that have blunted and coarsened our sensibilities.  On a societal level, it should show us how complete is the triumph of totalitarianism, when even the Queen of England is a slave of the microbes who, disguised as servants of the people, rule us all with an iron rod.

One of the big takeaways of the coronapanic is the glaring proof that the result of toppling throne and altar in the West has not been the advent of freedom, but of godless, amoral oligarchies.  We are no longer ruled by Christians who take to heart their obligations to those under them, and fear eternal damnation for misruling them, but by ruthless moneyed interests who care only about human beings to the extent they find them useful, and do not even believe in hell, much less fear going there.  In Britain, the appalling treatment of their widowed Queen proves that the monarchy is effectively abolished in all but name.  This is the evil fruit of Henry VIII’s break from the Catholic Church: that the oligarchy he set up to help him crush Catholicism within his realms should make slaves even of his distant successors.      

God rest Prince Philip.  God save the Queen.  God rescue us from our apostasy and self-inflicted thralldom.

We Really Need to Think Before We Run Our Mouths

 ...or whatever other orifice we're used to communicating out of.  

When you meet a stranger, you have no idea where that person started from, or how far he has come from where he started.  You really have no idea what he has had to overcome to get to where he is right now.  

What looks to you like a train wreck, to him might be a hard-fought victory.  As bad as that person's condition appears to you, it might be orders of magnitude of improvement from where he began.    

And, it may be that he does not see how much progress he's made.  The reality is that we are often not the best judges of where we are in relation to where we've been, and where we ought to be.

For these reasons, a tongue-lashing from you under the guise of "charity" or "fraternal correction" just might be the last thing that person needs.  You really cannot know how devastating and discouraging your words can be to someone who is already struggling, and already too ready to believe the worst.  And the more convinced you are of the righteousness of what you're doing, the less likely you will be to grasp the full horror of it, until you are standing before God in judgment and He confronts you with both your words and the fullness of the effects they have wrought.

Yes, we will be held accountable for every last word.  As somebody with very strong opinions and a very big mouth, it's sobering to think of how much I have failed over the years to take seriously this truth that comes straight from the mouth of Christ in the Gospels.  

For the sake of the common good as well as for our own welfare, we should probably all spend a lot more time with our mouths and other orifices closed.

Did Charles Coulombe Go Too Far?

UPDATE: Charles Coulombe responds to the requests of a priest who, unlike many of his critics, addressed him on this subject with charity.

I gather, from the latest episode of Off the Menu, that Charles Coulombe is once again being attacked as an occultist.  I’m not clear what prompted the hue and cry this time—unfortunately, Off the Menu tends to assume, erroneously, that everyone is plugged into the Twitterverse—but it is not the first time that Coulombe has been so accused.  Part of the basis for the accusation is that Coulombe knows how to read tarot cards and has publicly done so on a number of occasions.  He addressed this in this latest podcast, as he has on previous episodes.  Another part that was not addressed is Coulombe’s alleged association with certain esoteric/occult groups.

Full disclosure: I am a big fan of Charles Coulombe and Off the Menu.  I like to listen to Off the Menu during my long commutes to work and to Sunday Mass.  I enjoy it because the content is solidly Catholic; Coulombe’s knowledge of history is encyclopedic; he is blunt and plain-spoken; and, above all, while he doesn’t candy-coat the crisis in  Church and state, his overall attitude is one of joy and hope.  Instead of raging about the things that are wrong, to the exclusion of all else, he focuses a lot on the things he loves; and he finds much to love about the Church, the United States, the places he has traveled and the people who make them all work.  He is a monarchist, which causes many to dismiss him as a crank, despite the fact that his arguments in favor of monarchy are well-reasoned and backed by historical events, including recent U.S. history, and despite the fact that he readily acknowledges the extreme improbability of his hopes for a monarchy coming true in these United States.  It is true that Coulombe grew up in Hollywood and comes from a show-business background — both his parents were actors, and he himself was once a stand-up comedian — so there is a chance I could be completely wrong in thinking him a devout Catholic.  On the other hand, the possibility that a person is not in the least who I think he is is a chance I have to take in dealing with anybody.  I have listened to many hours of Coulombe’s talks, both on Off the Menu and elsewhere, and I have read several of his books, and have found no evidence that he is out to undermine the Church or even covertly promote the occult.  Even a really good actor has his limits and must at some point let the mask slip.  His critics will argue that the tarot card thing is the slipping of his mask; on the other hand, their snarky comments about him that focus on his appearance and his dress and his social contacts indicate the most superficial knowledge of his substance as expressed in the things he has actually said and how he says them.

Coulombe has reiterated what he has said before about being an occultist and using tarot cards: he denies the former, and says that the latter has been for purposes of evangelizing those who are interested in such things.  In light of the many talks of his that I have heard, and the many words he has written that I have read, I see no reason not to take Coulombe at his word on this.  So the question becomes one of whether his prudential judgment on these points has been sound,and whether his attackers are really in a position  to condemn him.

Frankly, the question of how far is too far in the pursuit of fulfilling our Lord’s Great Commission that is binding on all Catholics is one that I have long wrestled with myself.  Specifically, how far do I go, not merely in risking my physical well-being, but also my spiritual well-being?  What if, going too far, I sin?  Is it possible to worry too much about keeping my skirts clean and pressed and starched?  At what point does prudence become cowardice?  On the one hand, if you hang out with certain types of people, you could be dragged down; on the other hand, to bring them into the Church, it is necessary to go to where you will find them, and to associate with them.  If these are the people that, by dint of my background and circumstances, I may be well-suited to evangelize, would I be right to decline the risk?  In a real way, spreading the Gospel is a battle to the death, especially if the people in question are also determined to bring me around to their way of thinking.  When the rubber meets the road, it’s them or me, and I have to walk onto the field of battle open-eyed, knowing that.

I also have to come prepared.  I have to do this first by frequenting the Sacraments as often as possible, and having a solid prayer life.  Second, I have to know what motivates the people in question, what they are looking for, what their expectations are, and how to respond to their questions and objections.   If I’m really serious, that is going to involve making a study of the things that interest them.  Therein lies a big danger.  Coulombe says that he has studied tarot cards in order to be able to use them to reach a certain class of people and interest them in the Catholic faith.  Was that a wise idea?  I don’t know.  Certainly the Dominicans under St. Raymond of Penaforte took their chances studying the Talmud in order to convert the Jews; Bl. Raymond Llull took his chances studying Islamic philosophy in order to convert the Muslims; Bl. Bishop Clemens von Galen took his chances studying Nazi literature in order to combat their ideology.  I myself would not mess with tarot cards; but then, my background and upbringing are such as lead me to a different prudential judgment than Coulombe came to.  I grew up in the Los Angeles area, like Coulombe did, but I was not well-acquainted with the show business set or how they function.  I do not have the same type of personality that Coulombe has.  Above all, I do not have the same kind of background as a Catholic as he has.  Coulombe grew up in a solidly Catholic home, with solidly Catholic extended family, and a solidly Catholic ancestry stretching back generations and rooted in what was once a solidly Catholic society.  This, coupled with the frequent use of the Sacraments, probably gives Coulombe a lot of security of a sort that is frankly foreign to me, and probably to a lot of other traditional Catholics in an age when we have hirelings in place of shepherds.  

If we are honest with ourselves, one of the ways in which this lack of security manifests itself is in our hair-trigger readiness to condemn other Catholics.  Forgetting the scriptural admonition to put not our trust in princes, in the children of men in whom there is no salvation, we have been disappointed again and again by priests and bishops and Catholic authors and commentators who turn out to be no better than they should be, to the point where now we expect to be disappointed.  In fact, it is almost as if we are disappointed any time we are not disappointed.  When some Catholic public figure does something we don’t like, we pounce on him, shouting “AHA!  I always KNEW this guy was a crook!”  We are almost gleeful at revelations that one of our co-religionists is less than perfect.  Then, whenever anyone defends that person, or even merely refrains from joining the chorus against him, we pounce on that person too for “siding with the enemy.”  Is this really how Catholics ought to behave?  If Coulombe is really a public violator of the First Commandment, wouldn’t the proper Catholic response be to mourn over his fall and try to win back our brother, rather than gloat over how much better we are than he?

Has Charles Coulombe gone too far in reaching out to the tarot-card-esoterica-gnostic-occult set?  I don’t know: given his stated intentions, which I see no reason to either disregard or disbelieve, the prudence of his methods is between him and God.  But surely Coulombe deserves credit for caring enough about the tarot-card-esoterica-gnostic-occult set to think they deserve to hear the Gospel, and to try to bring it to them in such a manner as to make them more open to receiving it.  He has judged himself up to the task, given his personality, his circumstances and his background, and he has not shrunk from trying to accomplish it.  That I personally would not do what he has done does not mean that he is wrong; it only means that I am probably meant to try to bring the Gospel to a different set of people with different needs that I am better equipped to meet.  I hope I will not shrink from trying to accomplish it.

What Do the Modernists and the Trad Catastrophizers Have in Common?

 Both factions act as if God is not in charge or even factors into the equation.

Staying Sane Inside Insanity

 This interview with Archbishop Vigano, published in The Remnant on Easter Monday, might help.

Milo Yiannopoulos

Gay conservative bad boy Milo Yiannopoulos has announced that he has returned to the Catholic faith and abandoned the gay lifestyle, crediting the intercession of St. Joseph for what he calls his “U-turn.”  John Henry Weston’s interview of Yiannopoulos can be found on LifeSite News.

I have to admit to not knowing a lot about Milo Yiannopoulos.  I have long been aware of him, his homosexuality and his conservative politics, but I have never been a fangirl.  I have not read many of his writings nor listened to any of his talks except the LifeSite interview.  As Yiannopoulos is a fellow creature, made to God's image and likeness and whom Christ died to save, I do hope he is sincere in his conversion.  If so, he still has a long way to go.  This is clear from the LifeSite video, in which he portrays himself as a crusader, a knight in shining armor on a mission to rescue other young men trapped in the homosexual lifestyle and to take down those responsible for promoting that lifestyle.  Although his professed desire to help others and conquer evil is laudable, even the post-conversion Milo pretty evidently still has a monumental ego, and still attaches a vast deal of importance to his own powers and his own self.  These are typical wounds that a life of vice leaves behind.  There is also the fact that Yiannopoulos is still living with his male sex partner, a situation he compares with an invalidly married couple living as brother and sister for the sake of the children.  To be fair, he admits the comparison is awkward; but regardless, even if there is no longer anything sexual going on, the public persistence in these living arrangements is still an open scandal.

Of course, when our Lord delivers a man from a life of crime, He is perfectly capable of healing all the secondary effects of that life.  But very often, He does not.  Certainly, He does not do this in the ordinary course with Baptism, which cleanses us of original sin but still leaves us with the wounds left by original sin so that, with the help of His grace, we can battle through them and gain merit.  Life is tough enough with just the effects of original sin to deal with, but years and years of entrenched mortal sin on top of this seriously distort the intellect and leave major scars on the soul.  Just as there must be a period of physical recovery for a body that emerges from a life-threatening illness, so there must also be a period of spiritual recovery for a soul that emerges from a long state of habitual sin.  Even after a person has repudiated a long-standing vice, he still has a lot to learn, and, above all, to un-learn.  To a man who steps from a prolonged period of absolute darkness into the light of one candle, that one candle seems as bright as the sun.  Yet, however much of an improvement one candle is over total darkness, it is still not, and can never be, the sun.  You cannot see as far or as clearly by the light of one candle as you would by the light of the sun.

Milo is still in recovery and, whether he wants to acknowledge it or not, really should be treated as such.  We have to also step back and consider the quality of our own judgment in this matter.  We ourselves suffer terrible wounds, not only from our personal sins but also as the result of being governed by little men in both Church and State who care only about fattening their own purses and don't give a damn about our welfare.  So badly are things going, with one anvil after another being dropped on us by our rulers from on high, that we prize highly the paltry crumbs of comfort that in better times we would have ignored.  So bereft are we of real shepherds and true fathers, that we are apt to make heroes out of persons who, in better times, deserve to be nobodies, simply because they happen on some occasion to refrain from hurting us in some way.  As Proverbs 27:7 puts it: "A soul that is full shall tread upon the honeycomb: and a soul that is hungry shall take even bitter for sweet."

So at this stage, we still need to pray and do penance for Milo, as for all others similarly situated, and to refrain from making a hero out of him before he is ready to be a hero.  We would be doing both ourselves and him a great disservice by fawning over him, showering him with plaudits, hanging on his every word, and otherwise feeding his ego.  Before he can become a crusader and do good to others, Milo has to attend to his own wounds.  Otherwise, his crusade becomes just another distraction for him to avoid his real business of growing in holiness.  

And he and we both need to remember that our real Savior is not Milo Yiannopoulos, nor any other mere mortal, but Jesus Christ.

Those That Are Going In, You Suffer Not to Enter

I have been thinking about the following verse from Scripture a lot over the last year, and it comes to my mind with every new anvil our shepherds in the hierarchy drop on us.  Matthew 23:13:

“But woe to you scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites; because you shut the kingdom of heaven against men, for you yourselves do not enter in; and those that are going in, you suffer not to enter.”

Everything from the campaign to abolish the traditional Mass after Vatican II to locking our churches in our faces and cutting us off from the Sacraments during the coronapanic seems to come under the heading of this verse.

Why do so many of our shepherds shut the kingdom of heaven against men?  Because so many of them, not believing, do not enter in themselves.  They will not suffer us to enter in because they do not love us.  

Believers do not force belief on unbelievers; or at least, if they do, it is an excess not in conformity with the Catholic faith.  On the other hand, unbelievers cannot abide belief and do all they can to stamp it out.  If they are out of power, then their efforts are aimed at subverting and undermining believers; once they are in power, then their efforts are aimed at compelling unbelief by main force.  In our time, both Church and State are dominated by the godless, whose goal is to force everyone to be like themselves.  They use their power and authority to smash and destroy, and rob their subjects of everything that is good, true, beautiful, worthwhile and that makes life worth living.  Some of them are deluded enough to think they are rescuing us from backward superstition, and believe our reluctance to be so rescued makes their mission all the more urgent.

Obviously, our Lord foresaw all this, which is why He said what He said.  And He predicted woe upon these unbelievers, if they fail to straighten up.

Which brings us to another thing that keeps coming to my mind: Psalm 36:35-36.

I have seen the wicked highly exalted, and lifted up like the cedars of Libanus.  And I passed by, and lo, he was not: and I sought him and his place was not found.

The Debt We Owe to Cartoons

 

In an age when children of single-digit age can easily access porn and are groomed in school for early sex via "sex education" programs, we are suddenly worried about the "rape culture" "promoted" by Pepe le Pew, a cartoon character that generations of kids have watched without growing up to become rapists.

It makes sense that the New Puritans, out to scrub our culture of anything that is human and worthwhile and that keeps us in touch with our patrimony, should target cartoons.  It is in no small part owing to cartoons -- especially Looney Tunes cartoons -- that generations of kids have been kept in contact with touchstones of Western civilization: history, literature, classic cinema, classical music and even opera.

Back in the '70s and '80s, the days of my far-off youth, Looney Tunes cartoons from the '30s through the '60s were a staple.  Television stations broadcast them uncut and unexpurgated.  Even the cartoons where characters shot themselves in the head, took poison, or -- gasp! -- smoked and drank; even the old World War II propaganda cartoons; even the cartoons with racial caricatures and stereotypes; even Pepe le Pew and his romantic misadventures: all of these I watched regularly.  It never occurred to me, from watching these cartoons, that I should play with guns and explosives.  It never occurred to me that persons of other ethnicities were inferior to myself.  Somehow, to this day, I have never smoked; I seldom drink; and the "N" word has never become a part of my working vocabulary.  In my eyes, so little resemblance did the caricatures of black people in cartoons bear to real black people, that it was years before I finally realized that they were supposed to depict black people.  The last thing on earth I got out of Pepe le Pew was that rape is okay.  What I got out of Pepe le Pew's encounters with the ladies was that he was totally clueless and his methods were highly ineffective.

The real takeaway that I got from cartoons was my cultural heritage.  Cartoons, even more than school, gave me my first tastes of great books, great films, great music, and history.  In some cartoons, the characters from books on a shelf came alive at night and did zany things together.  There were books I read primarily because I had seen the titles on these cartoons.  Cartoons introduced me to classic movie stars like Bogey and Bacall, James Cagney, Bette Davis, Peter Lorre, Sidney Greenstreet and Erroll Flynn.  There were bits of classical music that became familiar to me because I heard them in cartoons.  Who doesn't remember the Elmer Fudd and Bugs Bunny takeoff on Wagner?  A lot of themes and characters in cartoons didn't make sense unless you knew some history.  Cartoons had a lot to do with sparking my interest in World War II.  

In short, the cartoons from the salad days of Looney Tunes represented the interaction of Christendom and the playful part of the popular imagination.  They were the great things of Western civilization applied to daily life.  Not everything about them was good or perfect, by any stretch, and there is no question that they contained themes that were -- and should be -- over the heads of us average kids.  But they were not sterile or banal.  They dealt with difficult subjects, mostly in a lighthearted way, without being preachy.  They came from a world where there was room for fun and laughter and parody and satire, instead of the bestial seriousness sought to be cultivated by today's cultural commissars.  

These days, nobody is allowed to laugh at anything, especially our Elders and Betters who profess to be Servants of the People but who actually rule over us with an iron rod.  The campaign to re-shape our ethical system into one where pornography and the slaughter of the unborn are moral, but beloved cartoon characters are not, went too far the day it started.  If we hope to reverse the tide, or at least preserve anything worthwhile for our posterity, now is the time to push back.