The Recusant #55 -Easter 2021

[Stone]

The Recusant - Issue 55

Editorial

Dear Reader,

The above dictionary definition (or one like it) was reproduced on this page in the very first issue of this newsletter, eight-and-a-half years ago. It seems that the minority who refuse to partake of immoral vaccines are to become modern day recusants in at least one sense of the word, the “refusers,” the outlaws, the ones who aren’t content simply to go along to get along. Of course there is another sense of the word, the religious sense, the one which more properly describes the Traditional Catholic Resistance in our time. Like our 16th Century English ancestors, we see all around us heresy, compromise and falling away from the Faith where once there had been only Traditional Catholic belief and practice. Like them, it falls to us, whether we like it or not, to be the ones to continue to profess the Faith publicly, entire and unaltered, even when it seems as though everyone else has stopped professing it, has given in, has adulterated it with modern errors in some form or has made their peace with the world in some other way. The effect of seeing so many whom we might once have been able to think of as comrades-in-arms choosing the easy way out instead of choosing to stand and fight might appear demoralising at first; but in reality this is how is always has been and, in a way, how it must always be: how could it be otherwise? 

Recusancy means primarily the refusal to compromise on the level of Catholic doctrine and practice, with Protestantism in the days of the so-called ‘Reformation’ or, in our own day, with the latest in a long line of subsidiarity heresies all of which in one way or another are the great-grandchildren of the Protestantism of the ‘Reformation’ (could there have been a French Revolution, 19th Century liberalism, 20th century modernism, or even capitalism and socialism without the Protestant ‘Reformation’? Almost certainly not. They Have Uncrowned Him by Abp. Lefebvre has more about this. But we digress…) Yet I honestly think that the modern day equivalent right now seems to be those who refuse to give in to the lies about the pandemic-that-never-was and get the “vaccine”-which-isn’t-even-a-vaccine.

The response of both governments and media to those who refuse, the harsh and unbending rhetoric used by supposed liberals when it comes to (*gasp*) anti-vaxxers, the relentless government-sponsored propaganda tells its own tale. Hence whenever you hear the media talk disparagingly of those who “refuse” to get the vaccine, or who “refuse” to comply with this or that tyrannical petty rule or regulation, or “conspiracy theorists” - which in reality means nothing more than those who “refuse” to accept the lies and propaganda in the mainstream media - you can hold your head up high and be proud. Remember that Catholics, especially in England, have a fine tradition of laughing at government propaganda, of refusing to obey government rules and of unapologetically operating on the wrong side of the law. Our heroes are men and women who died outlaws, especially between the 1530s and 1681 and are now Saints and martyrs. They never apologised for what they did. Of course, that is not to say that one must seek persecution any more than one ought to actively invite martyrdom (although the sentiment, the instinct, is still surely the right one!). One can be clever about how one goes about it. But never accept the phoney respectability which the world has to offer. How the mainstream media see things and how Our Lord sees them are not at all the same!

For the moment the vaccine - one ought to speak rather of “the vaccines” since there are several, and of a quite different sort! - are not mandatory and remain entirely voluntary. There are, however, little signs that that might not remain the case forever. Perhaps Our Lord will be merciful and spare us from any form of open and physical persecution just yet. On the other hand, we would surely do well to be prepared for a very rough time indeed in the months ahead. Whatever happens will be for the best, provided we do not lose sight of Him. It might also be useful to recall that for several generations after the bloody persecutions had come to an end in England and Ireland, a bloodless persecution remained. For most of the 18th century Catholics were treated as second-class citizens. The situation only began to ease-up thanks to the French revolution and war with France, when the realisation dawned on the government that the imminent threat of foreign invasion would be a little less terrifying if they did not have to simultaneously commit significant numbers of troops to the task of holding down a large minority of their own population. Allow me to illustrate the point by quoting the excellent Mr. William Cobbett. We will quote him at some length because it is well worth hearing what he has to say:

“[King] James II wished to put an end to the penal code; he wished for general toleration; he issued a proclamation, suspending all penal laws relating to religion and granting a general liberty of conscience to all his subjects. This was his offence. For this he and his family were set aside forever! No man can deny this. […] Now, we are going to see a sketch of this terrible code. It must be a mere sketch; two hundred Letters like this would not contain the whole of it. It went on increasing in bulk and in cruelty, from the Coronation of Elizabeth till nearly twenty years after that of George III [which was September 1761, so around 1781 - Ed.], till events came, as we shall see, and broke it up. It consisted, at last, of more than a hundred Acts of Parliament, all made for the express purpose of punishing men, because, and only because, they continued faithfully to adhere to the religion, in which our as well as their fathers had lived and died, during a period of nine hundred years! The code differed, in some respects, in its application with regard to England and Ireland, respectively.

In ENGLAND this code:

I. stripped the Peers of their hereditary right to sit in Parliament.

II. It stripped gentlemen of their right to be chosen Members of the Commons' House.

III. It took from all the right to vote at elections, and, though Magna Charta says, that no man shall be taxed without his own consent, it double-taxed every man who refused to abjure his religion, and thus become an apostate.

IV. It shut them out from all offices of power and trust, even the most insignificant.

V. It took from them the right of presenting to livings in the Church, though that right was given to Quakers and Jews.

VI. It fined them at the rate of £20 a month for keeping away from that Church, to go to which they deemed apostacy.

VII. It disabled them from keeping arms in their houses for their defence, from maintaining suits at law, from being guardians or executors, from practising in law or physic [i.e. medicine - Ed.], from travelling five miles from their houses, and all these under heavy penalties in case of disobedience.

VIII. If a married woman kept away from Church, she forfeited two-thirds of her dower, she could not be executrix to her husband [i.e. to her husband’s will, if he died before her - Ed.], and might, during her husband’s life-time, be imprisoned, unless ransomed by him at £10 a month.

IX. It enabled any four justices of the peace, in case a man had been convicted of not going to church, to call him before them, to compel him to abjure his religion, or, if he refused, to sentence him to banishment for life (without judge or jury), and, if he returned, he was to suffer death. 

X. It enabled any two justices of the peace to call before them, without any information, any man that they chose, above sixteen years of age, and if such man refused to abjure the Catholic religion, and continued in his refusal for six months, he was rendered incapable of possessing land, and any land, the possession of which might belong to him, came into the possession of the next Protestant heir, who was not obliged to account for any profits.

XI. It made such a man incapable of purchasing lands, and all contracts made by him or for him, were null and void.

XII. It imposed a fine of £10 a month for employing a Catholic schoolmaster in a private family, and £9, a day on the schoolmaster so employed.

XIII. It imposed a £100 fine for sending a child to a Catholic foreign school, and the child so sent was disabled from ever inheriting, purchasing, or enjoying lands, or profits, goods, debts, legacies, or sums of money. 

XIV. It punished the saying of Mass by a fine of £l20, and the hearing of Mass with a fine of £60.

XV. Any Catholic priest, who returned from beyond the seas, and who did not abjure his religion in three days afterwards, and also any person who returned to the Catholic faith,
or procured another to return to it, this merciless, this sanguinary code, punished with hanging, ripping out of bowels, and quartering!

In IRELAND the code was still more ferocious, more hideously bloody; for, in the first place, all the cruelties of the English code had, as the work of a few hours, a few strokes
of the pen, in one single act, been inflicted on unhappy Ireland; and, then, in addition, the Irish code contained, amongst many other violations of all the laws of justice and
humanity, the following twenty most savage punishments.

I. A Catholic schoolmaster, private or public, or even usher to a Protestant, was punished with imprisonment, banishment, and finally as a felon.

II. The Catholic clergy were not allowed to be in the country, without being registered and kept as a sort of prisoners at large, and rewards were given (out of the revenue raised in part on the Catholics) for discovering them, £50 for an archbishop or bishop, £20 for a priest, and £10 for a schoolmaster or usher.

III. Any two justices of the peace might call before them any Catholic, order him to declare, on oath, where and when he heard Mass, who were present, and the name and residence of any priest or schoolmaster that he might know of; and, if he refused to obey this inhuman inquisition, they had power to condemn him (without judge or jury) to a year's imprisonment in a felon’s gaol, or to pay £20. 

IV. No Catholic could purchase any manors, nor even hold under a lease for more than thirty-one years.

V. Any Protestant, if he suspected any one of holding property in trust for a Catholic, or of being concerned in any sale, lease, mortgage, or other contract, for a Catholic; any Protestant thus suspecting, might file a bill against the suspected trustee, and take the estate, or property, from him.

VI. Any Protestant seeing a Catholic tenant of a farm, the produce of which farm exceeded the amount of the rent by more than one-third, might dispossess the Catholic, and enter on the lease in his stead. 

VII. Any Protestant seeing a Catholic with a horse worth more than five pounds, might take the horse away from him upon tendering him five pounds.

VIII. In order to prevent the smallest chance of justice in these and similar cases, none but known Protestants were to be jurymen in the trial of any such cases.

IX. Horses of Catholics might be seized for the use of the militia; and, beside this, Catholics were compelled to pay double towards the militia.

X. Merchants, whose ships and goods might he taken by privateers, during a war with a Catholic Prince, were to be compensated for their losses by a levy on the goods and lands of Catholics only, though, mind, Catholics were at the same time impressed and compelled to shed their blood in the war against that same Catholic Prince.

XI. Property of a Protestant, whose heirs at law were Catholics, was to go to the nearest Protestant relation, just the same as if the Catholic heirs had been dead, though the property might he entailed on them.

XII. If there were no Protestant heir; then, in order to break up all Catholic families, the entail and all heirship were set aside, and the property was divided, share and share alike, amongst all the Catholic heirs. 

XIII. If a Protestant had an estate in Ireland, he was forbidden to marry a Catholic, in, or out, of Ireland.

XIV. All marriages between Protestants and Catholics were annulled, though many children might have proceeded from them.

XV. Every priest, who celebrated a marriage between a Catholic and a Protestant, or between two Protestants, was condemned to he hanged.

XVI. A Catholic father could not be guardian to, or have the custody of, his own child, if the child, however young, pretended to be a Protestant; but the child was taken from its own father, and put into the custody of a Protestant relation.

XVII. If any child of a Catholic became a Protestant, the parent was to be instantly summoned, and to be made to declare, upon oath, the full value of his or her property of all sorts, and then the Chancery was to make such distribution of the property as it thought fit.

XVIII. “Wives be obedient unto your own husbands,” says the great Apostle. “Wives, be disobedient to them,” said this horrid code; for, if the wife of a Catholic chose to turn Protestant, it set aside the will of the husband, and made her a participator in all his  possessions, in spite of him, however immoral, however bad a wife or bad a mother she might have been.

XIX. Honour thy father and thy mother, that thy days may be long in the land which the Lord, thy God, giveth thee. “Dishonour them,” said this savage code; for, if any one of the sons of a Catholic father became a Protestant, this son was to possess all the father had, and the father could not sell, could not mortgage, could not leave legacies, or portions out of his estate, by whatever title he might hold it, even though it might have been the fruit of his own toil.

XX. Lastly (of this score, but this is only a part), “the Church, as by law established,” [i.e. the Protestant Anglican so-called Church - Ed.] was, in her great indulgence, pleased not only to open her doors, but to award (out of the taxes) thirty pounds a year for life to any Catholic priest, who would abjure his religion and declare his belief in hers!”

(Cobbett, History of the Reformation, Chapter XV, §433 ff.)

By the 1800s things had begun generally to ease up for Catholics in England and Ireland and by the Victorian era we were only shunned, looked-down-on, disapproved-of and generally treated with suspicion, the sort or people one doesn’t really mix with in polite society. But nothing more. I suspect that in our case, everything is about to happen the other way round: we are already at the disapproval phase. The “penal code” will be what comes next, followed eventually by the bloody persecution, if (please God!) we have by then proved ourselves worthy of the honour.


A Very Serious Betrayal

I am sure that this will not come as news to many of you, if any at all, but for the record, the SSPX has continued to betray the fort all over the world. Here in England, over in the United States, in France and in Germany too, Traditional Catholics, many of whom no doubt thought that they were safe with the organisation founded by Archbishop Lefebvre, have been noticeably weakened by the irresponsible advice of their fearful and equivocating pastors. There is no question of this being just one or two rogue priests, the Fr. Robinsons of this world; rather, it is a deliberate institutional policy of compromise. Dress it up how you will, the SSPX is in effect encouraging people to voluntarily allow themselves and their children to be injected with these untested, unnecessary, potentially harmful so-called vaccines, despite the dubious provenance (involving the deliberate murder of the innocent), the implicit involvement in and acceptance of a big fat lie (the “pandemic” which never was) and the backing of all sorts of questionable organisations and individuals with whoknows-what agenda.

“The SSPX has ultimately said it’s fine ...so I took that as my final authority,” reads one recent text message from February 2021. God forgive the soul who took the “vaccine” based on such faulty reasoning, and God forgive the SSPX whose bad example and cowardly lack of fight influenced this soul to give-in. “The SSPX” in question, in case you are wondering, refers to the SSPX here in England. But it might equally have been France, the United States, Germany or who-knows-where else. One cannot help but wonder how many others have been influenced in exactly the same way. “If even the SSPX says it’s OK, then it must be OK!” The likelihood is that there are plenty such people out there, more than any of us realise.

“The SSPX appear to have chickened out,” reads another recently received message, before going on to remark that all the “conservative” or indultish priests appear to have had the jab already, “as have lots of Traditional Catholics” of all stripes, including SSPX: “One expected more from these soi-disant Traditionalists.” Quite so. At least the Resistance is still, you know, resisting. But has it really come to this? We’re not even at the stage yet where it’s mandatory, the jab is still entirely voluntary! What led to the SSPX caving in so easily? Many of you know the answer already, but for the record it is this.

Morals flow from doctrine. Some people doubtless thought we were making too much fuss over the Doctrinal Declaration back in 2013 (see Issue 27, p.18 if you are not aware of what
the issue is with that infamous document). Was it all a lot of fiddly technicalities, pie-in-the-sky mumbo-jumbo which the common man cannot possibly be expected to understand? Or was it the front line in the battle for Western civilisation? If we were right, then the SSPX abandoned its doctrinal stand and that is something which will always have a chain reaction of negative consequences, since ultimately everything else flows from doctrine. Well, now the SSPX cannot be relied on when it comes to evolution and it even cannot be relied on when it comes to the most pressing moral questions of the day. This is where tampering with doctrine leads. Go back and read your old back issues of The Recusant from 2013, 2014 and 2015.
Didn’t we say all along that this sort of thing would be the result? And it won’t stop here.

What could be worse than encouraging people to take the vaccine? Yes. Arguably the collapse and surrender of the SSPX on the question of evolution is ten thousand times worse. The dethroning of God as “Creator” (isn’t that what you call Him every time you say the rosary, “I believe in God...Creator of heaven and earth”? And yet how can be a “creator” if he didn’t actually create anything, but only caused a “big bang” which in turn caused everything else, rather like the “great Architect” of the Deists who wound up the watch and then sat back and let it do it’s thing..? Think about it...) is the loose thread which unravels the whole garment.

Sent in by a reader. Well, he is after all a modernist and a bigwig in the conciliar church - what would one expect? The SSPX may not be quite so openly enthusiastic, their response might be wrapped up in a lot of umming and ahing, but doesn’t what they say amount to the same thing in the end..?

But as you might imagine, it often takes a moral question which affects “me personally” (the covid vaccines, for instance) before many people will wake up and realise. Let us hope that many people do in fact wake up and realise that something is wrong and that, having done so, they will be able to see clearly at long last who their real friends are. 

In these pages, then, the reader will find “Fr. Robinson is Still At It.” Well? He is still at it! This was not a flash in the pan, it isn’t going to go away! We will keep banging on about it because it keeps being current and relevant. We also include a snapshot of the vaccines controversy from the SSPX in Germany as well as a more detailed look at what our own district newsletter had to say on the question, and the Superior General, Fr. Pagliarani, too. (Hint: it’s more or less the same message!). The Fr. Sélégny article is still visible on the US district website in English and on the French district website in French.


Down With Rulez!   

I tell people flippantly that I cannot sleep at night without breaking at least one of these stupid covid rules each day, if nothing else just to keep my self respect. I am joking, but at the same time I am not joking. In such a spirit of disobedience (the right sort), a group of faithful joined Fr. Hewko for a mini pilgrimage to Glastonbury in January. Despite being completely “illegal” and “verboten” the day included Mass in public without permission in a place where we strictly speaking had no right to be, even though it was in outside and in view of a nearby road. Following the Mass, we all made our way the short distance on foot for a group visit to both Glastonbury Abbey and up Glastonbury Tor, again all without permission sought or given. Nowhere would let us have Mass, no venues were for hire and the Abbey certainly would not allow it. So Fr. Hewko simply said Mass anyway, without permission. As far as I am aware, nobody else is or was holding any such pilgrimages or events due to the “lockdown rules” in force. Pictures, as usual, can be found in the centre pages. Thank you Fr. Hewko, thank you to those who were brave enough to join us and thank you St. Padre Pio for the one day of fine weather, right before a snowstorm overtook us! The day went without a hitch. Divine Providence and the intercession of the Saints looked after us for the whole day.


30 Years Ago…

25th March 1991 was the day on which Archbishop Lefebvre went to his eternal reward. May I take this opportunity to encourage you all to re-read his words and to make an extra effort to make them more widely known and read? There can be found the answer to this crisis in the Church which is currently affecting the world so badly. Had it not been for Archbishop Lefebvre none of us would be Traditional or even Catholic of any description, the Traditional Mass would have disappeared some fifty-plus years ago, and the teaching of the Church consigned to a curiosity of history (assuming of course that the anti-Christ had not arrived by now…) Everyone owes a massive debt to him, including a great many people who do not even realise it, and no one more so than his own sons who have been edging away from him for a few years now. He is becoming less and less known at a time where we need his example more and more to see us through a deepening crisis in the Church and the world. We can expect the SSPX to continue using him as a mascot; what they will not do is follow his teaching or example. In a few weeks it will be thirty-three years since the consecrations at Écône, all four bishops are looking more elderly by the day, but there have been and will be no further consecrations. Let us redouble our prayers.

A holy and blessed Easter to one and all, friend and foe alike.

- The Editor