Showing posts with label Bishop Williamson. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Bishop Williamson. Show all posts

Thursday, August 26, 2010

Right-Wing Liberal Group Think and Rash Condemnations of the SSPX

What happens when you get a group of self-educated, conservatively minded Midwestern women together on a website so they can complain about society and the men who run it?

In this case, we have a young woman in her anger, rashness and hardness of heart getting her facts wrong and exaggerating her ability to move heaven and earth to excommunicate the SSPX. In her haste to issue her res terribilis, based we assure you on nothing more than some real or imagined slights she's suffered from SSPX adherents, condemning an entire group of people because she imagines that the rumor mentioned by Bishop Williamson that a Motu Prorio was in the works was actual, and that not only had this Motup Proprio been published, but that it had been rejected by the leadership of the Society.

If such a Motup Proprio existed, we have no idea what the Society would have done with it, but we at least on this end have no idea what is going to happen. Certainly some members of the SSPX are not pleased, either, with things they imagine to be going on.

The fact is, no one knows about the Motu Proprio, except for those who need to know about it, and a group of women, no matter how conservative or self-educated they happen to be, can make the Pope do something he hasn't done.

Anyhow, she doesn't like the Society, despises Bishop Williamson and will not be moved either way. There are many people, who, as in this case, out of ignorance, condemn this or that person and hold for dear life upon that misapprehension, to their eternal discredit, and possibly damnation.

If she's not more careful, she could be one of the best apologists for the society. Her wild accusations and factual inaccuracies could lead to not a few people taking the time to find out a little bit about the Society of Saint Pius X, human nature and perhaps a little bit about themselves?

Cheeky Pink Girl: I Declare SSPX to Be An Officially Separated Religion From the Catholic Church

Monday, February 1, 2010

Bishop Williamson Reveals the Democratic Deceit of Free Speech

Bad boy Bishop Williamson is being pelted by the press again. He's being accused of the greatest sin a modern man can commit in this age of unreason, denying the sanctity of the Jewish race and the numbers (accountancy) related to the so-called "Holocaust". In its passion for reification and easy villains, the world press has levelled its guns on one man whose life has been a singular rejection of the liberalism who's cult they adore, as he speaks out against their consensus of depravity.

We agree with Bishop Williamson on attire, is it enough that so many daughters complain of the immoral men that the behaviors that contribute to it can't rightly be castigated? We think that the editors of these propaganda organs want a nice docile population, enslaved to its lusts and caprices, who will enjoy the pillorying of one man who stands against their Orthodoxy and their frequent and unchecked deceit and malice. So much for freedom of speech and the values of "democracy". We should thank Bishop Williamson, whether we agree with him or not, for revealing this democratic deceit.

Williamson has noticed female fans wearing even shorter skirts. "Aren't there are any men left who tell their daughters, sisters, wives or mothers that this sort of outfit is only meant for the eyes of their own husbands?"

Wednesday, January 13, 2010

"The Master" lectures on T.S. Elliot

Bishop Williamson has all of the urbanity, mystical wonder and startling uniqueness of St. Augustine and Albert Camus, but he also has the childlike simplicity of St. John Vianney. His discussions on art, poetry and popular culture resonate with the kind of urgency and appreciation that Archbishop Sheen once commanded on his radio shows so long ago. Like a rare and precious unrepeatable prodigy, Bishop Williamson is, dare we say it, like a gift from heaven, although we don't deserve it, of a great 19th Century mind, spanning the years to reach us with long discarded and forgotten treasures and graces.

As the apostasy of the nations in modern times takes the whole world further and further away from God, so there are ever fewer artists and writers who have kept any sense of the things of the human spirit. All that matters henceforth is things material, which is why poetry is widely despised, and serious art, literature and music are all dying or dead. In this land of the blind, the American-born poet, dramatist and critic, T.S.Eliot (1888-1965) is a seer, but his well-known poem, “Journey of the Magi”, shows how he too lost one eye in his struggle with the modern wasteland.

That struggle is reflected in the main event of his life: his move at the age of 26 from the United States where he was born and bred, to England where he was based for the remainder of his life, hardly re-visiting the land of his birth. He once said that while his poetry represented a combination of his being born in the USA with his staying in England, nevertheless “in its sources, in its emotional springs, it comes from America.” Surely what he meant was that the problem set for him in his early years by the materialism of modern civilisation remained the driving force of his writing, like the grain of sand by its irritation generates the pearl in the oyster, but it was his move back from the New World to the Old that enabled him to get a handle on the problem, and to express in his poetry an at least partial solution.

But the spiritual problem set by the mass of men giving themselves over to materialism runs deep, and that is why many of Eliot’s poems are not easy to understand. He would say that poetry in modern times “has to be difficult”, meaning no doubt that if it is easy, it can hardly be true to the world around us. Thus his first published poems, written around the time of the first World War, already so broke with the century-old tradition of Keatsian romanticism that they were accused by some critics of not being poetry at all ! See for instance in the “Journey” how there are no rhymes at all, nor regular length of lines, nor regular rhythm.

Yet it is enough to read the poem aloud to appreciate the approximate four beats to a line which do make the “Journey” a poem, as opposed to mere prose. The comparison with Matthew Arnold’s “Dover Beach” is interesting. Observably Arnold is already (1851) loosening classical poetic discipline as to rhyme and rhythm, and Eliot loosens it still further. But Eliot does still have discipline. Alas, successors of Eliot can pretend to be following him when they have no discipline at all !

However, if one stops to think about it, old-fashioned rhymes would be too pretty for the problematic monologue of Eliot’s Magus (singular of the Latin plural “Magi”), whose modernity in search of the Christ Child requires a re-working of the Gospel story, found in Matthew II, 1-12. Then the three Magi, or astrologers, Kings from the East, followed a miraculous star over a long distance to pay homage and bring precious gifts to the new-born King of Kings, still a little child in the arms of his blessed Mother. Now we have in Eliot’s “Journey” an old man (line 32) recalling from long ago neither star, nor gifts, nor Mother, but in the poem’s three sections only the painful travelling (l.1-20), the arrival (l. 21-31) and the huge question of what it all meant (l. 32-43). Eliot’s is no Christmas card poem, nor short cut to comfort !

The poem’s first section (1-20), easy enough to understand, recreates the physical discomfort of the long journey from the East to Bethlehem, not mentioned. Nor does Eliot suggest there were any of the spiritual consolations that no doubt sustained the three original Magi on their historic journey. On the contrary (l.19,20), their modern successor has only the voices singing in his ears to tell him that he is crazy to be making such a journey.

The poem’s middle section (l.21-31) is less easy to understand. As the journey draws to its close, so the scenery has more warmth and life (21,22). In the next six lines (23-28), the “three trees” evoke the three crosses on Calvary while the “pieces of silver” evoke Judas Iscariot. All other details, e.g. the stream, mill, horse, tavern and wineskins, no doubt had a particular significance for Eliot himself, so that they are somehow suggestive, but of exactly what, it is difficult to say. Together they create a surreal scene which serves as transition from the material discomfort of the first section to the mysterious discomfort of the last section, for (28-31) our modern Magus is not necessarily happy to have arrived at his destination – “you may say” the place was “satisfactory”, he himself seems not so sure…

Indeed, in the poem’s third section (32-43) the old man is sure that the journey was worth the trouble (32,33), but it left him nevertheless with a huge question mark (35-39): how could a scene of birth, the scene of a new-born child, have left him at the same time with such a sensation of death, of “hard and bitter agony” (39) ? Because when the Magus got back to his kingdom (40), he found he could no longer live as he had lived before. He found his own people now “alien” to him, clutching hold of the pagan gods of his old way of life, which could no longer satisfy him, because after meeting the Child he could no longer be a pagan. But he had gone through no rebirth of his own into any new dispensation, so that the whole experience felt only like death. In conclusion (43), he would not be unhappy to die.

Contrast the story of the Magi as told by St Matthew. The Magi make the journey, full of faith that the star will lead them to the Child they mean to adore. It disappears when they visit the court of the treacherous Herod, but when it appears to them again on their way to Bethlehem, “they rejoiced with exceeding great joy” (v.10). It stands to reason that their faith and perseverance were rewarded by the divine Child with a flood of light and joy. They died as Saints, and their sacred relics are honoured to this day in the great Cathedral of Cologne which is dedicated to them.

Why then does our modern poet present such a different version of their journey to find Christ ? Because he does not have the faith of the original three Kings. Experts in the life and works of T.S.Eliot are unanimous that the “Journey of the Magi” is a largely autobiographical poem, having been published in August of 1927, just two months after Eliot had converted at 39 years of age to Anglicanism (Episcopalianism in the USA). Let us illustrate the poem by the life.

Eliot had begun life immersed in the “old dispensation” of Protestant Mid-west America (188-1906), Calvinist Harvard (1906-1910; 1911-1914) and liberal Oxford (1914-1915) which he quit after a year – “It’s pretty”, he said, “but I don’t like to be dead”. In 1915 he made an unfortunate marriage which caused him untold stress until (and after) he and his wife separated in 1933. From 1917 to 1925 he worked in a London bank, during which penitential time he published in 1922 what was no doubt the single most influential poem in English of the entire 20th century, “The Wasteland”.

In this poem Eliot could not have given expression to so much of the disorder of an “old dispensation” dying unless he had sensed that disorder, and he could not have sensed that disorder had he not had within him a considerable sense of the order that was missing. This sense of that order he had from the past and its masters. The “Wasteland” is steeped in quotations from them, notably Dante and Shakespeare, Eliot’s two favourites. Scratching his way back to the source of their order, Eliot nearly converted to Catholicism, but he stopped short at Anglicanism, partly because of Pius XI’s controversial condemnation in 1926 of “Action Francaise”, partly because Eliot wished to remain loyal to the country of his adoption. Five months after joining the Anglican Church he took out British citizenship.

This was the same year in which he published “Journey”, and now we can understand why Eliot’s Magus was so lacking in joy. Full marks to Eliot for not contenting himself with the plentiful delights of the disintegrating West (l.10); full marks for persevering on the journey towards Christ (l.33); full marks for never again being “at ease” in the “old dispensation”; but – mystery of grace and free-will – Eliot never made it all the way to Christ in his one true Church, and that is surely why his Magus never “rejoiced with exceeding great joy”.

Yet “God writes straight with crooked lines”. Many readers today immerse themselves in Eliot and feed on his poetry because it grapples with, and grasps, their dying dispensation, without imposing on them any of the demands of Christ’s dispensation. In this way Eliot must have served as at least a first step towards order and salvation for many souls who might not have gone near him had he made himself openly and fully a “Papist”. The same applies to a number of writers and artists who combine a grasp of modern disorder with a more or less disguised conveyance of the values of Christian order. If we should be grateful for small mercies, we should certainly be grateful for a large mercy like the poems of T.S. Eliot even if they are not always easy.
Posted by Stephen Heiner at 7:08 PM


http://truerestoration.blogspot.com/2010/01/poetry-project-vi-journey-of-magi-by-ts.html

Sunday, November 8, 2009

The Scottish Bishops' New Website and Frankfurt School

Thanks to our confreres in Scotland at Catholic Truth, he invites comments on the new site of the Scotish Catholic Bishop's Conference. It's not very Catholic looking, the packaging is more redolent of car sales than of something distinctly Catholic. The content matches the packaging, unfortunately. Would that at least the content was Catholic.

In a related sense we bring you Eleison Comments, Bishop Williamson's blog which goes into the subject of the Frankfuhrt School which migrated to the United States and enjoyed a tremendous amount of sway and influence over Catholic education, eventually spilling over into things Catholic as well. We believe it's especially noticeable in the Scotish Conference's website.

By Bishop Richard Williamson


Valuable lessons for all friends or lovers of "Western civilisation" are to be culled from an analysis of the USA's leftwards lurch in the 1960's by a Californian Professor of Psychology, accessible at their website. Professor Kevin MacDonald is there reviewing the critique of mass culture in a book on "The Frankfurt School in Exile".

The Frankfurt School needs to be much better known. It was a small but highly influential group of non-Christian intellectuals who, when Hitler came to power, fled from Germany to the USA, where in conjunction with a like-minded group of New York Trotskyists they continued to exert an influence out of all proportion to their numbers. Feeling a profound alienation from the "traditional Anglo-American culture", says MacDonald, they made war on it by promoting the individual against the family, multi-culture against White leadership, and modernism against tradition in all domains, especially the arts. "Theodor Adorno's desire for a socialist revolution led him to favour Modernist music that left the listener feeling unsatisfied and dislocated - music that consciously avoided harmony and predictability". The Frankfurt School wanted "the end of the order that bore the sonata".

The Frankfurt School scorned the American people's lack of desire for Revolution, and they blamed it on the people's "passivity, escapism and conformism", says the Professor, and on "late capitalist" control of the mass culture by, for instance, conservative organisations imposing moral standards on Hollywood. Yet when in the 1960's they themselves gained control of the media, universities and politics, they exploited to the full the mass culture and Hollywood and the people's on-going sleep-like condition to swing them to the left. The Professor laments the resulting vicious attack upon "White interests", "White identity" and the "traditional people and culture of the West".

The Professor is right on several counts. For instance, the war is not mainly between capitalism and communism, as the leftists originally thought, and as many Americans still think. Material comfort has lulled the American people to sleep, after the 1960's as before them. Also, on or off the leash, Hollywood and culture play a huge part in moulding minds and masses (which is why "Eleison Comments" often treat of cultural topics). Also, there does exist a small group, conscious and resolute, of highly influential enemies of "traditional Western culture".

However, to defend "White interests" the Professor needs to go well beyond White interests as such. The real problem is religious. Why did White Europeans ever have so much to give ? Because for centuries and centuries they co-operated with God's grace to profit best by the Catholic Faith. Why does this small group of leftists so hate "Western culture" ? Because it is the lingering remains of that Faith. And why did the small group become so powerful from the 1960's onwards ? Because at Vatican II the same "Whites" were mainly responsible for the Catholic officials' betrayal of the Faith which took place at that Council. Today's triumph of the leftists is no more nor less than a just punishment from God.

Professor, you are not asleep. Now pick up a Rosary !

Kyrie eleison.

London, England

Monday, October 26, 2009

SSPX Bishop Williamson Fined €12,000 by German Court

A British bishop has been fined €12,000 after a German court found him guilty of denying the Holocaust.

Richard Williamson received a letter today from the court in the Bavarian city of Regensburg informing him that he was being fined for incitement over his claim on Swedish television that fewer than 300,000 Jews died in Nazi death camps.

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