I think you have all missed the typical British humor that this column contains. It is just brimming with satire and quite funny and definitely very clever:
Read it with my pair of glasses:
Eleison Comments Number CCLXXV (275)
20 October 2012
HOME READING
When a while back these “Comments” advised readers to fortify their homes in case public bastions of the Faith might, due to the wickedness of the times, prove to be a thing of the past, a few readers wrote in to ask just how homes might be fortified. In fact various spiritual and material means of defending home and family have been suggested in previous numbers of the “Comments”, notably of course the Holy Rosary, but one fortification has gone unmentioned which I think I would try in place of television if I had a family to defend: reading aloud each night to the children selected chapters from Maria Valtorta’s Poem of the Man-God. (Of course the topic is controversial - but isn't it the Bishop's controversy that is leading to his ouster - he's poking fun at himself here loud and clear) And when we had reached the end of the five volumes in English, I imagine us starting again from the beginning, and so on, until all the children had left home ! (Yes you have to keep on saying that 2+2=4 until this kid i.e. himself leaves home - and even after)
Yet the Poem has many and eloquent enemies. (Who doesn't around here ?) It consists of episodes from the lives of Our Lord and Our Lady, from her immaculate conception through to her assumption into Heaven, as seen in visions received, believably from Heaven, during the Second World War in northern Italy by Maria Valtorta, an unmarried woman of mature age lying in a sick-bed, permanently crippled from an injury to her back inflicted several years earlier. (Any one for a TV interview and an enforced stay in St. George's House ?) Notes included in the Italian edition (running to over four thousand pages in ten volumes) show how afraid she was of being deceived by the Devil, and many people are not in fact convinced that the Poem truly came from God. Let us look at three main objections.
Firstly, the Poem was put on the Church’s Index of forbidden books in the 1950’s, (and so have I) which was before Rome (SSPX) went neo-modernist in the 1960’s. The reason given for the condemnation was the romanticizing and sentimentalizing of the Gospel events. Secondly the Poem is accused of countless doctrinal errors. Thirdly Archbishop Lefebvre objected to the Poem that its giving so many physical details of Our Lord’s daily life makes him too material, and brings us too far down from the spiritual level of the four Gospels. (Guess who else is about to be put on ice by writing another column for you)
But firstly, how could the modernists have taken over Rome in the 1960’s, as they did, had they not already been well established within Rome in the 1950’s ? (As they are indeed in the Society and for a long time already) The Poem, like the Gospels (e.g. Jn.XI, 35, etc.), is full of sentiment but always proportional to its object. The Poem is for any sane judge, in my opinion, neither sentimental nor romanticized. (But who cares ? He's already been called a crank by the "crow" and others within the SSPX !) Secondly, the seeming doctrinal errors are not difficult to explain, one by one, as is done by a competent theologian in the notes to be found in the Italian edition of the Poem. (Yes and the Fellay regime will explain away all the doctrinal problems of Vatcian II by the new notes in the 16 Council Texts that BXVI will pencil in this year of Faith) And thirdly, with all due respect to Archbishop Lefebvre, I would argue that modern man needs the material detail for him to believe again in the reality of the Gospels. Has not too much “spirituality” kicked Our Lord upstairs, so to speak, while cinema and television have taken over modern man’s sense of reality on the ground floor ? As Our Lord was true man and true God, so the Poem is at every moment both fully spiritual and fully material. (With all due respect to today's Superior General the SSPX has kicked Our Lord upstairs as well)
From non-electronic reading of the Poem in the home (Excuse me but aren't you reading me now, here, on the internet, on your computer ? - This is the greatest satirical comment of them all) , I can imagine many benefits, besides the real live contact between parents reading and children listening. (With switched off computers as the SSPX superiors would dearly love me to stop writing and you reading) Children (You dear reader) soak in from their surroundings like sponges soak in water. From the reading of chapters of the Poem selected according to the children’s age, I can imagine almost no end to how much they could learn about Our Lord and Our Lady. And the questions they would ask ! (Aren't you going to start asking what the heck the SSPX bigwigs are up to with a sell out ?) And the answers that the parents would have to come up with ! (Howler !) I do believe the Poem could greatly fortify a home. (Dripping with sarcasm as we say in England)
Kyrie eleison.