Dear Friends and Benefactors,
Jiminy Cricket! If ever the writer of this letter were to fear its readers going to sleep, all he need do would be to write "Slacks III"! From "Slacks I" and "Slacks II" the mail is still coning in, continuing about evenly divided for and against women's trousers. No, this letter will not be "Slacks III", the writing of which will be held over as a threat to keep some of you in line! (Yes, Madam, I heard you — nothing will keep you in line!) However, we will be printing (anonymously) some of the very fine letters received here in praise of skirts for women. Be warned, these will be printed on brown paper, so when they arrive, whosoever wishes may direct them straight into the circular file! For indeed the writing of this letter is a tyranny, but its reading is a democracy!
Meanwhile on the Superior General's blue paper is coming to you this month an interview given last summer by the Society of St. Pius X's Superior General Rev: Fr. Franz Schmidberger, to the international magazine "30 Days". Fr. Schmidberger was asked principally about on-going relations between the Society and Rome. In his replies one can see the Society of St. Pilus X continuing along the lines laid down by Archbishop Lefebvre: openness to Rome, respect for Rome, the classical attachment of any Roman Catholic to Rome, but a firm refusal to follow today's Rome in its modernist errors.
Fr. Schmidberger tells that since Archbishop Lefebvre's death last March, there has not been much contact between Rome and the Society. Elsewhere Cardinal Oddi was quoted last autumn as saying that henceforth Rome is disregarding the Society. All honour to his Eminence and to his colleagues, but I for one do not believe him. The Pharisees pretended to disregard Our Lord, but they spied on his every step!
After all, Rome cannot help keeping watch on the Society, or on any coherent group with large numbers of Catholics keeping the Faith. The reason is not hard to find — such groups are the main obstacle to the advance of the Antichrist.
In our time towards the end of the world, the infinite Wisdom and Justice of God have allowed His enemies a great deal of control over world affairs. These enemies consider they are today on the brink of achieving their One World Government, towards which an economic crash, or threat thereof, is about to give a powerful push. However, religion has even more power than economics over men's minds and hearts. So, Roman Catholicism being amongst world religions the one with an incomparable prestige and worldwide levers of spiritual power, the One Worlders owed it to themselves to infiltrate Rome and harness it to the purposes of the Antichrist. This with Vatican II they largely succeeded in doing, as the fruits of its aftermath continually demonstrate. Another recent example in the U.S.A., quite independent of the Society of St. Pius X, is the dealings since 1988 between Rome and Queen of the Holy Rosary Chapel in Vienna, Ohio. One may hope the complete documentation of these dealings will be published which demonstrate once more that Rome is clearly out not to defend but to destroy the Catholic Faith and Catholic Church of all time.
However, to sweep all Catholics into the clutches of the One World Government, to switch them from followers of Christ into followers of the Anti-christ, Rome must deceive them. Many are willing to be deceived, but an influential minority need to have the appearances maintained for them while the contents are switched, until such time as even the old appearances can be jettisoned. In this process, it is vital that the people should be persuaded that Catholicism is only what Rune says it is, that no other Catholicism is possible, and that the old Catholicism in particular is dead and gone. Hence the vigour with which Rome stamped it out in the wake of Vatican II.
For if any group of Catholics survives or revives within the Church to demonstrate by their practice of the "old" religion that it is as true as ever, and viable, even vibrant, such a group will be the living proof that Catholicism is not automatically what "Rome" says it is, that another form of Catholicism than that of "Rome" is after all possible, and that the "old" Catholicism is neither dead nor gone. Such a group will accordingly form the major obstacle in the path of the Religious Department of the One World Government. So the more numerically important it is, the more it must be watched for a flaw, circled around for an opening, maybe infiltrated, in any case subverted and above all divided. That is what "Ecclesia Dei" and St. Peter's Fraternity were all about (poor St. Peter's! Let me spare you the latest circle-squaring woes of their Tradition-docile-to-modernism). That is why I simply do not believe Cardinal Oddi when he says Rome is henceforth disregarding the Society. As Churchill might have said, his Eminence is perpetrating a terminological inexactitude (there is a simpler word for it, but a gentleman is not meant to use such words ).
Logically, this Rome has to be casting around to find a way of dividing and destroying the Society... maybe "unheard of concessions, undreamt of ouvertures," something along the lines of Dmitri Manuilski's famous recipe for the Communists to lull and smash the decadent West ....
Ah, my dear friends, the Society is a poor affair, humanly speaking quite insignificant, but it is rich in its upholding of the Divine Truth. Until Rome unequivocally returns to upholding that same Truth, there is little or nothing Rome has with which to endow the poor Society, least of all Rome's current version of respectability, so that there is nothing that the Society has to go beg of Rome. In the Catholic Church, and, amongst all human enterprises beneath the moon, in the Catholic Church alone, the Truth is in the driving seat. Read these two blue pages for re-assurance as to the at least immediate future of the Society. And keep our Superior General in your prayers, as he dances with foxes and wolves. Dom Putts said of these Romans, "Sono tutti delinquents". Translation upon request!
As for the long-term viability of the Truth, take out your Missal, and see if it includes the wonderful Antiphons of today's Office, the first Sunday in Advent, drawn from the Prophets Joel (III, 18), Zechariah (IX, 9; XIV, 5) and Isaiah (IV 1,6), and from Deuteronomy (XVIII, 18).
Advent means the coming of the Messiah to re-build the spiritual Jerusalem (#5) which is the Catholic Church, not the physical Jerusalem which was razed to the ground in 70 A.D. for its crime of deicide. Rejoice and shout for joy, O children of the Church (#2), because no worldly miseries, not even of 1991 or 1992, can stop you from finding the Messiah if you seek him, or from slaking your spiritual thirst in the waters of his Church (#4), and in that day the mountains shall drop down sweetness and the hills shall flow with spiritual milk and honey (#1), collapse of the economy notwithstanding!
Dear benefactors, thank you for keeping the Seminary in the black through another calendar year. Have a very merry Christmas to rejoice in the Messiah being amongst us, but please do not send me a Christmas card if you wish to have mercy on my desk!
In 1992 beware of a change in the Winona summer schedule: the men's five-day Retreat of June 29-July 4 has had to be moved to July 20-25. For 1991 if this letter reaches you within a few days, join us on the Feast of the Immaculate Conception in making the enclosed Consecration of Russia to the Immaculate Heart of Mary. May she obtain blessing and protection for all of your families, especially for the womenfolk who never wear trou-*!*!*BE QUIET, bishop!
Most ...most....ruefully yours in love of the Messiah,
+Richard Williamson
