The Battle of Vienna, 1683, September 12th

King John III Sobieski, entering Vienna in triumph.
Painting: Jan Matejko

Venimus, vidimus et Deus vicit: so wrote King John III Sobieski to Pope Innocent XI, after the armies of the Polish and Lithuanian Commonwealth with additional Ukrainian knights smashed the Turkish hordes of Grand Vezir Kara Mustapha after a fearsome siege of Vienna. We easily forget that on that fateful September 12th, European history hung in the balance; had the Turks won the day, the road would have been open to Rome, and the Turks had planned to take Rome. Indeed,  the Grand Vezir's had pledged to feed his horse oats on the High Altar of St. Peter's.

Kahlenburg Plaque of commemoration

Prior to his departure for Austria, King John placed himself and his army in the hands of the Black Madonna at Czestochowa. Remember this great victory and this great man. Remember his faith and his courage.

Vatican Insider on the Islamist Riots

Giacomo Galeazzi of Vatican Insider on the recent Islamist riots:

... Vatican Insider has learnt that it is fundamentalist Muslims who are putting the responsibility on the backs of the local Christian minority. The film director is an Israeli-American  living in California, who got together the five million dollars raised from the contributions of about a hundred Jewish donors, mostly from the U.S. The director apparently distributed the film with the help of a radical Christian association and one Christian Copt, who shares the association’s aversion to Islam. The Coptic Church has nothing to do with the film which is inflaming the Muslim world, to the extent that Christian religious leaders have been forced to speak out against the film, condemning certain provocative aspects of the film which reference to religious symbols.

Christians in Israel

Vatican Insider is carrying a report from Israel indicating that a fringe Jewish Israeli group is targeting Christian sites with hate propaganda. This situation reflects the powder-keg that Israel sits on: not just Islamic, but also the various factions - albeit very small - within the Jewish community and its response to internal and external pressure seeking to destroy Israel as a political entity. Those conducting these acts are also undermining Israel. The tragedy is that Christian Arabs are disappearing and the vacuum is being filled by extremist Islamist forces. Richard Nixon may not have been a moral man, but he was an extremely intelligent man with a great awareness of geo-political forces and history. It was his assessment that Israel's long-term prospects for survival were not good.  

Pope John Paul I also hoped to reconcile the SSPX

Andrea Tornielli of Vatican Insider reports on the concerns that Patriarch Luciani had prior to his election as John Paul I over the SSPX: 

Reconciliation with traditionalist archbishop Marcel Lefebvre was also close to Pope Luciani’s heart. This was revealed to the director of the Italian Episcopal Conference’s television channel TV2000, Dino Boffo, by John Paul I’s secretary, Diego Lorenzi, during an interview on the occasion of the centenary of the “smiling Pope’s” birth. 

The full article may be read here. 

Rome-SSPX: Williamson's comments ensure SSPX split

Bishop Richard Williamson's latest Kyrie Eleison comments for September 1, 2012 are highly significant given his detailed opposition to the official SSPX position. It is this month of September that Rome will give a definitive reply to the SSPX following further exchanges after the SSPX General Chapter. 

Williamson writes: 

The sixth and last condition desires a Commission to be set up in Rome to look after Tradition, with  a strong representation from Tradition, but “dependent on the Pope”. Dependent on the Pope? But have the Conciliar Popes not been ringleaders of Conciliarism? Is Conciliarism no longer a problem?

In conclusion, these six conditions are excessively grave. Unless the Society’s leadership is shaken out of its dream of peace with Conciliar Rome as revealed by them, then the last worldwide bastion of Catholic Tradition risks being on its way to surrendering to the enemies of the Faith. 

Whatever the result will be regarding the SSPX, one thing remains a near certainty: the rebel Society will have an internal split, and it is only a matter of from where and how many may go with Williamson. My own suspicion is that most of his following will be in the English speaking world. Not so much due to the sad man being English speaking, but, rather that the vast majority of the English speaking world is heavily imbued with a protestant ethos. Hence, the near schismatic "traditionalist" press, websites, blogs etc. that on one hand ostensibly bend their knee to Pope Benedict; yet in the next breath undermine him at every turn by harbouring, encouraging, winking at a form of "traditional" Catholicism which is really protestantism with bells and whistles. Examples would include the recent outrage by many that the Anglicans who have returned home after nearly 500 years did not take up the Tridentine Mass as their normative liturgy! Thus, liturgy is more important than schism and heresy. 

THE SITUATION FOR RELIGIOUS LIBERTY IN BRITAIN IS NOW CRITICAL

Today's Daily Telegraph reports on the legal cases of four British Christians and their persecution by the British State for their religious beliefs; the issue at hand being the wearing of a small cross in public. We have commented on this blog a number of times about fascism and its gradual growth in western Europe and North America. This is where the fight is; we are talking about absolute basics - not liturgical fetishes and troll baiting about the latest scandal - real and imagined- in the Church. (Scandal has been with the Church since the Apostles; just read the Gospels). 

Parallel to the British situation is the undermining of the Catholic Church in the United States by the Obama Administration; in Canada, we have the equally real, yet not so well known undermining of the Catholic Church in education in Ontario by the McGuinty Administration acting with the approval of the leaders of the militant teachers' union, OECTA.  In these two cases the episcopal reaction has been interesting: the Americans have reacted with gusto and rigor; the Canadians have made an official protest to then go silent. A very historical reaction in both cases. Silence is no longer an option. Caesar only grows stronger with each advance. 

The evangelization of culture is all the more important in our times, when a “dictatorship of relativism” threatens to obscure the unchanging truth about man’s nature, his destiny and his ultimate good. There are some who now seek to exclude religious belief from public discourse, to privatize it or even to paint it as a threat to equality and liberty. Yet religion is in fact a guarantee of authentic liberty and respect, leading us to look upon every person as a brother or sister. For this reason I appeal in particular to you, the lay faithful, in accordance with your baptismal calling and mission, not only to be examples of faith in public, but also to put the case for the promotion of faith’s wisdom and vision in the public forum. Society today needs clear voices which propose our right to live, not in a jungle of self-destructive and arbitrary freedoms, but in a society which works for the true welfare of its citizens and offers them guidance and protection in the face of their weakness and fragility. Do not be afraid to take up this service to your brothers and sisters, and to the future of your beloved nation.

Pope Benedict, (Homily in Glasgow, September 16, 2012). 

Modernism

The word modernism is a bit of a misnomer. After all, how can something that was described by Pope Pius X as the synthesis of all heresies be anything but ancient? Moreover, the word seems to imply an excessive attachment to innovations and progress. This is not the case because the essential definition lies with one's attitude towards dogma. Modernism is characterized by a willingness to pervert dogma in an effort to make it conform to one's own notion of progress or the spirit of the age. It is the twisting of dogma that is the identifying characteristic of modernism, not the presence of innovations. Appearances can be deceiving as Cardinal Ferrari pointed out in 1908:

We are deeply pained to find that certain persons, in public controversy against modernism, in brochures, newspapers and other periodicals, go to the length of detecting the evil everywhere, or at any rate of imputing it to those who are very far from being infected with it.  CE

This association of modernism with innovation has led many to indiscriminately toss the epithet about. However sometimes there are changes which are badly timed, poorly carried out or taken to extremes. There are treasures in the Church's store which have been sorely neglected. Badly done liturgy has been with us for a very long time. However bad these things are, none of them in themselves cut to the core of the issue. The smoking gun with modernism is the perversion of doctrine and unless you have identified that core problem you have nothing in hand at all.

Here, however, it is needful to speak a word of warning against unreasonable attacks. Not every novelty is to be condemned, nor is every project of reform to be dubbed modernist because it is untimely or exaggerated.   CE

One more thing needs to be said about modernism and that is its use of language. You will notice the words with which I have described the modernist attitude towards dogma. I have described it as a perversion or as a twisting. In the past heresies were characterized by a picking and choosing of one doctrine over another. The word comes from the Greek and means to choose or a choosing. Each party in the controversy believed that they were dealing with divine revelation and their differences consisted of a disagreement over the content or interpretation of that revelation. Modernism is different in that it attempts to adhere to the terms the Church uses to define dogma while subtly changing their meanings to suit whatever their agenda is. Thus the  Oath Against the Errors of  Modernism rejects these misinterpretations and changes in meaning.

Fourthly, I sincerely hold that the doctrine of faith was handed down to us from the apostles through the orthodox Fathers in exactly the same meaning and always in the same purport. Therefore, I entirely reject the heretical' misrepresentation that dogmas evolve and change from one meaning to another different from the one which the Church held previously.  

The bottom line here is that if one is rejecting one or another doctrine of the Church, one is not a modernist but a protestant, but more on that in another post. Modernists do not wish to leave the Church and will go through all sorts of contortions to seem to conform.

On the other hand, it is regrettable that certain avowed leaders of modernism, carried away perhaps by the desire to remain within the Church at all costs — another characteristic of modernism — have taken refuge in equivocation, reticence, or quibbles. Such a line of action merits no sympathy; while it explains, if it does not altogether justify, the distrust of sincere Catholics.  CE

How then should the ordinary Catholic recognize modernism? The guitar group at the folk mass may be playing music that is modern and out of keeping with the Church's tradition, but are they modernist? Well, you are not likely to find out without talking to them and looking for the perversion of dogma. However, it may well be a case of bad taste. How about the parishioner who wishes wistfully that she or someone like her might be ordained a priest someday? Definitely a modernist inclination there because what she is really saying is that the papal pronouncements on women's ordination are subject to change over time. "Just keep up the pressure, they're bound to change eventually." Even conservatives are not immune from this tactic.

Unfortunately the word modernism has so degraded over time that few Catholics are likely to know what you are talking about except to note that you have called them something bad. This is why recent pronouncements by Benedict XVI have used words like relativism and secularism to describe this phenomena. As he said in his homily before the conclave that elected him:

To have a clear faith, according to the creed of the Church, is often labeled as fundamentalism. While relativism, that is, allowing oneself to be carried about with every wind of "doctrine," seems to be the only attitude that is fashionable. A dictatorship of relativism is being constituted that recognizes nothing as absolute and which only leaves the "I" and its whims as the ultimate measure.

CE - Catholic Encyclopedia, 1917 ed., www.newadvent.org

September 1st: Anniversary of the War - a personal reflection

This day, 73 years ago, the forces of satan crossed the Polish border and unleashed on the world a torrent of bloodshed. In the early hours of that fateful day, Nazi aircraft began to bomb Warsaw leading to the eventual occupation of that nation with co-conspirator, Soviet Russia. The Bolsheviks attacked Poland on the 17th, following the secret protocols in the vile Ribbentrop-Molotov Pact. In fact, Nazis had even been training in the Soviet Union in the late 1930s. The right and left hand of satan met at the river San - the dividing line between the two totalitarian States. Eventually, due to far greater organization and international connections and assorted fellow travelers,  the communist empire would devour more than half of Europe and lead to its monstrous extension over the globe leading to such a death count, that even the fiendish Hitler would end up looking like a choir boy. 

Stalin directing Hitler into a losing war 

The result for Poland was the virtual extermination of Poland's Jews - protected by King Kazimir the Great centuries earlier, when Jews were being hounded out of other European states. Nazi hatred for the Catholic Church too was on display with arrests and executions of priests. Mass was proscribed, with the sole Mass at the Wawel Cathedral under the eye of the Gestapo. It was in this environment that the great Archbishop Sapiecha would take on a seminarian named Karol Wojtyla. 

My father was a witness to Nazi brutality. Early during the war, he and my grandmother on a number of occasions would sneak food to the Jews of Przemysl and pass food through the wired off area where the Jews were kept, prior to deportation to the death camps. My father always remembered this, and he remembered to his horror seeing behind the wire a young teenage boy from his class in school. Eventually my father would be arrested in a "Lapanka" (or street catch) and sent to Germany for slave labour. He then ended up in Norway on an island doing tree cutting; transfered to a camp near the Swedish border, he and another teenager escaped up into the mountains and to freedom in Sweden. He always remembered seeing the German Army motorbikes traveling along the road far below looking for them. In fact, this escape was even more daring for two young men had tried it earlier and had been shot. From Stockholm he eventually he would end up in Scotland in the armed forces... from then, onto London where he met my very English mother (who spent her war years in Llandudno, Wales) - and the rest is history. 

So, please pray for Poland that she may remain true to her ancient Faith.