The Recusant
An unofficial SSPX newsletter, fighting a guerilla war for the soul of Tradition!
15th April, 2014
Dear Friends and Benefactors,
In the newly-branded website
sspx.org in the “About Us” section under the SSPX’s “Key Concerns” we
find that one of them is “Modernism.” The website states that “Modernism
(is a) dominant philosophical trend of the twentieth century, one still
persistent today...” (St. Pius X is not mentioned in the Modernism
section even once. Not one point in the website is taken from his
“Pascendi.” Is this something to worry about?)
In the greatest encyclical of our times, Pascendi Dominici Gregis
(1907) St. Pius X speaks of Modernism as THE heresy of our times.
According to this most august Supreme Pontiff Modernism is a philosophy,
a theology, an exegesis, a science, a history, a criticism, in a word a
completely coherent heresy, united into one demonic whole. He states:
“And now with our eyes fixed upon the whole system, no one will be
surprised that we should define it to be the synthesis of all
heresies... (which) system means the destruction not of the Catholic
religion alone, but of all religion.” (#39, Pascendi)
His perspective seems to embrace more than “a philosophical trend,” something akin to a trend in clothes. According to St. Pius X Modernism is more serious than the trend of teenagers wearing oversized baggy jeans with holes. While this type of trend may be disturbing, given the time jeans get holes in them anyway and given a sufficient quantity of genetically modified Big Macs those jeans get less baggy as well. Further, no trend of any kind synthesizes or embraces the whole world.
Modernism is the life blood of our modern world. It flows in the deepest part of our veins and arteries, carrying the oxygenated blood of evolution throughout our world not to revivify and nitrify it but to make our world evolve into gods. Evolution is the essential principle of Modernism. It unites all the elements of the modern world into a new synthesis of souls who think they are little gods just waiting for the “true god” (the Anti-Christ) to come and rule over them in a New World Order of peace under this demonic messiah – whom the world of 2014 is nearly ready to receive.
Causes of Modernism
Let us consider here some of the causes of this most pernicious heresy (not trend) of our times. St. Pius X gives two moral causes, namely vain curiosity which is “the desire for novelties” and pride which “dwells in modernism as in its own house” (#40) He gives two intellectual causes which are ignorance and “the marriage (connubio) between the Faith and false Philosophy.” The desire for novelties is fed us in every TV commercial and in the latest widgets and gadgets of modern technology. Modern man believes he is superior to all previous men since he is the latest, greatest development of evolutiuon. Pride is the owner of this modern evolutionary house. One no longer needs education, or money, or prominence to be filled with pride, he only needs to be born in the modern world of glorious superior i-phones, TVs, advanced toasters, etc.
In this letter let us consider primarily the first intellectual cause of Modernism, the life blood of our Modern World and in brief some solutions.
The Problem of Ignorance
The first intellectual cause of modernism mentioned by St. Pius X in Pascendi (1907) is ignorance. In theology we speak of God as the first cause of all things, acting everywhere holding all things in existence. If God, who is the first cause of your hair ceases to act upon it, you go bald. If God acts more on the hair of Samson, however – it’s a bad day to be a Philistine.
In a similar vein ignorance is the first cause of Modernism. The more ignorant one is of truth the more space the devil has in which to place his lies. Since Modernism is the synthesis of all heresies and per consequence of all errors which come due to that first heresy of thinking that man could be like God (cf. Adam and Eve), then the more ignorant one is of any truth such as the fact that we don’t come from monkeys and therefore shouldn’t act like them, or the truth that scientists will never be able to make new life, or the truth that since the final sixth literal day of creation nothing is either being created or destroyed, then more and more we are sucked into the vast pit of demonic modernism. St. Pius X explains that the modernists are cunning, speak in confused language and on any and every topic, of which they always claim to be the experts, in their unabashed pride. They act confused and disjointed only so as not to be discovered. They are in reality leading souls through smoke and fog into this most wicked heresy unto the destruction and damnation of their immortal souls – unless it is removed by the miraculous intervention of the Good God’s infinite mercy and grace.
Modernist Goggles
Modernists wear Google night vision goggles similar to the new Google eyeglass cameras which look like ordinary glasses but are in fact cameras. They act like they don’t know where they are going in the darkness of the modern world but they do know where they go and where they are trying to lead us. The top scientists, doctors, world leaders, bankers, economists, theologians, etc. Of our times are Satanic modernists who when they come out of their lodges into the public eye put on these night vision Google modernist goggles unless they are very adept in wickedness and more advanced in the heresy, in which case they wear night vision Google modernist contacts so that even the astute won’t catch them. Ignorance, my dear friends, is not bliss; it is rather the greatest tool for the father of lies to deceive souls. Any and every truth is an enemy of the devil. Why is it that our modern schools dumb down our children rather than build them up? Why are modern movies, stories, reality shows, television, etc. making souls more and more ignorant of the truth? Why are our young boys minds being filled with useless trivia concerning sports, rock musicians and so on? Why? Why? Why? – Because a small mind filled with trivial knowledge and trivial pursuit has no space left therein for the placement of eternal essential truth and the pursuit of eternal happiness of heaven. It is therefore seemingly impossible to get truth into souls today since the devil has so many defences against truth as well as so many attacks against it.
Active Ignorance
There is found today what can be called “active ignorance.” In normal times ignorance is only an absence of the knowledge of truth e.g. Who made you? Ignorant answer- I don’t know. Modernist ignorant answer (active ignorance) – I know that I don’t know who made me, I know that nobody knows and you don’t know either because God is beyond all knowability.
Active ignorance is a kind of Donald Rumsfeld theology of “things we know that we don’t know”. Here is where the devil has been most victorious in our times. He has convinced modern man that he knows with certitude that he will not ever know God. This kind of certitude is found only in hell where the damned do truly know with absolute certitude that they will never know God face to face. They will know only His Divine Justice forever in eternal fire.
Catechetical Remedy
What’s the answer to this cause of ignorance? First of all Catechism. St. Pius X said elsewhere that error and heresy spread not so much because of heresiarchs but because Catholics don’t know their Faith. (Acerbo Nimis, On Teaching Christian Doctrine, #1, 1905). Let us note here that a Catholic who memorizes the Catechism may only have memorized the words in a book like memorizing the names of all the characters in the original Star Trek series as well as in all its “new generations.”
The devil through modernism pours demonic thinking into modern souls. This is a theological problem to which the simple, clear, unconfused Traditional Catholic Catechism gives the theological clear and only answer. What is required to KNOW the Catechism? Firstly, it must be memorized. Secondly, it must be believed and known as absolutely certain with the certitude of Faith. St. Thomas Aquinas assures us that the certitude of Faith is the greatest of all certitudes. For example, which is more certain, a) an axe through the neck causing it to be separated from the body is deadly to health and causes certain immediate death, or b) burning incense to a false god is deadly to health and causes certain immediate death? Which is more certain? What will we do if presented with a choice between these certitudes? Suppose a Civil Magistrate says to one: “Either burn incense before this idol or you shall certainly die by beheading.”
Choice of Certitudes, Choice of Health
Now we must choose between certitude and certitude, between health and health. The choice that we make will depend on which certitude we KNOW is more certain. What choice would we make if pressed today by such a question? What choice we make before the Creator of both certitudes and both healths?
If we KNOW our Catechism we will know that mortal sin of worshipping idols kills the soul forever whereas head removal is only a temporary problem which will be resolved on the last day of this world’s history. God has a head replacement program which will last longer than any of the present day hair replacement programs available. Also, head replacement will never be required. Hence the Catholic who KNOWS his catechism gladly runs to the axe rather than offend the most wonderful, most true and only God of all Creation. Or as a modern soul might say: the choice is “a no brainer.” Such choices will come again. The Anti-Christ will ask us to choose the ability to buy food for health on condition that we reveive the mark of the beast. The Holy Father asked our founder to choose between the life of approbation by modernist Rome or the life of Faith by providing for future priests of Faith unapproved by that conciliar Rome. He chose according to the Catechism of his childhood. Had he become ignorant of the Catechism he could not have made that global Church-saving, soul-saving Faith-saving choice on June 30, 1988. St. Pius X wrote 10 different encyclicals and decrees on Catechism in only 11 years of his papacy. KNOW your catechism with the greatest certitude. Never doubt it no matter what the liars of modern universities and the History Channel say against it. KNOW that they shall wither like the grass but “not one jot or tittle” of our God’s words shall pass away. (Mt. 24:35)
A Problem of Truth not Trends
The truth will out. The truth is the living word of God. The Truth created all things and sustains all things and at the end og the world the Truth shall come in power and majesty to judge all things. This is why the decil hates all truths whether they be about created things, about men or angels, or about the Good God Himself. The devil lves ignorance and it is his tool. We followers and adorers of the Truth must therefore seek truth everywhere and in all things without exception and we must detest and hate all lies, not only so called “religious lies.” This foolish deceit of the devil indicates that moral lies, business lies, lies of modern science, lies of economics, lies of false psychology, lies of history, etc are only secondary and unimportant. We Catholics must hate lies and the father of all lies just as we love the Truth made flash, the Creator of all truth as well as all the truths He created. Modernism despises and attacks them all and therefore it is not at all “a philosophical trend still prevalent even today,” but rather the most wicked “synthesis of all heresies,” as St. Pius X called it.
Some modern theologians object that Modernism is not a heresy since it was never defined as a heresy and St. Pius X calls it “the synthesis of all heresies” only. Reply: That is like saying a poisonous pill concocted by a mad scientist which is made up of all poisons is not a poison but only “the synthesis of all poisons,” and therefore in a court of law the victims of the mad scientist could not be said to have been poisoned. The scientist could not be convicted of murder for poisoning his victims since he only administered “the synthesis of all poisons” to his subjects who must have died from unknown causes.
Let us KNOW our Catechism, fill our minds with truth and then the devil will have no space in which to place his modernism and he will just have to go back to hell. And be aware of getting faith from the watered down neo-SSPX, which has at best lost its clarity of truth and at worst seeks to have a marriage with the modernists in Rome and calls its modernism only a relatively harmless “philosophical trend.” Souls following this path are in the most grave peril. What is the SSPX, named after St. Pius X, doing speaking to souls of modernism without any of the teachings of the greatest anti-modernist Pope – the very same St. Pius X? It smells of a grave betrayal.
Kentucky Updates
Meanwhile, we persevere in Kentucky. The Seminarians had two winter weeks with 40-below-zero weather and frozen water pipes as well as semi-frozen toes. They learned the scientific truth that shivering generates heat just enough to keep the blood from freezing. If only the pipes shivered enough they wouldn’t have frozen.
Summer cometh with its heat. There is not airglow in our seminary building and we are looking to install a new heating/air conditioning and to repair some of the existing structures and make some extensions as well to accommodate future religious as well as retreatants. Our seminarians are seeking the kingdom of God and His justice, but they are hoping for a little central air besides. Without it, summer retreats in Kentucky hear and summer studies may leave a brain frazzled. Your help is most appreciated.
Summer Retreats
We are finally scheduling some Ignatian retreats in response to the request of many of you. Father Hewko and I will preach Ignatian retreats in Kentucky for women – June 16-21 and for men June 23-28. For the West Coast in the Post Falls, Idaho area an Ignatian retreat will be held for men Aug. 11-16 and Aug. 18-23 for women. Please contact by email: ourladyofgoodsuccess@ymail.com for those interested in each retreat. If we can schedule more then we shall.
Resistance Update
Also the resistance is steadily growing. Our little fragile Marian Corps somehow miraculously continues. Australia is strong, Asia increases under the indefatigable Fr. Francois Chazal, more centres are opening up in the United States and more requests are slowly coming in from Europe and Africa for help from Boston, Kentucky. South America is well cared for by the tireless work of Fr. Thomas Aquinas’s monastery and Fr. Cardozo and company. Bishop Williamson is being kept busy administering the Sacraments to our flocks. We now have approximately 70 small Mass centres in Asia, Australia, USA, Canada, Ireland and the UK as well as a little contingent in Germany. South America has many totalling, after less than two years, more than 100 Mass centres.
Stay faithful, do not be discouraged by a few million devils so long as we are wrapped in the mantle of Our Holy Mother and so long as we stay close to her side. We await her victory over wicked satanic modernism, a victory that will come in a moment by just a flick of her heel. The devil is crouching in fear of her heel, let us not fear but eagerly await her certain victory.
In Christ Our King,
Modernism is the life blood of our modern world. It flows in the deepest part of our veins and arteries, carrying the oxygenated blood of evolution throughout our world not to revivify and nitrify it but to make our world evolve into gods. Evolution is the essential principle of Modernism. It unites all the elements of the modern world into a new synthesis of souls who think they are little gods just waiting for the “true god” (the Anti-Christ) to come and rule over them in a New World Order of peace under this demonic messiah – whom the world of 2014 is nearly ready to receive.
Causes of Modernism
Let us consider here some of the causes of this most pernicious heresy (not trend) of our times. St. Pius X gives two moral causes, namely vain curiosity which is “the desire for novelties” and pride which “dwells in modernism as in its own house” (#40) He gives two intellectual causes which are ignorance and “the marriage (connubio) between the Faith and false Philosophy.” The desire for novelties is fed us in every TV commercial and in the latest widgets and gadgets of modern technology. Modern man believes he is superior to all previous men since he is the latest, greatest development of evolutiuon. Pride is the owner of this modern evolutionary house. One no longer needs education, or money, or prominence to be filled with pride, he only needs to be born in the modern world of glorious superior i-phones, TVs, advanced toasters, etc.
In this letter let us consider primarily the first intellectual cause of Modernism, the life blood of our Modern World and in brief some solutions.
The Problem of Ignorance
The first intellectual cause of modernism mentioned by St. Pius X in Pascendi (1907) is ignorance. In theology we speak of God as the first cause of all things, acting everywhere holding all things in existence. If God, who is the first cause of your hair ceases to act upon it, you go bald. If God acts more on the hair of Samson, however – it’s a bad day to be a Philistine.
In a similar vein ignorance is the first cause of Modernism. The more ignorant one is of truth the more space the devil has in which to place his lies. Since Modernism is the synthesis of all heresies and per consequence of all errors which come due to that first heresy of thinking that man could be like God (cf. Adam and Eve), then the more ignorant one is of any truth such as the fact that we don’t come from monkeys and therefore shouldn’t act like them, or the truth that scientists will never be able to make new life, or the truth that since the final sixth literal day of creation nothing is either being created or destroyed, then more and more we are sucked into the vast pit of demonic modernism. St. Pius X explains that the modernists are cunning, speak in confused language and on any and every topic, of which they always claim to be the experts, in their unabashed pride. They act confused and disjointed only so as not to be discovered. They are in reality leading souls through smoke and fog into this most wicked heresy unto the destruction and damnation of their immortal souls – unless it is removed by the miraculous intervention of the Good God’s infinite mercy and grace.
Modernist Goggles
Modernists wear Google night vision goggles similar to the new Google eyeglass cameras which look like ordinary glasses but are in fact cameras. They act like they don’t know where they are going in the darkness of the modern world but they do know where they go and where they are trying to lead us. The top scientists, doctors, world leaders, bankers, economists, theologians, etc. Of our times are Satanic modernists who when they come out of their lodges into the public eye put on these night vision Google modernist goggles unless they are very adept in wickedness and more advanced in the heresy, in which case they wear night vision Google modernist contacts so that even the astute won’t catch them. Ignorance, my dear friends, is not bliss; it is rather the greatest tool for the father of lies to deceive souls. Any and every truth is an enemy of the devil. Why is it that our modern schools dumb down our children rather than build them up? Why are modern movies, stories, reality shows, television, etc. making souls more and more ignorant of the truth? Why are our young boys minds being filled with useless trivia concerning sports, rock musicians and so on? Why? Why? Why? – Because a small mind filled with trivial knowledge and trivial pursuit has no space left therein for the placement of eternal essential truth and the pursuit of eternal happiness of heaven. It is therefore seemingly impossible to get truth into souls today since the devil has so many defences against truth as well as so many attacks against it.
Active Ignorance
There is found today what can be called “active ignorance.” In normal times ignorance is only an absence of the knowledge of truth e.g. Who made you? Ignorant answer- I don’t know. Modernist ignorant answer (active ignorance) – I know that I don’t know who made me, I know that nobody knows and you don’t know either because God is beyond all knowability.
Active ignorance is a kind of Donald Rumsfeld theology of “things we know that we don’t know”. Here is where the devil has been most victorious in our times. He has convinced modern man that he knows with certitude that he will not ever know God. This kind of certitude is found only in hell where the damned do truly know with absolute certitude that they will never know God face to face. They will know only His Divine Justice forever in eternal fire.
Catechetical Remedy
What’s the answer to this cause of ignorance? First of all Catechism. St. Pius X said elsewhere that error and heresy spread not so much because of heresiarchs but because Catholics don’t know their Faith. (Acerbo Nimis, On Teaching Christian Doctrine, #1, 1905). Let us note here that a Catholic who memorizes the Catechism may only have memorized the words in a book like memorizing the names of all the characters in the original Star Trek series as well as in all its “new generations.”
The devil through modernism pours demonic thinking into modern souls. This is a theological problem to which the simple, clear, unconfused Traditional Catholic Catechism gives the theological clear and only answer. What is required to KNOW the Catechism? Firstly, it must be memorized. Secondly, it must be believed and known as absolutely certain with the certitude of Faith. St. Thomas Aquinas assures us that the certitude of Faith is the greatest of all certitudes. For example, which is more certain, a) an axe through the neck causing it to be separated from the body is deadly to health and causes certain immediate death, or b) burning incense to a false god is deadly to health and causes certain immediate death? Which is more certain? What will we do if presented with a choice between these certitudes? Suppose a Civil Magistrate says to one: “Either burn incense before this idol or you shall certainly die by beheading.”
Choice of Certitudes, Choice of Health
Now we must choose between certitude and certitude, between health and health. The choice that we make will depend on which certitude we KNOW is more certain. What choice would we make if pressed today by such a question? What choice we make before the Creator of both certitudes and both healths?
If we KNOW our Catechism we will know that mortal sin of worshipping idols kills the soul forever whereas head removal is only a temporary problem which will be resolved on the last day of this world’s history. God has a head replacement program which will last longer than any of the present day hair replacement programs available. Also, head replacement will never be required. Hence the Catholic who KNOWS his catechism gladly runs to the axe rather than offend the most wonderful, most true and only God of all Creation. Or as a modern soul might say: the choice is “a no brainer.” Such choices will come again. The Anti-Christ will ask us to choose the ability to buy food for health on condition that we reveive the mark of the beast. The Holy Father asked our founder to choose between the life of approbation by modernist Rome or the life of Faith by providing for future priests of Faith unapproved by that conciliar Rome. He chose according to the Catechism of his childhood. Had he become ignorant of the Catechism he could not have made that global Church-saving, soul-saving Faith-saving choice on June 30, 1988. St. Pius X wrote 10 different encyclicals and decrees on Catechism in only 11 years of his papacy. KNOW your catechism with the greatest certitude. Never doubt it no matter what the liars of modern universities and the History Channel say against it. KNOW that they shall wither like the grass but “not one jot or tittle” of our God’s words shall pass away. (Mt. 24:35)
A Problem of Truth not Trends
The truth will out. The truth is the living word of God. The Truth created all things and sustains all things and at the end og the world the Truth shall come in power and majesty to judge all things. This is why the decil hates all truths whether they be about created things, about men or angels, or about the Good God Himself. The devil lves ignorance and it is his tool. We followers and adorers of the Truth must therefore seek truth everywhere and in all things without exception and we must detest and hate all lies, not only so called “religious lies.” This foolish deceit of the devil indicates that moral lies, business lies, lies of modern science, lies of economics, lies of false psychology, lies of history, etc are only secondary and unimportant. We Catholics must hate lies and the father of all lies just as we love the Truth made flash, the Creator of all truth as well as all the truths He created. Modernism despises and attacks them all and therefore it is not at all “a philosophical trend still prevalent even today,” but rather the most wicked “synthesis of all heresies,” as St. Pius X called it.
Some modern theologians object that Modernism is not a heresy since it was never defined as a heresy and St. Pius X calls it “the synthesis of all heresies” only. Reply: That is like saying a poisonous pill concocted by a mad scientist which is made up of all poisons is not a poison but only “the synthesis of all poisons,” and therefore in a court of law the victims of the mad scientist could not be said to have been poisoned. The scientist could not be convicted of murder for poisoning his victims since he only administered “the synthesis of all poisons” to his subjects who must have died from unknown causes.
Let us KNOW our Catechism, fill our minds with truth and then the devil will have no space in which to place his modernism and he will just have to go back to hell. And be aware of getting faith from the watered down neo-SSPX, which has at best lost its clarity of truth and at worst seeks to have a marriage with the modernists in Rome and calls its modernism only a relatively harmless “philosophical trend.” Souls following this path are in the most grave peril. What is the SSPX, named after St. Pius X, doing speaking to souls of modernism without any of the teachings of the greatest anti-modernist Pope – the very same St. Pius X? It smells of a grave betrayal.
Kentucky Updates
Meanwhile, we persevere in Kentucky. The Seminarians had two winter weeks with 40-below-zero weather and frozen water pipes as well as semi-frozen toes. They learned the scientific truth that shivering generates heat just enough to keep the blood from freezing. If only the pipes shivered enough they wouldn’t have frozen.
Summer cometh with its heat. There is not airglow in our seminary building and we are looking to install a new heating/air conditioning and to repair some of the existing structures and make some extensions as well to accommodate future religious as well as retreatants. Our seminarians are seeking the kingdom of God and His justice, but they are hoping for a little central air besides. Without it, summer retreats in Kentucky hear and summer studies may leave a brain frazzled. Your help is most appreciated.
Summer Retreats
We are finally scheduling some Ignatian retreats in response to the request of many of you. Father Hewko and I will preach Ignatian retreats in Kentucky for women – June 16-21 and for men June 23-28. For the West Coast in the Post Falls, Idaho area an Ignatian retreat will be held for men Aug. 11-16 and Aug. 18-23 for women. Please contact by email: ourladyofgoodsuccess@ymail.com for those interested in each retreat. If we can schedule more then we shall.
Resistance Update
Also the resistance is steadily growing. Our little fragile Marian Corps somehow miraculously continues. Australia is strong, Asia increases under the indefatigable Fr. Francois Chazal, more centres are opening up in the United States and more requests are slowly coming in from Europe and Africa for help from Boston, Kentucky. South America is well cared for by the tireless work of Fr. Thomas Aquinas’s monastery and Fr. Cardozo and company. Bishop Williamson is being kept busy administering the Sacraments to our flocks. We now have approximately 70 small Mass centres in Asia, Australia, USA, Canada, Ireland and the UK as well as a little contingent in Germany. South America has many totalling, after less than two years, more than 100 Mass centres.
Stay faithful, do not be discouraged by a few million devils so long as we are wrapped in the mantle of Our Holy Mother and so long as we stay close to her side. We await her victory over wicked satanic modernism, a victory that will come in a moment by just a flick of her heel. The devil is crouching in fear of her heel, let us not fear but eagerly await her certain victory.
In Christ Our King,
Fr. Joseph Pfeiffer