August 9, 2003
Dear Friends and Benefactors,
Many of you, bless you, have been asking whether on the eve of leaving the United States I plan still to write a monthly letter. If I do, it will certainly not be this letter, which belongs to the Seminary and will therefore go to the new Seminary Rector, to do with as he wishes. Nor should anyone interfere with a successor in a post of command by "hanging around." Nor would any letter written for an Argentinian readership be quite the same. But time may have me pick up the pen again - I could even be driven onto the Internet! But not willingly!
Meanwhile enclosed you have the promised poem of farewell. Brother Marcel did the cartoons. I hope he and it suggest how much I have enjoyed my 21 years in the United States, and I thank all of you for your support and friendship When I get to the Argentine, I shall need a hole-in-the-heart operation – the hole left by all of you! Lest however the light-hearted poem give anyone to think that this time I have really lost my marbles, let me sketch out one last time the serious danger represented by today's Rome.
I can remember Malcolm Muggeridge saying that just when the modern world had proved itself a busted flush in the aftermath of WWII, and just when the Catholic Church could and should have accepted the world's unconditional surrender to her Truth, just then the Catholic churchmen themselves surrendered at the Second Vatican Council, and went over to those modern principles which are the dissolution of Catholicism. Similarly today, Vatican II is proving for steadily more souls of good will to be a busted flush, and the Society of St. Pius X's stand for the Catholic truth is coming closer to being widely recognized as such. This is just not the moment for the Society to lay down its arms and go over to the Conciliar enemy! Yet that is just what the Devil has in mind!
For as in a tug-of-war between two teams of eight men, the anchor-man with the end of the rope wrapped around his midriff is usually big, fat and correspondingly ugly, but he is still the most important man on the rope, so in the tug-of-war between Vatican II's Conciliarism and (Traditional) Catholicism, the SSPX acts as Tradition's anchor-man, so that it may in the eyes of all kinds of people - especially "conservative" Catholics - appear to be fat and "disobedient" and ugly and "schismatic," but the fact remains that those "conservatives" would have no rope on which to pull against Conciliarism unless the SSPX were acting as Tradition's anchor-man.
Which means that the Romans tugging the Church away from Tradition must at all costs undo the SSPX. In 1988 they pretended to use the biggest stick available to them as churchmen: a declaration (false) that the SSPX leadership was "excommunicated." Alas, the SSPX failed to disintegrate, even when its great Founder died in 1991, so Rome resorted to a policy of smothering the Society in silence and neglect. Alas, the SSPX would still not wither away, so when its perseverance generated for the Jubilee Year of 2000 what was surely the largest integrally Catholic pilgrimage to Rome of the whole Jubilee, even the Romans could neglect the Society no longer, so they switched from stick to carrot.
Accordingly, since 2000 the SSPX has been subjected to wave upon wave of what the French call "a charm offensive," or assault by charm. The Big Bad Wolf began to coo like a dove! - "Dear SSPX, we love you, we need you, do come in from the cold!" But the SSPX in its little red riding hood has not budged so far. Why not? To explain this crucial point I have before resorted to a comparison with arithmetic. Let me now extend and expand that comparison. I imagine a dialogue between an up-dated Roman and a true Catholic: -
Catholic:
If I am to follow you in arithmetic, I need to know you are a true arithmetician. Please make a profession of your two-times table, up to 20.
Roman:
2x2=4; 2x3=6; 2x4=9; 2x5=10; 2x6=13; 2x7=14; 2x8=19; 2x9=18; 2x10=20.
Catholic:
I am afraid you have made three mistakes. Kindly repeat.
Roman:
(He corrects all except 2x8=19).
Catholic:
(Respectfully) I fear you have still made a mistake. 2x8 are not 19.
Roman:
(Gently) No, 2x8=19. That is not a mistake.
Catholic:
(Still respectfully) But how can you say such a thing? If 2x8 were 19, they would be more than 2x9!
Roman:
(As if inspired) Ah, but I FEEL that 2x8 are 19. That is my inward EXPERIENCE and my personal NEED!
Catholic:
(Puzzled) But then what makes you say that 2x2=4?
Roman:
(Enthusiastically) Just the same, my inward EXPERIENCE and my personal NEED!
Catholic:
(Shocked) But the two-times table, like every other part of the multiplication table, rests upon objective reality!
Roman:
(A little exasperated) Of course its does, but objective reality must still be assimilated by me, i.e. it must become my personal experience.
Catholic:
(Slowly) So if today you "assimilate" that 2x2 are 4, but tomorrow "assimilated" that they were 5, then tomorrow they would be 5?
Roman:
(Triumphantly) Exactly! What value would any arithmetical table have if it was not assimilated by me in accordance with my present needs?
Catholic:
(Jumping up, and jamming on his baseball-cap sideways!) Get me outa' here! You're CRAZY! (Exit, as fast as his legs can carry him).
Notice three things. Firstly, the comparison between arithmetic and Catholic dogma is apposite, insofar as both are a connected body of objective truths. Thus as the single error that 2x8=19 is enough, if applied enough, to destroy all arithmetic (then 2x8 is greater than 2x9, so 8 is greater than 9, etc., etc.), so the denial of a single Catholic dogma is enough to destroy the entire Catholic Faith (dogmas also interlock), and he who denies a single dogma is a heretic.
Secondly - worse - notice in our comparison how close our Roman seemed to come to objective reality. Had he corrected all three errors and not just two, or had he from the outset recited correctly the whole two-times table, then our Catholic might have thought he was dealing with a Roman Catholic and not with a Roman modernist. Only our Roman's insistence upon 2x8=19 drove our Catholic to discover that our Roman rested his entire multiplication table not upon objective reality but upon his personal inward experience and needs! Similarly today's Rome could come closer and closer to resembling outwardly the true Rome, yet if the very basis upon which it seemed to be the true Rome was, for instance, ecumenical need or modern experience, then the Society would still have to not budge an inch!
But how then will we ever know that the Romans are back to professing the true Faith upon its true basis? Archbishop Lefebvre used to reply: when they subscribe to Pius IX's "Quanta Cura" (against liberalism in politics), to Pius X's Anti-Modernist Oath (against modernism in religion) and to Pius XI's "Quas Primas" (against secularism in society). And the sure sign of the Romans' subscribing sincerely to these papal documents will be when they have no more problem with the SSPX, assuming always that the latter will not have budged. In other words, until the Romans subscribe as above, any Rome-SSPX agreement is impossible, and once they subscribe, it will no longer be necessary! Meanwhile, as the Romans tug towards Conciliar perdition, the one thing that the "schismatic" anchorman must do is not budge one inch from his "schism"!
Notice thirdly from the comparison with arithmetic another tremendous element of deception in our present situation - our Roman as presented above need not be of ill will. He can be a rabid modernist and still a "very nice guy." Of course the ring-leaders of modernism who know exactly what they are doing to detach souls from objective reality, supernatural and natural, are of a diabolical pride and malice, but if our Roman learned from his mother's knee onwards that the multiplication table has an inward basis, how can he think any differently? How can he not be sincere? And if he is sincere, he can be very convincing in defense of his error, as, for instance, Pope John Paul II, Cardinal Ratzinger and Cardinal Castrillon all seem to be (God alone knows for sure what is in the human heart - Jer. XVII, 9, 10).
Now no amount of sincerity or niceness can turn objective error into objective truth. For if a man wants to preserve ice, what does it matter how sincere he is in thinking that the best way to do so is to expose it to warm sunshine? It will still melt. However, while subjective sincerity cannot change objective reality, it can be deceiving, highly deceiving. Thus the more innocent or ignorant - "sincere" - these Romans are in what is objectively their deluded fight against Catholic reality, the more dangerous any contacts or negotiations with them can be. The SSPX, like any other defender of the objective Catholic Faith, must today and tomorrow beware like the plague of "nice guys" in Rome. As St. Theresa of Avila said, "I do not need my confessor to be a Saint, I do need him to know his Catholic doctrine."
Should then the SSPX have no contact at all with the Romans? No. Even if a man's mother is a leper, he stays by her bedside, while taking care not to catch the illness which would put an end to his being able to look after her. In May I said that the Romans, as holding authority over the Church, have huge influence and responsibility for millions of souls, and they are not necessarily impervious to the Truth - while there is life, there is hope. To which one can add that if by the grace of God the SSPX possesses the Truth, it is the SSPX's duty to make that Truth - prudently - available and accessible to the churchmen who so need it. Also, that Truth will have the effect of discerning the spirits in Rome, and of dividing the Romans who are truly in good faith from those who are not. But how can the little stone of Truth bring down the giant of error (Dan. II, 34, 35) if there is no contact?
My dear friends, let us all persevere in the Truth, however much more difficult yet that may become in the next several years. For if we do persevere, our reward in Heaven will go far beyond anything we can imagine. Let us pray for one another. I will not forget the United States. I send you all my blessing as a bishop. Please support my successor in Winona.
Sincerely yours in Christ,
+ Richard Williamson
Showing posts with label 2003. Show all posts
Showing posts with label 2003. Show all posts
Monday
Liberalism is a Killer
July 7, 2003
Next month includes (August 4) the 100th anniversary of the election to the Papacy of Cardinal Giuseppe Sarto, i.e. St. Pius X, patron of our Priestly Society. Digging out for a colleague a past Seminary Letter on the true charity of Pius X, I see that in August of 1996 I told briefly the story of his clash with Cardinal Ferrari of Milan, but I did not draw out all the implications. The problem is central to our times. In honour of St. Pius, let me tell the story again, still more briefly, with a secular parallel from the post-war United States.
In 1910, three years after the appearance of Pope Pius X's great anti-modernist Encyclical letter "Pascendi", two loyal Italian Monsignors, The Scotton Brothers, published in their anti-modernist review an article declaring— not without foundation — that the Seminary in Cardinal Ferrari's Archdiocese of Milan was "a seed-bed of modernism", i.e. of that mother of all heresies which preserves the appearances of Catholicism but empties out the substance, in order to adapt the Catholic Church to the modern world.
The Cardinal was indignant. How could a supposedly Catholic journal so attack the honour and integrity of the Seminary Professors and their Superiors, including himself? When Pius X replied through his Cardinal De Lai, amongst other things, that there was not a little modernism in the archdiocese of Milan, the Liberals profited by the controversy to create a media uproar. In early March, both parties appealed to Rome, and Cardinal Ferrari defended the Liberal Catholic paper of Milan, "The Union", because he sensed it was being called in question.
At the end of March, Pius X wrote himself to the Cardinal, saying that the modernism provoking the Scotton brothers in the archdiocese of Milan might not be doctrinal but it was practical, i.e. good doctrine might be taught, but it was not being applied in practice, for instance when so many of the Milan clergy supported "The Union", a newspaper leaving much to be desired from a Catholic point of view. Yet less than three weeks after receiving this letter, the Cardinal vigorously defended "The Union" in front of his Milan seminarians, and said that this defense was in accordance with the Pope's will! When Pius X learned of the Cardinal's reaction, he was scandalized and deeply hurt: here was a Cardinal deceiving his future priests as to the will of the Pope, so that they would soon be spreading Liberal ideas throughout the Archdiocese in the name of the Pope! When in turn the Cardinal learned of the Pope's reaction, he replied with a flood of tears, and now I must quote the August 1996 letter in full:—
"He was broken-hearted to have offended the Pope. He was humiliated. He would be saddened to the end of his days. He begged forgiveness. He never meant to hurt the Pope. He never said a word disrespectful to the Pope, etc., etc... As for what he said to his seminarians, he never meant it to be copied down or published. All he meant to say was that "The Union" should go on improving. There had been no significant scandal in the Archdiocese. He was ready to take back anything he said, and would come to Rome if necessary. When Pius X read this letter, he replied that there had in fact been great scandal in the Milan Archdiocese because the Cardinal's defense of "The Union" had been clear, and clearly understood. So let the Cardinal correct the scandal by conveying the Pope's real thinking to all concerned, but let him not come to Rome.
"This last instruction was intended to calm the agitation, so that the controversy might die a quiet death, but the Liberals turned it into a refusal of the Pope to listen to his Cardinals! Thus when on the death of Pius X Cardinal Ferrari went down to Rome for the conclave to elect his successor, to an Italian senator remarking on the people's emotion and veneration for the deceased Pope, the Cardinal sternly replied: "Yes, but he will have to give an account to God for the way in which he would abandon his bishops in the face of accusations being made against them"! Truly, as Msgr. Begnini said, Cardinal Ferrari had understood nothing."
Now what are the implications that I did not spell out in 1996? Between Pius X and Cardinal Ferrari we have a clash between two worlds: one of Catholic reality, of man serving God; the other of Liberal dreamery, of God serving man. Pius X is concerned with the issues, the Cardinal is concerned with personal feelings. Pius X worries that the good doctrine is not put into practice in Milan; that the Cardinal's defending "The Union" would spread liberal ideas; that the Cardinal should straighten out the scandal of mistaken thinking. On the contrary the Cardinal takes the Scotton accusation as a personal attack upon his subordinates and himself; when the Pope is scandalized by his defense of "The Union", he is overcome with personal feelings ("broken-hearted", "humiliated", "saddened") and fanfares his good intentions: when the Pope does not want to see him, he feels personally betrayed ("abandoned") by his Superior.
There is a famous quotation of the arch-Romantic English poet, John Keats (1795-1821):- "I am certain of nothing but the holiness of the heart's affections and the truth of imagination" (Letter to Benjamin Bailey). Now when a young poet in a Revolutionary age allows his feelings and imagination to take over, that is, in a manner of speaking, his prerogative. But when an eminent Prince of the Catholic Church allows questions of doctrine to be overtaken in his mind by the conviction of the holiness of his own heart's affections, then we are in trouble! The Revolution is taking over the Church, and the Catholic Faith is being washed out. Sure enough! — the Pius X - Cardinal Ferrari clash was finally resolved in 2001 when Pope John-Paul II beatified Cardinal Ferrari! In effect, he was declaring the Cardinal's affections to be Blessed! A Catholic Saint? A saint of the world of Keats!
The secular parallel from the post-war United States is the clash which took place in Washington , D.C., in the late 1940's between Whittaker Chambers and Alger Hiss. Whittaker Chambers' book "Witness" is a classic of U.S. history, culture and literature, which should be studied in every American school, but because it refuses the modern dream, it is disappearing down the memory hole. Chambers was not a Catholic, but he had real and deep insight into the soul of modern man.
Born in Philadelphia, PA, in 1901, and reared in a more or less unhappy middle-class home on Long Island, NY, Chambers had a serious and searching mind which led him as a university student in the 1920's to tour Europe's centers of culture in pursuit of an answer to what seemed to him a grave crisis of Western Civilization. But post-WWI Europe had no answer either, which is why in the 1930's, like many another desperate young man, he joined the Communist Party. Within the Communist underground which he served with distinction for several years, he met and befriended an equally brilliant rising D.C. bureaucrat, by name Alger Hiss. The two worked together, until Stalin's Great Purge in 1937 and 1938 opened Chambers' eyes and drove him out of the Communist Party and out of Communism. He went to ground until the Communists no longer risked killing him, and had quietly re-surfaced in the late 1940's as a journalist with "Time" in New York. Meanwhile Alger Hiss had gone on to make a brilliant wartime and post-war career in Washington, partaking for instance at the highest level in the Conference of Yalta and in the constituting of the United Nations.
Chambers and Hiss met again in August of 1948 when Chambers stepped forward out of his obscurity into blazing publicity in D.C. to give witness that Hiss, while in the US Department of State, had helped to transmit confidential government documents to the Russians. Hiss denied that he had ever even met Chambers! But Hiss was finally convicted of perjury in January of 1950, and sentenced to a five-year prison term. He died only a few years ago, still protesting his innocence, remaining no doubt still convinced of the holiness of his heart's affections! Chambers died a sad man in 1961, sure that his cause was doomed to perish.
The Chambers-Hiss clash was again a clash between two worlds, between two Americas. As Pius X represented the centuries-old true Church while Cardinal Ferrari represented in effect the looming Church of Vatican II, so the dumpy little Chambers represented all the decent little folk across the United States while Hiss, darling of the DC and NY Establishment, represented the Liberal-Communist march towards the New World Order. When Chambers quit Communism, without the Catholic Faith, he clearly saw that he was joining the losing side. His agonizing decision to testify against Hiss was a noble but desperate gesture, made in the hope of obtaining for civilization no more than a slight reprieve. In this Chambers succeeded when we think of US anti-communism in the 1950's, but, of course, anti-communism without the Catholic Faith has no long future, so by the 1960's the Liberal-Communist march to the Brave New World was more irreversible than ever.
Insights abound in Chambers' "Witness" but here are two that could come straight out of pre-Vatican II Papal Encyclicals: communism is a religious problem, and all liberals are virtual communists. That is why, regardless of the truth or facts of the case, the DC-NY Establishment of liberals rallied to a man behind Hiss, because they knew that if he was condemned, so were they, and their substitute-religion of liberalism. That is why, to this day, they will maintain that Hiss was innocent, just as Pope John-Paul II innocented Cardinal Ferrari.
Dear readers, the whole world can go the way of Alger Hiss, and nearly all the churchmen can go the way of Cardinal Ferrari, but God remains God and He is neither deceived nor mocked. We may for the moment be like crushed beneath the juggernaut-dream of Alger Hiss and Vatican II, but it will come to an end, whereas God will not come to an end. Patience. Prayer. Tradition is gently stirring again in many a Catholic breast.
Let us pray that the Precious Blood of Jesus descend in July as a laver of regeneration upon more and more souls.
Sincerely yours in Christ,
Richard Williamson
P.S. Watch out for August’s Letter, my last from the Seminary. It will be a poem!
Next month includes (August 4) the 100th anniversary of the election to the Papacy of Cardinal Giuseppe Sarto, i.e. St. Pius X, patron of our Priestly Society. Digging out for a colleague a past Seminary Letter on the true charity of Pius X, I see that in August of 1996 I told briefly the story of his clash with Cardinal Ferrari of Milan, but I did not draw out all the implications. The problem is central to our times. In honour of St. Pius, let me tell the story again, still more briefly, with a secular parallel from the post-war United States.
In 1910, three years after the appearance of Pope Pius X's great anti-modernist Encyclical letter "Pascendi", two loyal Italian Monsignors, The Scotton Brothers, published in their anti-modernist review an article declaring— not without foundation — that the Seminary in Cardinal Ferrari's Archdiocese of Milan was "a seed-bed of modernism", i.e. of that mother of all heresies which preserves the appearances of Catholicism but empties out the substance, in order to adapt the Catholic Church to the modern world.
The Cardinal was indignant. How could a supposedly Catholic journal so attack the honour and integrity of the Seminary Professors and their Superiors, including himself? When Pius X replied through his Cardinal De Lai, amongst other things, that there was not a little modernism in the archdiocese of Milan, the Liberals profited by the controversy to create a media uproar. In early March, both parties appealed to Rome, and Cardinal Ferrari defended the Liberal Catholic paper of Milan, "The Union", because he sensed it was being called in question.
At the end of March, Pius X wrote himself to the Cardinal, saying that the modernism provoking the Scotton brothers in the archdiocese of Milan might not be doctrinal but it was practical, i.e. good doctrine might be taught, but it was not being applied in practice, for instance when so many of the Milan clergy supported "The Union", a newspaper leaving much to be desired from a Catholic point of view. Yet less than three weeks after receiving this letter, the Cardinal vigorously defended "The Union" in front of his Milan seminarians, and said that this defense was in accordance with the Pope's will! When Pius X learned of the Cardinal's reaction, he was scandalized and deeply hurt: here was a Cardinal deceiving his future priests as to the will of the Pope, so that they would soon be spreading Liberal ideas throughout the Archdiocese in the name of the Pope! When in turn the Cardinal learned of the Pope's reaction, he replied with a flood of tears, and now I must quote the August 1996 letter in full:—
"He was broken-hearted to have offended the Pope. He was humiliated. He would be saddened to the end of his days. He begged forgiveness. He never meant to hurt the Pope. He never said a word disrespectful to the Pope, etc., etc... As for what he said to his seminarians, he never meant it to be copied down or published. All he meant to say was that "The Union" should go on improving. There had been no significant scandal in the Archdiocese. He was ready to take back anything he said, and would come to Rome if necessary. When Pius X read this letter, he replied that there had in fact been great scandal in the Milan Archdiocese because the Cardinal's defense of "The Union" had been clear, and clearly understood. So let the Cardinal correct the scandal by conveying the Pope's real thinking to all concerned, but let him not come to Rome.
"This last instruction was intended to calm the agitation, so that the controversy might die a quiet death, but the Liberals turned it into a refusal of the Pope to listen to his Cardinals! Thus when on the death of Pius X Cardinal Ferrari went down to Rome for the conclave to elect his successor, to an Italian senator remarking on the people's emotion and veneration for the deceased Pope, the Cardinal sternly replied: "Yes, but he will have to give an account to God for the way in which he would abandon his bishops in the face of accusations being made against them"! Truly, as Msgr. Begnini said, Cardinal Ferrari had understood nothing."
Now what are the implications that I did not spell out in 1996? Between Pius X and Cardinal Ferrari we have a clash between two worlds: one of Catholic reality, of man serving God; the other of Liberal dreamery, of God serving man. Pius X is concerned with the issues, the Cardinal is concerned with personal feelings. Pius X worries that the good doctrine is not put into practice in Milan; that the Cardinal's defending "The Union" would spread liberal ideas; that the Cardinal should straighten out the scandal of mistaken thinking. On the contrary the Cardinal takes the Scotton accusation as a personal attack upon his subordinates and himself; when the Pope is scandalized by his defense of "The Union", he is overcome with personal feelings ("broken-hearted", "humiliated", "saddened") and fanfares his good intentions: when the Pope does not want to see him, he feels personally betrayed ("abandoned") by his Superior.
There is a famous quotation of the arch-Romantic English poet, John Keats (1795-1821):- "I am certain of nothing but the holiness of the heart's affections and the truth of imagination" (Letter to Benjamin Bailey). Now when a young poet in a Revolutionary age allows his feelings and imagination to take over, that is, in a manner of speaking, his prerogative. But when an eminent Prince of the Catholic Church allows questions of doctrine to be overtaken in his mind by the conviction of the holiness of his own heart's affections, then we are in trouble! The Revolution is taking over the Church, and the Catholic Faith is being washed out. Sure enough! — the Pius X - Cardinal Ferrari clash was finally resolved in 2001 when Pope John-Paul II beatified Cardinal Ferrari! In effect, he was declaring the Cardinal's affections to be Blessed! A Catholic Saint? A saint of the world of Keats!
The secular parallel from the post-war United States is the clash which took place in Washington , D.C., in the late 1940's between Whittaker Chambers and Alger Hiss. Whittaker Chambers' book "Witness" is a classic of U.S. history, culture and literature, which should be studied in every American school, but because it refuses the modern dream, it is disappearing down the memory hole. Chambers was not a Catholic, but he had real and deep insight into the soul of modern man.
Born in Philadelphia, PA, in 1901, and reared in a more or less unhappy middle-class home on Long Island, NY, Chambers had a serious and searching mind which led him as a university student in the 1920's to tour Europe's centers of culture in pursuit of an answer to what seemed to him a grave crisis of Western Civilization. But post-WWI Europe had no answer either, which is why in the 1930's, like many another desperate young man, he joined the Communist Party. Within the Communist underground which he served with distinction for several years, he met and befriended an equally brilliant rising D.C. bureaucrat, by name Alger Hiss. The two worked together, until Stalin's Great Purge in 1937 and 1938 opened Chambers' eyes and drove him out of the Communist Party and out of Communism. He went to ground until the Communists no longer risked killing him, and had quietly re-surfaced in the late 1940's as a journalist with "Time" in New York. Meanwhile Alger Hiss had gone on to make a brilliant wartime and post-war career in Washington, partaking for instance at the highest level in the Conference of Yalta and in the constituting of the United Nations.
Chambers and Hiss met again in August of 1948 when Chambers stepped forward out of his obscurity into blazing publicity in D.C. to give witness that Hiss, while in the US Department of State, had helped to transmit confidential government documents to the Russians. Hiss denied that he had ever even met Chambers! But Hiss was finally convicted of perjury in January of 1950, and sentenced to a five-year prison term. He died only a few years ago, still protesting his innocence, remaining no doubt still convinced of the holiness of his heart's affections! Chambers died a sad man in 1961, sure that his cause was doomed to perish.
The Chambers-Hiss clash was again a clash between two worlds, between two Americas. As Pius X represented the centuries-old true Church while Cardinal Ferrari represented in effect the looming Church of Vatican II, so the dumpy little Chambers represented all the decent little folk across the United States while Hiss, darling of the DC and NY Establishment, represented the Liberal-Communist march towards the New World Order. When Chambers quit Communism, without the Catholic Faith, he clearly saw that he was joining the losing side. His agonizing decision to testify against Hiss was a noble but desperate gesture, made in the hope of obtaining for civilization no more than a slight reprieve. In this Chambers succeeded when we think of US anti-communism in the 1950's, but, of course, anti-communism without the Catholic Faith has no long future, so by the 1960's the Liberal-Communist march to the Brave New World was more irreversible than ever.
Insights abound in Chambers' "Witness" but here are two that could come straight out of pre-Vatican II Papal Encyclicals: communism is a religious problem, and all liberals are virtual communists. That is why, regardless of the truth or facts of the case, the DC-NY Establishment of liberals rallied to a man behind Hiss, because they knew that if he was condemned, so were they, and their substitute-religion of liberalism. That is why, to this day, they will maintain that Hiss was innocent, just as Pope John-Paul II innocented Cardinal Ferrari.
Dear readers, the whole world can go the way of Alger Hiss, and nearly all the churchmen can go the way of Cardinal Ferrari, but God remains God and He is neither deceived nor mocked. We may for the moment be like crushed beneath the juggernaut-dream of Alger Hiss and Vatican II, but it will come to an end, whereas God will not come to an end. Patience. Prayer. Tradition is gently stirring again in many a Catholic breast.
Let us pray that the Precious Blood of Jesus descend in July as a laver of regeneration upon more and more souls.
Sincerely yours in Christ,
Richard Williamson
P.S. Watch out for August’s Letter, my last from the Seminary. It will be a poem!
Karl Rahner - Prime Delinquent
June 4, 2003
Dear Friends and Benefactors,
Since this letter is set fair to be one of the last monthly letters from the Seminary that I am like to pen, then let me attempt to give one more overview of the false religion that has been devastating the Catholic Church for the last 40 years in the wake of Vatican II.
For when the Conciliar hurricane struck the Church in the early 1960's, the immediate and pressing need for true Catholics was to protect the true Mass, and the true priesthood that goes with it, from the grave threat of their extinction by the ensuing Novus Ordo Mass (1969). Only when the survival of the Catholic Mass and priesthood was guaranteed some years later were Traditionally-minded Catholics able to look farther, so to speak, and ask themselves where the hurricane came from. They had had to begin by parrying this or that horror of the Novus Ordo. Only now they are starting to fit all the horrors together.
For indeed the diverse horrors of the Conciliar Revolution do fit together. They could never have attained their hurricane-force to almost destroy the Church, had not each horror re-inforced the others, providing a united system of errors to replace Catholicism even while resembling it! The new religion of Vatican II and the Novus Ordo is a masterpiece of the Devil!
Two recent analyses of the Conciliar religion as a whole are to be found in Professor Johannes Dörmann's four-volume series on the theological way of Pope John Paul II to the Assisi meeting of religions in 1986, and in the small but dense book on the problem of the liturgical reform, put out by Society of St. Pius X priests in 2001. These two analyses were made quite independently of one another, but they are remarkably similar in their presentation of Vatican II and the Novus Ordo as the same system of error (both books are available from the Angelus Press in Kansas City, USA).
Now has come another such analysis, this time by an American, "A Critical Examination of the Theology of Karl Rahner, S.J.", by Robert McCarthy. The German Fr. Rahner was one of the very most important "periti" or expert theologians at the Council, on which he had an enormous influence. Mr. McCarthy is a layman from Texas in his late 70's who, according to a biographical note in his book, has been puzzling for years over what made Vatican II tick. His little book on Rahner is remarkably readable, makes perfect sense, and presents an analysis wholly corresponding to the two analyses mentioned above. We have three hunters on the trail of the same beast! The beast should be driven from cover before long!
McCarthy's "Critical Examination" is remarkably readable insofar as the writings of Rahner himself are notoriously obscure. Scholars may then dismiss McCarthy's book on the grounds that McCarthy reads no German, so he has had to base his analysis largely on English translations of summaries of Rahner's thinking by two of his German disciples. However Catholics who love their Church know that Vatican II left it in ruins, so if Rahner was one of those responsible, then either English is a surprisingly poor language, or what Rahner said and did must be discernible and describable in English. The question is not just a matter for scholars or a problem of language - it is a question of all-important Truth! So McCarthy's "Examination" may only be a summary of summaries, but if it fits the facts and responds to the ruins, then it is what we need.
Rahner, says McCarthy, started out from a hatred for that old Church and for that old Faith which descended by Revelation from God down to man. He held them to be wholly unfit for modern man, so he set about rediscovering Church and Faith in such a way as would fit modern man. Instead then of working, as Catholics always do, from God down to man to lift up man to God, Rahner set about working from modern man up to God so as to bring God down in a version of God acceptable to modern man. As a disciple of Rahner says, "Rahner himself has said that theology often gives the impression nowadays of providing mythological or at least unscientific answers... The theologian can only overcome this... by beginning with man and his experiences."
Notice that this principle of turning to man, as it lies at the heart of Rahner's whole system, so too it is the basis of the novelties of Vatican II which put man in the place of God. Modern man feels that he does not get enough credit from God, so with his feelings he will do an end-run around his Catholic faith.
Thus modern man feels himself to be not a bad guy, in fact he feels he is quite a good guy, so he can no longer believe in the old Catholic dogma of original sin, nor can he any longer believe that God's supernature, or supernatural grace, is so far above his own nature. Based on this feeling, or these "experiences", of modern man, Rahner comes up with his doctrine of the "supernatural existential", meaning that instead of original sin existing in man's nature, it is the supernatural, or grace, which exists in, or is built into, man's nature!
Thus Rahner, by starting from modern man's wonderful feeling about himself, has arrived immediately at those two major heresies of which Donoso Cortes said that they lie at the root of nearly all modern heresies: the denial of the supernatural and the denial of original sin. Now as a Catholic priest and theologian, Rahner could not come clean with such an overthrow of basic Catholic truth. Here, says McCarthy, is the explanation of Rahner's almost impenetrable obscurity, and his invention of phrases like "supernatural existential". However, what is obscure in the master is made clear by the disciples. Similarly Vatican II could not come clean with its overthrow of the old religion, because it had to pretend to be still Catholic, but that overthrow which is ambiguous in the Council's 16 documents is clear for all to see in the Council's fruits.
From Rahner's doctrine of the "supernatural existential" whereby grace and not the inclination to sin is built into man's nature, it necessarily follows that every human being, whether he knows it or not, or wants it or not, is in the grace of God! Logically, Rahner concludes that all non-Christians are "anonymous Christians", i.e. Christians without the name!
From which again it follows that if Jesus Christ's Church is the society of all Christians, then Christ's Church includes every human being! Therefore what Catholics always used to call the Catholic Church is for Rahner only a part of Christ's full Church, which is co-terminous with mankind. That is why in "Lumen Gentium" Vatican II decreed that Christ's Church is not identical with the Catholic Church, but merely "subsists in" the Catholic Church, in such a way that Christ's full Church can go way outside the Catholic Church and include, or subsist in, all kinds of other churches - or non-churches - as well! Here is the so-called "ecumenism" which is still ruining true Catholicism. Thus Vatican II followed Rahner in his total revolutionizing of the concept of the Catholic Church.
But if man is so wonderful as to have grace built into his nature, what need does he have of redemption or Redeemer? For Rahner as for modern man, evolution is true, so the wonderfulness of man means that he is always evolving higher, i.e. he is always from within himself rising above and beyond himself. Jesus Christ is simply that person in whom man evolved to the full above himself, i.e. into what men call divinity! And if man had not achieved this total self-transcendence in the person of the carpenter from Galilee, he would have achieved it or would achieve it in some other person at some other point in history! By this doctrine of God no longer coming down into human nature but of man instead evolving up into divine nature, Rahner fits together evolution and his turn to man, but he stands the Incarnation on its head!
Rahner similarly empties out the redemption, or the Cross. If modern man feels he is so wonderful, how can he feel that he sins, or does anything that really offends God? Besides - pardon the blasphemy! - God is a good guy like himself, so would not get upset anyway! Then how can man need to have been rescued from God's wrath by Our Lord dying for him on the Cross? Then what was the Cross for Rahner? McCarthy does not say, but maybe it was what Dörmann says it is for John Paul II (Redemptor Hominis) - a merely back-up demonstration of God's super-luv for man! (See the enclosed flyer for an overview of Dörmann, to be studied at the Doctrinal Session for men in Winona, this July 22 to 26).
Then for Rahner what are the Mass and the Catholic Priesthood? Since man has the "supernatural existential" or the grace of God built into him, then he needs neither atoning sacrifice nor sacrificing priesthood. So priests come, again, not from above but from below; they come not from a divinely instituted anointing or Sacrament of Orders lifting them above their fellow men, but from their fellow-believers around them freely consenting to their position. So for Rahner priests should be ready to hold a worldly job to demonstrate that they are on the level with their fellow-men. Hence the Vatican II priests we know, in lay jobs and in lay clothing. Conciliarism is Protestantism.
As for the Mass, McCarthy presents no specifically Rahnerian doctrine, but it stands to Rahnerian reason that sinners supposedly needing, for forgiveness, to partake in offering, through an anointed priest, a sacrifice to placate the anger of an infinite and offended God, no longer makes any sense to modern man. Rather we shall have good guys gathering in fellowship to share in a meal presided over by one of their own number (man or woman!) to express their caring and sharing - the Novus Ordo eucharistic picnic!
Lord, have mercy upon us! McCarthy's book is available for US$ 9 (postage paid) from Tradition in Action, P.O. Box 23135, Los Angeles CA 90023. Warmly recommended for anyone who wishes to puzzle out today's devastation of the Catholic Church.
This is one of the last Seminary letters your servant will write, because this August he is being appointed to head up the Society's Seminary in the Argentine, South America. Last April he had been for 20 years Rector of the SSPX Seminary in the USA, which is long enough for any priest to stay in one position. From September his successor in Winona, Fr. Yves Le Roux, may or may not continue this series of monthly letters, but you are begged not to interrupt the flow of your generosity which has made possible the Seminary's work for these 20 years: two new priests this June 21, Saturday, and some each year thereafter.
Thank you all, and God bless you.
+ Richard Williamson
The Enclosed Flyer
The Modernistic Thinking of Pope John Paul II
Why is the Catholic Church (in 2003) in confusion? Because the Pope who leads it is in confusion. Why is the Pope who leads it in confusion? Because he is trying to go in two directions at once. Why is the trying to go in two directions at once? Because he is trying to follow both the unchanging Catholic religion of all time, and the changing modem world which is directly opposed to that unchanging Catholic religion. He is trying to reconcile irreconcilables. Hence the confusion of the entire Church.
Father Johannes Dörmann is a retired Catholic University professor from Germany with a distinguished teaching career behind him. He is entirely independent of the Society of St. Pius X, and has almost nothing, or nothing, to do with it. He was puzzled by the Meeting of Religions presided over by Pope John Paul II in Assisi in 1986. He asked himself, how could a Catholic Pope do such a thing?
In order to answer his own question, he set himself to study everything said and written by Pope John Paul II. He found his answer, and put it in four books, available from the Angelus Press in Kansas, translated into English from the original German. These four books will provide the subject-matter of the Doctrinal Session to be held in Winona next month.
Professor Dörmann brings out the modernistic side of a retreat and three major Encyclicals composed by this Pope. Yet many Catholics protest, that the same texts can be interpreted in a perfectly Catholic way. Here lies the confusion which the Doctrinal Session will attempt to make perfectly clear.
Mary, Seat of Wisdom, pray for us.
That Part Of Pope John Paul II’s Thinking Which Dissolves Catholicism
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Two rumours - and more to come
May 5, 2003
Feast of St. Pius V
Dear Friends and Benefactors,
As was predictable and predicted, Rome is not leaving the Society of St. Pius X alone. As a New-church Cardinal puts it, "We can have no peace, as long as the SSPX is doing its thing." By carrot or stick, the Newchurch must somehow de-rail the SSPX, however numerically insignificant the SSPX may be, otherwise what the SSPX represents will sooner or later de-rail the Newchurch, as is already happening.
In the last few weeks two rumours have come flying out of Rome, one to the effect that three of the four SSPX Bishops will be "re-incommunicated" at a public Tridentine Mass to be celebrated by Cardinal Castrillon in a major Roman basilica on Saturday, May 24; the other to the effect that the Tridentine Mass Indult will be extended to all Catholic priests before the end of this calendar year, 2003. Whether Rome meant these rumours to be true, or whether Rome can make them come true, perhaps only God knows. In any case, both rumours are of a nature to put the SSPX under pressure, and since many more like them could be aimed at rocking the SSPX off its hinges, then we need to keep our Catholic wits about us. At the risk of saying once more things I have said already, even many times, let me attempt to explain why, even if Rome is seeming to be extremely generous, the SSPX must be extremely careful.
The root of the problem is the "modernization" of the Catholic Church launched - or at least manifested - in the 1960's by the Second Vatican Council (1962-1965) whose 16 documents revolutionized Catholic teaching, and by the New Order of Mass (1969) which revolutionized the essence of the Church's practice, namely the liturgy of the Mass. Since it is in Catholic principles that the Church cannot change, then the modernizers pretended and still pretend that the up-dating changed nothing essential., However, modernized "Catholics" bear so little resemblance to old-fashioned Catholics, that the change clearly was essential, and in retrospect Vatican II and the New Mass were clearly laying the foundations of what was meant to be a new religion.
Now the old God-centered Catholic religion and the new man-centered Conciliar religion contradict one another, and as all wars are ultimately religious, so a contradiction of religions can only mean war. The Conciliarists owe it to their new faith to root out and destroy the old Faith, while Catholics are in duty bound to refuse and to condemn the false new religion with all its pomps and all its works. That is why soon after Vatican II, Conciliarists were pretending that it was the most important Council in Church history, while a small number of Catholics were denouncing it as the introduction into the Catholic Church of the-anti-Catholic principles of the modern world. Similarly in 1969 the Conciliarist Pope Paul VI pretended that the old Mass was done away with, while a handful of Catholic bishops and priests kept it alive, notably - but not solely - Archbishop Lefebvre and the SSPX which he founded.
Here is the heart of the problem which must never be lost from view. We have a war between two religions which can only come to an end with the death of the one or the other. The Catholics must fight this war with the weapons of Truth. The Conciliarists may fight it by any means available to them. By God's just punishment of many Catholics' lukewarmness, the Conciliarists have been allowed to occupy nearly all positions of power and influence within the structure of the Church. These they have used to the full to establish their new religion.
However, the Catholics had and have on their side the Truth, which "is mighty and will prevail." The Conciliarists were unable to stop Archbishop Lefebvre from denouncing Vatican II and from saving the old Mass. They have so far proved unable to stop his SSPX from continuing to do the same. But the survival of their new religion depends upon the destruction of that old religion which clearly shows Vatican II and the New Mass to be false. Therefore they must destroy, break up, cripple or corrupt the SSPX, which presents for the moment the largest organized resistance to Conciliarism.
One obvious strategy for the Romans is as old as the hills: "Divide and rule." Hence the first rumour, pretending that three of the SSPX's four bishops think one way, while the fourth thinks another way.
But first one and then another of the three bishops said it was all nonsense, and the third would no doubt have publicly said so too, but he probably could not be bothered. (As for that fourth, he basked in the publicity!) And if, as the rumour had it, Rome thinks that 70% of the SSPX priests would be happy to be "re-incommunicated" with the supposed three bishops, then Rome knows our priests as little as it knows our bishops.
The second rumour represents another strategy, also as old as the hills: "Smother them in kindness," e.g. promise to grant in 2003 the pre-condition demanded in 2001 by the SSPX for entering upon negotiations with Rome, namely the permission for all priests freely to use the old rite of Mass. Now whether Rome could follow through on such a promise in the teeth of the opposition of a significant proportion of the world's Conciliar bishops, is less than sure. But if it could, then the SSPX would only rejoice that the free use of the true rite of Mass would mean a steadily increasing flow of grace throughout the Church, as priests realized what a treasure had been put back in their hands. However, even if Rome also "re-incommunicated" all four SSPX bishops, the other pre-condition of 2001, still the SSPX engaged itself in 2001 only to enter upon negotiations for its reconciliation with this Rome, and almost certainly the Conciliarists would now insist upon the SSPX in some way recognizing Vatican II, which the SSPX cannot do. The very documents of that Council, not just its aftermath, are shot through with the new religion.
Nevertheless, the strategy of 'smothering with kindness' presents real advantages for Rome. Supposing Rome overrode its own bishops and unilaterally declared, "The SSPX is simply reconciled with Rome and re-admitted into the Church, including all four bishops, without conditions, without demands"!? What would the SSPX do then? If the SSPX refused, it would really look churlish. But if it accepted, there would be an end to our present protective marginalization, and there would be a mass of contaminating contacts with "Catholics" who, having no grasp of the problem of Conciliarism, have no real grasp on true Catholicism. It could mean the end of the SSPX's defending the Faith.
Such a proposition from Rome might be unlikely, or impossible, but, to cripple the SSPX, it might be the smartest thing that they could do. In any case it highlights the central, central problem. Even if these Romans were to speak exactly the same language as the SSPX. still, by their modernist religion, they would not be meaning the same things. Therefore the "reconciliation" would be verbal, not real, and the SSPX would have lost the protection of its present marginalization.
Then why even think of sitting down to negotiate anything with these Romans? Firstly, "they occupy the chair of Moses" (Mt XXIII, 2), so they have a huge influence upon the eternal salvation or damnation of millions of souls. Secondly, they have, with these huge responsibilities, souls of their own to be saved, and one or other of them may just be able still to profit from contact with anti-Conciliar Catholics. That is why Archbishop Lefebvre maintained contacts with the Romans all the way down to May of 1988.
However, these contacts came to an end with the episcopal consecrations of that June, by when, as the Archbishop said, Rome had demonstrated by its actions such an uncare for souls that the problem had decisively moved out of the domain of diplomacy, into the domain of dogma. So whenever a Cardinal Castrillon Hoyos now insists upon diplomacy, he is from our point of view queering any contacts before they even start. For were the SSPX to negotiate on anything less than dogma, the results would prove deadly for the Faith, as has just been seen once more with the priests of Campos, Brazil.
But can non-elastic dogma be even conceived by elastic minds, for which words have no non-elastic meaning? Personally, I think that the mass of minds today are so far gone in fantasy that only a Chastisement will bring them back to reality, and to do this it will have to take a large number of souls out of this life. Pray meanwhile, dear readers, that the SSPX do what God wants of it.
The special insidiousness of Conciliarism by its apparent resemblance to Catholicism will be a main object of study in the Men's Doctrinal Session to be held at Winona this summer from Tuesday, July 22, to Saturday, July 26 (I apologize for a mistake over these dates in the last retreats flyer). The subject will be difficult, three major encyclicals of John Paul II, on God the Father, God the Son and God the Holy Ghost, but the books of Prof. Dörmann will be our clear guide. These books are available from the Angelus Press.
Let us for the month of May especially implore the help and protection of the Mother of God, and let us pray her Rosary to help her obtain the salvation millions of souls floundering in a world of confusion.
With all good wishes, in Christ,
+ Richard Williamson
Feast of St. Pius V
Dear Friends and Benefactors,
As was predictable and predicted, Rome is not leaving the Society of St. Pius X alone. As a New-church Cardinal puts it, "We can have no peace, as long as the SSPX is doing its thing." By carrot or stick, the Newchurch must somehow de-rail the SSPX, however numerically insignificant the SSPX may be, otherwise what the SSPX represents will sooner or later de-rail the Newchurch, as is already happening.
In the last few weeks two rumours have come flying out of Rome, one to the effect that three of the four SSPX Bishops will be "re-incommunicated" at a public Tridentine Mass to be celebrated by Cardinal Castrillon in a major Roman basilica on Saturday, May 24; the other to the effect that the Tridentine Mass Indult will be extended to all Catholic priests before the end of this calendar year, 2003. Whether Rome meant these rumours to be true, or whether Rome can make them come true, perhaps only God knows. In any case, both rumours are of a nature to put the SSPX under pressure, and since many more like them could be aimed at rocking the SSPX off its hinges, then we need to keep our Catholic wits about us. At the risk of saying once more things I have said already, even many times, let me attempt to explain why, even if Rome is seeming to be extremely generous, the SSPX must be extremely careful.
The root of the problem is the "modernization" of the Catholic Church launched - or at least manifested - in the 1960's by the Second Vatican Council (1962-1965) whose 16 documents revolutionized Catholic teaching, and by the New Order of Mass (1969) which revolutionized the essence of the Church's practice, namely the liturgy of the Mass. Since it is in Catholic principles that the Church cannot change, then the modernizers pretended and still pretend that the up-dating changed nothing essential., However, modernized "Catholics" bear so little resemblance to old-fashioned Catholics, that the change clearly was essential, and in retrospect Vatican II and the New Mass were clearly laying the foundations of what was meant to be a new religion.
Now the old God-centered Catholic religion and the new man-centered Conciliar religion contradict one another, and as all wars are ultimately religious, so a contradiction of religions can only mean war. The Conciliarists owe it to their new faith to root out and destroy the old Faith, while Catholics are in duty bound to refuse and to condemn the false new religion with all its pomps and all its works. That is why soon after Vatican II, Conciliarists were pretending that it was the most important Council in Church history, while a small number of Catholics were denouncing it as the introduction into the Catholic Church of the-anti-Catholic principles of the modern world. Similarly in 1969 the Conciliarist Pope Paul VI pretended that the old Mass was done away with, while a handful of Catholic bishops and priests kept it alive, notably - but not solely - Archbishop Lefebvre and the SSPX which he founded.
Here is the heart of the problem which must never be lost from view. We have a war between two religions which can only come to an end with the death of the one or the other. The Catholics must fight this war with the weapons of Truth. The Conciliarists may fight it by any means available to them. By God's just punishment of many Catholics' lukewarmness, the Conciliarists have been allowed to occupy nearly all positions of power and influence within the structure of the Church. These they have used to the full to establish their new religion.
However, the Catholics had and have on their side the Truth, which "is mighty and will prevail." The Conciliarists were unable to stop Archbishop Lefebvre from denouncing Vatican II and from saving the old Mass. They have so far proved unable to stop his SSPX from continuing to do the same. But the survival of their new religion depends upon the destruction of that old religion which clearly shows Vatican II and the New Mass to be false. Therefore they must destroy, break up, cripple or corrupt the SSPX, which presents for the moment the largest organized resistance to Conciliarism.
One obvious strategy for the Romans is as old as the hills: "Divide and rule." Hence the first rumour, pretending that three of the SSPX's four bishops think one way, while the fourth thinks another way.
But first one and then another of the three bishops said it was all nonsense, and the third would no doubt have publicly said so too, but he probably could not be bothered. (As for that fourth, he basked in the publicity!) And if, as the rumour had it, Rome thinks that 70% of the SSPX priests would be happy to be "re-incommunicated" with the supposed three bishops, then Rome knows our priests as little as it knows our bishops.
The second rumour represents another strategy, also as old as the hills: "Smother them in kindness," e.g. promise to grant in 2003 the pre-condition demanded in 2001 by the SSPX for entering upon negotiations with Rome, namely the permission for all priests freely to use the old rite of Mass. Now whether Rome could follow through on such a promise in the teeth of the opposition of a significant proportion of the world's Conciliar bishops, is less than sure. But if it could, then the SSPX would only rejoice that the free use of the true rite of Mass would mean a steadily increasing flow of grace throughout the Church, as priests realized what a treasure had been put back in their hands. However, even if Rome also "re-incommunicated" all four SSPX bishops, the other pre-condition of 2001, still the SSPX engaged itself in 2001 only to enter upon negotiations for its reconciliation with this Rome, and almost certainly the Conciliarists would now insist upon the SSPX in some way recognizing Vatican II, which the SSPX cannot do. The very documents of that Council, not just its aftermath, are shot through with the new religion.
Nevertheless, the strategy of 'smothering with kindness' presents real advantages for Rome. Supposing Rome overrode its own bishops and unilaterally declared, "The SSPX is simply reconciled with Rome and re-admitted into the Church, including all four bishops, without conditions, without demands"!? What would the SSPX do then? If the SSPX refused, it would really look churlish. But if it accepted, there would be an end to our present protective marginalization, and there would be a mass of contaminating contacts with "Catholics" who, having no grasp of the problem of Conciliarism, have no real grasp on true Catholicism. It could mean the end of the SSPX's defending the Faith.
Such a proposition from Rome might be unlikely, or impossible, but, to cripple the SSPX, it might be the smartest thing that they could do. In any case it highlights the central, central problem. Even if these Romans were to speak exactly the same language as the SSPX. still, by their modernist religion, they would not be meaning the same things. Therefore the "reconciliation" would be verbal, not real, and the SSPX would have lost the protection of its present marginalization.
Then why even think of sitting down to negotiate anything with these Romans? Firstly, "they occupy the chair of Moses" (Mt XXIII, 2), so they have a huge influence upon the eternal salvation or damnation of millions of souls. Secondly, they have, with these huge responsibilities, souls of their own to be saved, and one or other of them may just be able still to profit from contact with anti-Conciliar Catholics. That is why Archbishop Lefebvre maintained contacts with the Romans all the way down to May of 1988.
However, these contacts came to an end with the episcopal consecrations of that June, by when, as the Archbishop said, Rome had demonstrated by its actions such an uncare for souls that the problem had decisively moved out of the domain of diplomacy, into the domain of dogma. So whenever a Cardinal Castrillon Hoyos now insists upon diplomacy, he is from our point of view queering any contacts before they even start. For were the SSPX to negotiate on anything less than dogma, the results would prove deadly for the Faith, as has just been seen once more with the priests of Campos, Brazil.
But can non-elastic dogma be even conceived by elastic minds, for which words have no non-elastic meaning? Personally, I think that the mass of minds today are so far gone in fantasy that only a Chastisement will bring them back to reality, and to do this it will have to take a large number of souls out of this life. Pray meanwhile, dear readers, that the SSPX do what God wants of it.
The special insidiousness of Conciliarism by its apparent resemblance to Catholicism will be a main object of study in the Men's Doctrinal Session to be held at Winona this summer from Tuesday, July 22, to Saturday, July 26 (I apologize for a mistake over these dates in the last retreats flyer). The subject will be difficult, three major encyclicals of John Paul II, on God the Father, God the Son and God the Holy Ghost, but the books of Prof. Dörmann will be our clear guide. These books are available from the Angelus Press.
Let us for the month of May especially implore the help and protection of the Mother of God, and let us pray her Rosary to help her obtain the salvation millions of souls floundering in a world of confusion.
With all good wishes, in Christ,
+ Richard Williamson
FOR EVER... AND EVER...
April 4, 2003
Dear Friends and Benefactors,
Eternity - "the thought of thoughts", said St. Augustine. The thought that puts this little life on earth in its proper perspective. The thought that will not get into our little heads. The thought that we shall never grasp, yet which helps us to grasp a multitude of other thoughts - the thought of eternity.
Catholics know with certainty that we human beings are composed of body and soul, that at death the soul leaves the body behind, which normally disintegrates without it, that the soul then begins on its own an existence which continues forever. At the end of the world, this soul will be re-united with its body, mysteriously re-assembled, and then the two together will either enjoy unimaginable happiness or suffer unspeakable torments, without end... without end... without end...
Preachers have resorted to a variety of images to represent this endlessness. For instance, they imagine a blackbird flying back and forth the 236,000 miles between the earth and the moon, and each time the bird lands on the moon, it pecks away a lunar fragment, then flies back to earth, and so on. The preachers then ask, how long will it take the blackbird to peck away the whole moon? And when it has done so, will eternity even have started?
Yet no amount of images can succeed in representing the stretch of eternity. Why? Because all creatures, and images of creatures, are by their nature limited, whereas eternity consists precisely in the lack of limitation. But, it may be objected, if God on the one hand destines us to eternity and on the other hand surrounds us with no creatures capable of adequately representing to us that destiny, is He not being contradictory? How can He expect us to strive for a goal which He gives us no means of knowing?
The first part of the answer is that God wants all of us human beings to get to Heaven (I Tim II, 4), because He can have created none of us for any other purpose. This means of course that in some way or other every single human being since Adam and Eve has received grace or graces sufficient to bring that soul to Heaven, if only it chose to co-operate. However, it would be a poor Heaven whose idea could fit inside our little heads, and God means to reward with no small Heaven those who respond freely to His love. That is why St. Paul says, quoting Isaiah (LXIV, 4), "Eye hath not seen, nor ear heard, neither hath it entered into the heart of man, what things God hath prepared for them that love Him" (I Cor. II, 9).
But the problem remains: how can man be expected to act, in particular to follow the Way of the Cross, for a reward of which he has no idea? Here comes the second part of the answer: man does not have no idea at all of eternity, Heaven and Hell, on the contrary every man has an inkling of them, at least in certain special moments of his life, and this inkling will reach further and further if only he will choose to bend his mind in that direction instead of turning it away. But rather than inkle eternity, most men prefer to short-circuit their minds with the pleasures of this life, which is why they fritter their lives away.
And here, following on the thinking of the unthinkable length of eternity, is another huge thought: the value of time. If the whole length of my eternity in the afterworld depends upon my short life in this world, then every moment counts! If whether I spend eternity in Heaven or in Hell depends upon how I spend an average of, say, 70 years on earth, a period which is nothing, but nothing, in comparison, then every single day is a drama of building my Heaven or preparing my Hell!
But how can God let so much depend on, comparatively speaking, so little? How can He make such a limitless and unimaginable consequence depend on so few years of limited images? It is because God knows the innermost secrets of men's hearts, so that even if a man dies in the flower of his youth, he will have lived long enough to make sufficiently, as God knows, his choice between living with God for ever in Heaven or without God for ever in Hell. So at that soul's particular judgment, God will have given to it the eternity it sufficiently chose, and that soul will not be able to deny that the moment of its death was another mercy of God, either to preserve it for Heaven from the dangers of living longer amidst temptations on earth, or to prevent it from falling by a prolonged life of sin much deeper into Hell.
Thus every moment of our brief lives on earth is given to us by God for us either to get out of sin and into the state of grace, or to build up in our souls a higher degree of grace and charity, to which will correspond a higher reward of eternal happiness.
Thus if a soul is living in the grace of God, each new day, every hour of life is a gift of His for us to merit more in eternity. Why else life? We would eat to live, and live to eat? No, we eat on earth to live on earth, and we live on earth to merit for Heaven, and if we make this right use of each moment, who will complain any longer of this life's limitation when it is earning a reward wholly disproportionate by its illimitation? And when Our Lord traces out for us the Way of the Cross as the road to Heaven, who that believes in him will complain even of a lifetime of suffering? That suffering should be the way to Heaven is as mysterious as the mystery of sin, but the better I understand Our Lord, the closer I can come to the saints' rejoicing in each moment of pain. War, illness, old age, grief of any kind - it can all be minted into the coinage of Paradise.
Conversely, if a soul is in mortal sin, then without doubt the grace of God is all the time reaching out to it, now very strongly, perhaps most of the time quite faintly, because God will leave the sinful soul free, and he knows that too strong an appeal would merely push the soul into a stronger and more damnable refusal. "Fearful silence of God", said St. Augustine, referring to God's abandoning a soul to its own devices. And again, "Beware of grace passing once, and not twice". Yet, to the very end, God will appeal. Yet how many souls around us only want to drive Him away, and have Him stay away, so that they may sin undisturbed!
This value of time for eternity, for the sinner to repent and for the saint to merit, highlights the length of God's mercy. Knowing how weakened we are by original sin and how much weaker we become by our personal sins, and knowing, as we do not, just what eternity means, God has a boundless compassion on our human frailty. A man may fall again and again and again, but if there is only a spark of true repentance, God can forgive him again and again and again, because this brief life is our only chance, and upon it depends our eternity! "It is appointed to man once to die, and after this the judgment" (Heb. IX, 27). None of us lives or dies twice. Re-incarnation is a lie with which the Devil re-assures souls wishing to be deceived. But if we live only once, have we not almost a right to God's compassion?
No, compassion should not be defined as something that anyone has a right to on the part of anyone else, least of all on the part of a God continually offended by our sins. Nevertheless we find in the Old Testament an abundance of references to "the mercy of God that endureth for ever", notably Psalm CXXXV, and of course the New Testament presents to us in Our Lord the incarnation of compassionate mercy, especially towards sinners: Mary Magdalene, the Prodigal Son, the woman caught in adultery, the good thief on Calvary, etc.. It is the same one true God in Old and New Testaments, it is the same mercy, it is the same tireless reaching out of God's Catholic Church towards all souls for their eternal salvation.
And it is the same perversity of men that in most cases responds. A day or two before his crucifixion and death, Our Lord has run into the Temple leaders' deicidal hatred, in which he knows they will be followed by the ordinary people on whom he has lavished so great benefits for the three years of his ministry -"Jerusalem, Jerusalem, thou that killest the prophets, and stonest them that are sent unto thee, how often would I have gathered thy children, as the hen doth gather her chickens under her wings, and thou wouldest not? Behold, your house shall be left to you desolate" (Mt. XXIII, 37, 38). The Sacred Heart is broken with grief at the thought of souls then and now to whom he made salvation so easy of access, yet who prefer their eternal damnation.
Divine Heart of Jesus, torn with sorrow for the everlasting perdition chosen by so many souls, and, even after death, shedding upon the Cross the last drop of your blood to draw us towards everlasting happiness with you, grant us we beseech you so to ponder on our souls' eternal destiny and so to cling to your Mercy for their eternal salvation, that when our souls are laid bare at death in the unsparing light of your judgment, still we may have full confidence in our sins being forgiven by that divine Mercy that endureth for ever, Amen.
Dear men, there are two five-day Ignatian retreats at the Seminary this summer to give a frame to meditation on these and other grand truths (July 7-12, and 14-19), and there is a study session on three encyclicals of John Paul II (Divini Redemptoris, Dives in Misericordia, Dominum et Vivificantem), to help study in depth how far the Newchurch is departing from these Catholic truths (July 22-26). But the hand of God is not shortened by the naughtiness of men (Is. L, 2).
Patience, and all blessings, in Christ,
Dear Friends and Benefactors,
Eternity - "the thought of thoughts", said St. Augustine. The thought that puts this little life on earth in its proper perspective. The thought that will not get into our little heads. The thought that we shall never grasp, yet which helps us to grasp a multitude of other thoughts - the thought of eternity.
Catholics know with certainty that we human beings are composed of body and soul, that at death the soul leaves the body behind, which normally disintegrates without it, that the soul then begins on its own an existence which continues forever. At the end of the world, this soul will be re-united with its body, mysteriously re-assembled, and then the two together will either enjoy unimaginable happiness or suffer unspeakable torments, without end... without end... without end...
Preachers have resorted to a variety of images to represent this endlessness. For instance, they imagine a blackbird flying back and forth the 236,000 miles between the earth and the moon, and each time the bird lands on the moon, it pecks away a lunar fragment, then flies back to earth, and so on. The preachers then ask, how long will it take the blackbird to peck away the whole moon? And when it has done so, will eternity even have started?
Yet no amount of images can succeed in representing the stretch of eternity. Why? Because all creatures, and images of creatures, are by their nature limited, whereas eternity consists precisely in the lack of limitation. But, it may be objected, if God on the one hand destines us to eternity and on the other hand surrounds us with no creatures capable of adequately representing to us that destiny, is He not being contradictory? How can He expect us to strive for a goal which He gives us no means of knowing?
The first part of the answer is that God wants all of us human beings to get to Heaven (I Tim II, 4), because He can have created none of us for any other purpose. This means of course that in some way or other every single human being since Adam and Eve has received grace or graces sufficient to bring that soul to Heaven, if only it chose to co-operate. However, it would be a poor Heaven whose idea could fit inside our little heads, and God means to reward with no small Heaven those who respond freely to His love. That is why St. Paul says, quoting Isaiah (LXIV, 4), "Eye hath not seen, nor ear heard, neither hath it entered into the heart of man, what things God hath prepared for them that love Him" (I Cor. II, 9).
But the problem remains: how can man be expected to act, in particular to follow the Way of the Cross, for a reward of which he has no idea? Here comes the second part of the answer: man does not have no idea at all of eternity, Heaven and Hell, on the contrary every man has an inkling of them, at least in certain special moments of his life, and this inkling will reach further and further if only he will choose to bend his mind in that direction instead of turning it away. But rather than inkle eternity, most men prefer to short-circuit their minds with the pleasures of this life, which is why they fritter their lives away.
And here, following on the thinking of the unthinkable length of eternity, is another huge thought: the value of time. If the whole length of my eternity in the afterworld depends upon my short life in this world, then every moment counts! If whether I spend eternity in Heaven or in Hell depends upon how I spend an average of, say, 70 years on earth, a period which is nothing, but nothing, in comparison, then every single day is a drama of building my Heaven or preparing my Hell!
But how can God let so much depend on, comparatively speaking, so little? How can He make such a limitless and unimaginable consequence depend on so few years of limited images? It is because God knows the innermost secrets of men's hearts, so that even if a man dies in the flower of his youth, he will have lived long enough to make sufficiently, as God knows, his choice between living with God for ever in Heaven or without God for ever in Hell. So at that soul's particular judgment, God will have given to it the eternity it sufficiently chose, and that soul will not be able to deny that the moment of its death was another mercy of God, either to preserve it for Heaven from the dangers of living longer amidst temptations on earth, or to prevent it from falling by a prolonged life of sin much deeper into Hell.
Thus every moment of our brief lives on earth is given to us by God for us either to get out of sin and into the state of grace, or to build up in our souls a higher degree of grace and charity, to which will correspond a higher reward of eternal happiness.
Thus if a soul is living in the grace of God, each new day, every hour of life is a gift of His for us to merit more in eternity. Why else life? We would eat to live, and live to eat? No, we eat on earth to live on earth, and we live on earth to merit for Heaven, and if we make this right use of each moment, who will complain any longer of this life's limitation when it is earning a reward wholly disproportionate by its illimitation? And when Our Lord traces out for us the Way of the Cross as the road to Heaven, who that believes in him will complain even of a lifetime of suffering? That suffering should be the way to Heaven is as mysterious as the mystery of sin, but the better I understand Our Lord, the closer I can come to the saints' rejoicing in each moment of pain. War, illness, old age, grief of any kind - it can all be minted into the coinage of Paradise.
Conversely, if a soul is in mortal sin, then without doubt the grace of God is all the time reaching out to it, now very strongly, perhaps most of the time quite faintly, because God will leave the sinful soul free, and he knows that too strong an appeal would merely push the soul into a stronger and more damnable refusal. "Fearful silence of God", said St. Augustine, referring to God's abandoning a soul to its own devices. And again, "Beware of grace passing once, and not twice". Yet, to the very end, God will appeal. Yet how many souls around us only want to drive Him away, and have Him stay away, so that they may sin undisturbed!
This value of time for eternity, for the sinner to repent and for the saint to merit, highlights the length of God's mercy. Knowing how weakened we are by original sin and how much weaker we become by our personal sins, and knowing, as we do not, just what eternity means, God has a boundless compassion on our human frailty. A man may fall again and again and again, but if there is only a spark of true repentance, God can forgive him again and again and again, because this brief life is our only chance, and upon it depends our eternity! "It is appointed to man once to die, and after this the judgment" (Heb. IX, 27). None of us lives or dies twice. Re-incarnation is a lie with which the Devil re-assures souls wishing to be deceived. But if we live only once, have we not almost a right to God's compassion?
No, compassion should not be defined as something that anyone has a right to on the part of anyone else, least of all on the part of a God continually offended by our sins. Nevertheless we find in the Old Testament an abundance of references to "the mercy of God that endureth for ever", notably Psalm CXXXV, and of course the New Testament presents to us in Our Lord the incarnation of compassionate mercy, especially towards sinners: Mary Magdalene, the Prodigal Son, the woman caught in adultery, the good thief on Calvary, etc.. It is the same one true God in Old and New Testaments, it is the same mercy, it is the same tireless reaching out of God's Catholic Church towards all souls for their eternal salvation.
And it is the same perversity of men that in most cases responds. A day or two before his crucifixion and death, Our Lord has run into the Temple leaders' deicidal hatred, in which he knows they will be followed by the ordinary people on whom he has lavished so great benefits for the three years of his ministry -"Jerusalem, Jerusalem, thou that killest the prophets, and stonest them that are sent unto thee, how often would I have gathered thy children, as the hen doth gather her chickens under her wings, and thou wouldest not? Behold, your house shall be left to you desolate" (Mt. XXIII, 37, 38). The Sacred Heart is broken with grief at the thought of souls then and now to whom he made salvation so easy of access, yet who prefer their eternal damnation.
Divine Heart of Jesus, torn with sorrow for the everlasting perdition chosen by so many souls, and, even after death, shedding upon the Cross the last drop of your blood to draw us towards everlasting happiness with you, grant us we beseech you so to ponder on our souls' eternal destiny and so to cling to your Mercy for their eternal salvation, that when our souls are laid bare at death in the unsparing light of your judgment, still we may have full confidence in our sins being forgiven by that divine Mercy that endureth for ever, Amen.
Dear men, there are two five-day Ignatian retreats at the Seminary this summer to give a frame to meditation on these and other grand truths (July 7-12, and 14-19), and there is a study session on three encyclicals of John Paul II (Divini Redemptoris, Dives in Misericordia, Dominum et Vivificantem), to help study in depth how far the Newchurch is departing from these Catholic truths (July 22-26). But the hand of God is not shortened by the naughtiness of men (Is. L, 2).
Patience, and all blessings, in Christ,
Iraqi War - In God We Trust
March 9, 2003
Dear Friends and Benefactors,
The beginning of Lent is always a time to reflect on great truths of God, of life and death, but when war seems imminent as it does now in the Middle East, then there is particular reason to remember that God is in command of events, and that He directs them, strange though that may sometimes seem, for nothing other than for the eternal salvation of the immortal soul of each one of us.
War does seem imminent. The United States (and Great Britain) have over the last several months transported to the Middle East such a mass of troops and weapons that it is hard to imagine them being pulled out again with no action: And since each day hotter at this time of year makes desert warfare more difficult, then an attack soon is all the more likely.
Now it is usual for those who start a war to think they know what they are doing when they start it, but none of them can tell for certain how it will end. That is determined by God. A classic case was World War I, into which the nations of Europe gaily launched, each thinking it would conquer with ease in a matter of weeks. In fact the attack turned into a four-year slug-fest, attended by all the horrors of modern trench warfare, which nobody but God had foreseen. But anybody with a grain of faith can see how these horrors were a just punishment of the godlessness of those nations, so gifted by God and so misusing their gifts. In brief, especially with war, "Man proposes while God disposes".
For even by the severity of His punishment of those European nations, God was still loving them. Proverbs III, 11 - "My son, neglect not the discipline of the Lord; neither be thou wearied whilst thou art rebuked by him. For whom the Lord loveth, He chastiseth; and He scourgeth every son whom He receiveth". Having quoted which verse, St. Paul adds (Hebrews XII, 7, 8) that a nation - or person - not chastised by God is not loved by Him! - "Persevere under discipline. God dealeth with you as with His sons; for what son is there whom the father doth not correct? But if you be without chastisement, whereof all are made partakers, then are you bastards and not sons. Thus God even chastises out of love.
This is especially clear if one compares the chastisements of this life with the eternal pains of the next. Who with a grain of faith does not cry out with St. Augustine, "O Lord, chastise me how You like on earth, so long as You do not have to chastise me in Hell"? In World War I, the heroic priests in the trenches (on both sides) certainly absolved and sent to Heaven hundreds of thousands of young men of whom God knew that they would have lost their souls in an enervating peace such -as we have "enjoyed" since 1945, especially since the 1960's. And in World War II, when a privileged soul able to converse with Our Lord (Sister Consolata Betrone) complained to him of all the young men being killed in the flower of their youth, Our Lord reminded her that by dying young for their country, many more of them were saving their souls for eternity than would otherwise have been the case.
At which point an objector may ask, then why is God not chastising us all the time with uninterrupted horrors? To which objection common sense immediately replies that if God dealt out to men nothing but chastisements, few of us would have enough faith to understand what He was doing and still believe in His goodness, so that, again, few would save their souls. Therefore good things in our life, like peace, God gives us, and evil things in our life, like war, He allows, both minutely calibrated for each of us with a view to our eternal salvation.
For He wishes each one of us to save our souls (I Tim. II, 4), but He will not take away our free-will, because, so to speak, He does not want to fill His Heaven with robots. But just as to move a donkey it takes sometimes the carrot and sometimes the stick, so to move a human being with free-will it takes sometimes prosperity to encourage him and sometimes hardship to chasten him. God being goodness itself, He would much rather draw us to Him by his gifts, which is why each of us every day receives from Him a series of blessings, but with our tendency to enjoy the gifts while forgetting the Giver, all too many of these escape our attention, so that we need hardship to bring us back to Him.
Before dying, Moses gave this same warning to Israelites, of how earthly prosperity can make us forget God. In Deuteronomy VIII, 7-10, Moses lists a few of the material benefits that God will bestow upon the Israelites in the Promised Land (recalling the benefits bestowed upon the inhabitants of "America the Beautiful"!). Then Moses warns: - "Take heed, and beware lest at any time thou forget the Lord thy God, and neglect His commandments and judgments and ceremonies, which I command thee this day: lest after thou hast eaten and art filled, thou hast built goodly houses, and dwelt in them, and shalt have herds of oxen and flocks of sheep, and plenty of gold and of silver, and of all things, thy heart be lifted up, and thou remember not the Lord thy God, Who brought thee out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of bondage... lest thou shouldst say in thy heart: My own might and the strength of my own hand have achieved all these things for me" (Deut. VIII, 11-17).
Moses concludes: "But remember the Lord thy God, that He hath given thee strength... But if thou forget the Lord thy God, and follow strange gods" (such as idolized democracy or technology!), "and serve and adore them: behold now I foretell thee that thou shalt utterly perish. As the nations, which the Lord destroyed at thy entrance" (of Israel into the Holy Land), "so shall you also perish, if you be disobedient to the voice of the Lord your God" (Deut. VIII, 18-20).
It follows that as prosperity can be a punishment if it leads away from God, so hardship can be a blessing if it leads back to God. "In suffering is learning", chanted Aeschylus in ancient Greece. Americans today call it the "school of hard knocks". Therefore God can punish or bless by hardship, just as He can bless or punish by prosperity. Therefore what are truly prosperity and hardship can only be judged in the light of God, which is more or less hidden from us human beings, especially by our sins.
However, that God is all-knowing, all-powerful and all-good, is certain. So, since He knows all that could or will happen to us down to the minutest detail, then we know that He can see the prosperity or hardship best able to bring us to Heaven or stop us falling too deeply into Hell. And since He has all power over every creature (for instance, over the weather on a battlefield), then we know that He can organize the comfort or hardship best suited to the welfare of our souls while still leaving them free. And since He is infinitely good, then we know that He will do so, in accordance with His divine Wisdom so far above our own. Therefore we can and must trust God. In particular we must place our trust in the Sacred Heart, human carrier of the Divine Love.
So we may safely leave in God's hands how events will turn in the Middle East, while we pray fervently for the salvation of souls, God's own desire, whichever way He may dispose events. If no attack takes place, it will certainly look like a mercy of God, but then we must pray for souls not to be internetted by the devil in the on-going materialistic peace. And if an attack does take place and our own armed forces conquer with ease, again it will look like a mercy of God, but it could be a curse, so we would have to pray for our nations not to make an arrogant or unjust use of their victory.
On the other hand if the attack brought great hardship and even defeat upon our military, it might not truly be the curse that it would look like, so we should pray that our nations would humble themselves beneath the mighty hand of God, who would have directed our sufferings. And finally, even if the attack on Iraq were to let loose World War III - also possible - we could and should trust still that it was the goodness of God chastising the entire world, and we should pray more than ever for the salvation of the greatest possible number of souls, all over the world.
For whoever appear to be our main enemies on earth (they are certainly not those represented as such by the vile media), the real enemies of mankind are the enemies of our eternal salvation, namely "principalities and powers, rulers of the world of this darkness, spirits of wickedness in the high places" (Eph. VI, 12), meaning the fallen angels or devils who do all that God allows them to do to bring our souls down to Hell with them.
That is why with this letter we are enclosing for readers in the USA, besides the usual Retreats flyer and a card to encourage Lenten benefactors, also the card of a prayer revealed to a Catholic soul in the 19th century, a prayer specially designed to appeal to the Mother of God for help in our fight against the devils let loose in modern times: - Noble Queen of the Heavens, obtain from your Divine Son mercy for us in our overwhelming distress!
With continuing thanks for your generosity that sustains the Seminary, and with all blessings for a holy season of Lent,
Sincerely yours in Christ,
Dear Friends and Benefactors,
The beginning of Lent is always a time to reflect on great truths of God, of life and death, but when war seems imminent as it does now in the Middle East, then there is particular reason to remember that God is in command of events, and that He directs them, strange though that may sometimes seem, for nothing other than for the eternal salvation of the immortal soul of each one of us.
War does seem imminent. The United States (and Great Britain) have over the last several months transported to the Middle East such a mass of troops and weapons that it is hard to imagine them being pulled out again with no action: And since each day hotter at this time of year makes desert warfare more difficult, then an attack soon is all the more likely.
Now it is usual for those who start a war to think they know what they are doing when they start it, but none of them can tell for certain how it will end. That is determined by God. A classic case was World War I, into which the nations of Europe gaily launched, each thinking it would conquer with ease in a matter of weeks. In fact the attack turned into a four-year slug-fest, attended by all the horrors of modern trench warfare, which nobody but God had foreseen. But anybody with a grain of faith can see how these horrors were a just punishment of the godlessness of those nations, so gifted by God and so misusing their gifts. In brief, especially with war, "Man proposes while God disposes".
For even by the severity of His punishment of those European nations, God was still loving them. Proverbs III, 11 - "My son, neglect not the discipline of the Lord; neither be thou wearied whilst thou art rebuked by him. For whom the Lord loveth, He chastiseth; and He scourgeth every son whom He receiveth". Having quoted which verse, St. Paul adds (Hebrews XII, 7, 8) that a nation - or person - not chastised by God is not loved by Him! - "Persevere under discipline. God dealeth with you as with His sons; for what son is there whom the father doth not correct? But if you be without chastisement, whereof all are made partakers, then are you bastards and not sons. Thus God even chastises out of love.
This is especially clear if one compares the chastisements of this life with the eternal pains of the next. Who with a grain of faith does not cry out with St. Augustine, "O Lord, chastise me how You like on earth, so long as You do not have to chastise me in Hell"? In World War I, the heroic priests in the trenches (on both sides) certainly absolved and sent to Heaven hundreds of thousands of young men of whom God knew that they would have lost their souls in an enervating peace such -as we have "enjoyed" since 1945, especially since the 1960's. And in World War II, when a privileged soul able to converse with Our Lord (Sister Consolata Betrone) complained to him of all the young men being killed in the flower of their youth, Our Lord reminded her that by dying young for their country, many more of them were saving their souls for eternity than would otherwise have been the case.
At which point an objector may ask, then why is God not chastising us all the time with uninterrupted horrors? To which objection common sense immediately replies that if God dealt out to men nothing but chastisements, few of us would have enough faith to understand what He was doing and still believe in His goodness, so that, again, few would save their souls. Therefore good things in our life, like peace, God gives us, and evil things in our life, like war, He allows, both minutely calibrated for each of us with a view to our eternal salvation.
For He wishes each one of us to save our souls (I Tim. II, 4), but He will not take away our free-will, because, so to speak, He does not want to fill His Heaven with robots. But just as to move a donkey it takes sometimes the carrot and sometimes the stick, so to move a human being with free-will it takes sometimes prosperity to encourage him and sometimes hardship to chasten him. God being goodness itself, He would much rather draw us to Him by his gifts, which is why each of us every day receives from Him a series of blessings, but with our tendency to enjoy the gifts while forgetting the Giver, all too many of these escape our attention, so that we need hardship to bring us back to Him.
Before dying, Moses gave this same warning to Israelites, of how earthly prosperity can make us forget God. In Deuteronomy VIII, 7-10, Moses lists a few of the material benefits that God will bestow upon the Israelites in the Promised Land (recalling the benefits bestowed upon the inhabitants of "America the Beautiful"!). Then Moses warns: - "Take heed, and beware lest at any time thou forget the Lord thy God, and neglect His commandments and judgments and ceremonies, which I command thee this day: lest after thou hast eaten and art filled, thou hast built goodly houses, and dwelt in them, and shalt have herds of oxen and flocks of sheep, and plenty of gold and of silver, and of all things, thy heart be lifted up, and thou remember not the Lord thy God, Who brought thee out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of bondage... lest thou shouldst say in thy heart: My own might and the strength of my own hand have achieved all these things for me" (Deut. VIII, 11-17).
Moses concludes: "But remember the Lord thy God, that He hath given thee strength... But if thou forget the Lord thy God, and follow strange gods" (such as idolized democracy or technology!), "and serve and adore them: behold now I foretell thee that thou shalt utterly perish. As the nations, which the Lord destroyed at thy entrance" (of Israel into the Holy Land), "so shall you also perish, if you be disobedient to the voice of the Lord your God" (Deut. VIII, 18-20).
It follows that as prosperity can be a punishment if it leads away from God, so hardship can be a blessing if it leads back to God. "In suffering is learning", chanted Aeschylus in ancient Greece. Americans today call it the "school of hard knocks". Therefore God can punish or bless by hardship, just as He can bless or punish by prosperity. Therefore what are truly prosperity and hardship can only be judged in the light of God, which is more or less hidden from us human beings, especially by our sins.
However, that God is all-knowing, all-powerful and all-good, is certain. So, since He knows all that could or will happen to us down to the minutest detail, then we know that He can see the prosperity or hardship best able to bring us to Heaven or stop us falling too deeply into Hell. And since He has all power over every creature (for instance, over the weather on a battlefield), then we know that He can organize the comfort or hardship best suited to the welfare of our souls while still leaving them free. And since He is infinitely good, then we know that He will do so, in accordance with His divine Wisdom so far above our own. Therefore we can and must trust God. In particular we must place our trust in the Sacred Heart, human carrier of the Divine Love.
So we may safely leave in God's hands how events will turn in the Middle East, while we pray fervently for the salvation of souls, God's own desire, whichever way He may dispose events. If no attack takes place, it will certainly look like a mercy of God, but then we must pray for souls not to be internetted by the devil in the on-going materialistic peace. And if an attack does take place and our own armed forces conquer with ease, again it will look like a mercy of God, but it could be a curse, so we would have to pray for our nations not to make an arrogant or unjust use of their victory.
On the other hand if the attack brought great hardship and even defeat upon our military, it might not truly be the curse that it would look like, so we should pray that our nations would humble themselves beneath the mighty hand of God, who would have directed our sufferings. And finally, even if the attack on Iraq were to let loose World War III - also possible - we could and should trust still that it was the goodness of God chastising the entire world, and we should pray more than ever for the salvation of the greatest possible number of souls, all over the world.
For whoever appear to be our main enemies on earth (they are certainly not those represented as such by the vile media), the real enemies of mankind are the enemies of our eternal salvation, namely "principalities and powers, rulers of the world of this darkness, spirits of wickedness in the high places" (Eph. VI, 12), meaning the fallen angels or devils who do all that God allows them to do to bring our souls down to Hell with them.
That is why with this letter we are enclosing for readers in the USA, besides the usual Retreats flyer and a card to encourage Lenten benefactors, also the card of a prayer revealed to a Catholic soul in the 19th century, a prayer specially designed to appeal to the Mother of God for help in our fight against the devils let loose in modern times: - Noble Queen of the Heavens, obtain from your Divine Son mercy for us in our overwhelming distress!
With continuing thanks for your generosity that sustains the Seminary, and with all blessings for a holy season of Lent,
Sincerely yours in Christ,
Nice Rome Not Enough
February 1, 2003
Dear Friends and Benefactors,
One amongst a thousand marvelous sayings of St. Augustine is the principle, "In things certain, unity; in things doubtful, liberty; in all things, charity". If there were in the Catholic Church today little confusion, there would be much certainty and we could expect much unity, but since there is much confusion and much doubt, surely we must allow for a corresponding degree of liberty. Speaking for myself, I am sure that the Society of St. Pius X has the long-term solution to the Church's present confusion. The confusion comes from the attempt to mix Catholicism with the principles of the modern world. The solution is to denounce those principles and to refuse even the least mixture. Now one cannot expect all Catholics to understand that, or to accept it, in the twinkling of an eye, but it behoves me to explain patiently why I am so sure the SSPX is right. Let me then gently answer a recent editorial by a - to all appearances - honourable priest in a - to many appearances - honourable monthly Catholic magazine in the United-States. I could name both, but in order to stick to the issues, let me leave out names.
"Souls are the only issue", says the editorialist, Fr. J., and because of two recent experiences in which he saw souls being hurt, he made in his editorial a two-edged appeal, to the authorities in Rome on the one side and to the Superior General of the SSPX on the other, to come to an understanding. The first experience was in Rome, where Fr. J. saw a young Fraternity of St. Peter priest being at the last moment forbidden to celebrate in St. Peter's Basilica an early morning Tridentine Mass for a Latin Mass pilgrimage. The second experience was in Ridgefield, Connecticut, where after an SSPX priest in our Retreat House had celebrated the funeral Mass for a devout girt to whom both he and Fr. J. had ministered, Fr. J. found himself being invited by the priest to conduct the burial ritual at the graveside, which he gladly did.
So Fr. J.'s editorial appealed to Rome to grant to traditionally-minded Catholics a canonical structure which would protect them from harassment by diocesan personnel who feel threatened by any manifestation of pre-Conciliar spirituality. And on the other side the editorial appealed to the SSPX's Superior General, Bishop Bernard Fellay, to consider very seriously the Pope's offer to the SSPX of a "universal apostolic administration". Fr. J. suggests that Archbishop Lefebvre would have accepted such an offer, because "souls aren't the real issue; they're the only issue".
Dear Fr. J., yours is, if I may say so, a noble appeal. You surely grasp the primacy of souls, and the value of pre-Conciliar - meaning Catholic - spirituality. But have you grasped the full depth of the religious war - no less - raging now for 40 years between Conciliarism and Catholicism? Roman or diocesan Conciliarists are of course perfectly free to present to you their side of the case, and they may persuade you that the SSPX and those who think like it are proud, intransigent, divisive, lacking in charity, etc.. But let me here present to you the SSPX's understanding of the matter. And let me start with a parable, from arithmetic.
In olden days, everybody used to think that two and two made four, to the point that nobody even doubted it! But then came modern science, engineering, technology and computers, and people began to doubt the old-fashioned arithmetic. It was, they came to feel, very narrow and limiting and uncreative to think that two and two could only make four! On the contrary it was broad-minded and progressive and up-to-date and altogether more free to think that they might make five, or six or why not - sixty-seven! So one fine day all the arithmeticians woke up to discover that they felt that two and two could make any number they wanted them to make! And since the arithmeticians were all into this New Arithmetic together, then to enjoy their new freedom together, they threw a great party, and they rejoiced exceedingly in their total liberation from two and two making exclusively and only four! What a feeling of freedom!
But then an unpleasant rumour arose amongst them: there was in the boondocks an old arithmetic teacher, named Back Ward, who would not go along with the New Arithmetic. He was apparently still insisting that two and two could only make four!" Hey, he's going to spoil our fun", they said. "He must join in the party!" So they sent a delegation to Back Ward, to bring him around. Whereupon the following conversation ensued: -
Del: Hey, Back, what's wrong with you? Join in the fun! The whole world is now arithmetically free, except you! We're enjoying ourselves! We're in tune with the modern world! Why are you raining on our parade?
B.W.: Arithmetic is a question of truth. Two and two can only make four.
Del.: Of course it is a question of truth! We all know that! And we all know that two and two make four. But now we know that they can make five or fifteen as well as just making four! We have broadened truth!
B.W.: But truth is what it is, independently of all of us arithmeticians. None of us can make two and two equal anything other than what they equal.
Del.: Of course truth is what it is! But what it is broader now than what it was. We have freedom today!
B.W.: But truth cannot change, nor can it be changed.
Del.: Of course truth can't be changed! But we're not changing it. We are merely discovering an extra dimension of truth that modern times have revealed. After all, we're no longer peasants!
B.W.: But two and two can still only make four!!
Del.: Of course two and two make four! But can't you get it into your head that at the same time they can make six or sixty? Computers today can work wonders!
B.W.: Look, if you say two and two can at one and the same time make four or five or six, then you are completely dissolving arithmetic! No number is then what it is, it can be any other number, you have total confusion!
Del.: You think we're confused? We're liberated! We're H-A-P-P-Y!
B.W.: Oh, go to - Heaven!
Del.: Now, you're not being nice. Be careful. If you're not nice, if you don't join us, then we may make things nasty for you!
B.W.: Be my guest. I would rather think straight on my own than think crooked with the whole world.
At which point the delegates gave up trying to persuade Back Ward. But they were resolved in their own minds that he should not be allowed to continue to rain on their parade, and already on their way home they were planning sticks (and even carrots!) with which to bring, or force, him over. And the sticks and carrots continue to this day!
Dear Fr. J., between Conciliarism and Catholicism lies the gulf that lies between two totally different ideas of truth. The gulf could not be deeper. And when the Conciliarists - like, surely, our present Pope - sincerely believe that they believe in Catholicism at the same time that they also believe in Conciliarism, that proves that they have no real grasp of Catholicism, just as the arithmetician who believes that he believes that two and two make four, even while he also believes that they can make five or whatever, proves that he is a dissolver of arithmetic with no understanding at all of what makes arithmetic.
Of course, that two and two making four EXCLUDES two and two making anything else is clear to anybody with a grain of common sense. It is, admittedly, less clear that the Nicene Creed excludes Conciliarism. But - one clear example -Pope Pius XI's "Mortalium Animos" excludes today's ecumenism. Yet today's ecumenists do not think so! "'Mortalium Animos' was valid in the 1920's", they will say, "but not from the 1960's onwards". In other words, Truth swings with swinging decades!
Fr. J., are you getting a glimmer of the problem? The Second Vatican Council rests upon principles so opposed to the Catholic Faith that for a Catholic to believe in that Council is like an arithmetician believing that two and two can make both four and five, either at the same time or alternatingly. But to believe such a thing, even alternatingly, is to dissolve arithmetic. Similarly to believe in the Council, even a little bit, is to dissolve the Catholic Faith.
Now all of today's Romans that have any clout believe more or less in Vatican Two. Therefore they have all more or less dissolved the Faith in their own heads, and they are - with however good intentions - dissolving it in the heads of all Catholics world-wide who are following and obeying Rome. The problem could not be more grave, because this dissolution of truth, at a supernatural or natural level, rots the mind. Whosoever accepts Vatican Two will end up losing his mind, while still persuaded that he is being Catholic, following the Pope, etc. etc.. And who loses his mind is well on the way to losing his soul. It is all about souls!
You may ask where all this began, and how it ends. It began, let us say, 700 years ago, in the High Middle Ages, when men began to detach their minds from reality and attach them to fantasy. The process took a giant step forwards with the philosophy of Immanuel Kant (1724-1804). St. Pius X said, "Kantism is the modern heresy". In brief, Kant makes truth no longer objective, but subjective, depending upon man's subjective desires or perceptions.
And where does it end? In my gentle opinion the process is today too far gone to end in anything other than a gigantic reality check, human and/or divine. A human World War III is at our doors, but as WWI and WWII were not enough to make modern man change course, so one may doubt whether even a cataclysmic WWIII would bring 21st century man to his knees. In which case the Lord God Himself may well intervene, because the Triumph of the Immaculate Heart promised by our Lady at Fatima and still to come suggests we are not yet at the end of the world. But her Heart cannot triumph amongst Kantians. That is why God may intervene. When in the time of Noah He cleaned up mankind with the Flood, He promised He would never use water again for that purpose. I conclude that Kantism will be cleaned out of the Catholic Church by a deluge of fire...
Dear Fr. J., do read the enclosed letter of Bishop Fellay. He does not speak of a deluge of fire, but he does ask the key question: if Rome wants to offer to the SSPX the most magnificent and suitable of "apostolic administrations", would they found it upon the shifting sands of Vatican Two, or upon the Rock of Peter? That says it all, in a nutshell. The SSPX must wait for Romans to climb back onto the Rock of Peter. Until then, we must pray and do penance. Pray especially the true Mass and the Rosary, do penance especially in Lent, coming up.
May God have mercy upon us all! Dear Friends and Benefactors, always, thank you.
In Christ,
+ Richard Williamson
Dear Friends and Benefactors,
One amongst a thousand marvelous sayings of St. Augustine is the principle, "In things certain, unity; in things doubtful, liberty; in all things, charity". If there were in the Catholic Church today little confusion, there would be much certainty and we could expect much unity, but since there is much confusion and much doubt, surely we must allow for a corresponding degree of liberty. Speaking for myself, I am sure that the Society of St. Pius X has the long-term solution to the Church's present confusion. The confusion comes from the attempt to mix Catholicism with the principles of the modern world. The solution is to denounce those principles and to refuse even the least mixture. Now one cannot expect all Catholics to understand that, or to accept it, in the twinkling of an eye, but it behoves me to explain patiently why I am so sure the SSPX is right. Let me then gently answer a recent editorial by a - to all appearances - honourable priest in a - to many appearances - honourable monthly Catholic magazine in the United-States. I could name both, but in order to stick to the issues, let me leave out names.
"Souls are the only issue", says the editorialist, Fr. J., and because of two recent experiences in which he saw souls being hurt, he made in his editorial a two-edged appeal, to the authorities in Rome on the one side and to the Superior General of the SSPX on the other, to come to an understanding. The first experience was in Rome, where Fr. J. saw a young Fraternity of St. Peter priest being at the last moment forbidden to celebrate in St. Peter's Basilica an early morning Tridentine Mass for a Latin Mass pilgrimage. The second experience was in Ridgefield, Connecticut, where after an SSPX priest in our Retreat House had celebrated the funeral Mass for a devout girt to whom both he and Fr. J. had ministered, Fr. J. found himself being invited by the priest to conduct the burial ritual at the graveside, which he gladly did.
So Fr. J.'s editorial appealed to Rome to grant to traditionally-minded Catholics a canonical structure which would protect them from harassment by diocesan personnel who feel threatened by any manifestation of pre-Conciliar spirituality. And on the other side the editorial appealed to the SSPX's Superior General, Bishop Bernard Fellay, to consider very seriously the Pope's offer to the SSPX of a "universal apostolic administration". Fr. J. suggests that Archbishop Lefebvre would have accepted such an offer, because "souls aren't the real issue; they're the only issue".
Dear Fr. J., yours is, if I may say so, a noble appeal. You surely grasp the primacy of souls, and the value of pre-Conciliar - meaning Catholic - spirituality. But have you grasped the full depth of the religious war - no less - raging now for 40 years between Conciliarism and Catholicism? Roman or diocesan Conciliarists are of course perfectly free to present to you their side of the case, and they may persuade you that the SSPX and those who think like it are proud, intransigent, divisive, lacking in charity, etc.. But let me here present to you the SSPX's understanding of the matter. And let me start with a parable, from arithmetic.
In olden days, everybody used to think that two and two made four, to the point that nobody even doubted it! But then came modern science, engineering, technology and computers, and people began to doubt the old-fashioned arithmetic. It was, they came to feel, very narrow and limiting and uncreative to think that two and two could only make four! On the contrary it was broad-minded and progressive and up-to-date and altogether more free to think that they might make five, or six or why not - sixty-seven! So one fine day all the arithmeticians woke up to discover that they felt that two and two could make any number they wanted them to make! And since the arithmeticians were all into this New Arithmetic together, then to enjoy their new freedom together, they threw a great party, and they rejoiced exceedingly in their total liberation from two and two making exclusively and only four! What a feeling of freedom!
But then an unpleasant rumour arose amongst them: there was in the boondocks an old arithmetic teacher, named Back Ward, who would not go along with the New Arithmetic. He was apparently still insisting that two and two could only make four!" Hey, he's going to spoil our fun", they said. "He must join in the party!" So they sent a delegation to Back Ward, to bring him around. Whereupon the following conversation ensued: -
Del: Hey, Back, what's wrong with you? Join in the fun! The whole world is now arithmetically free, except you! We're enjoying ourselves! We're in tune with the modern world! Why are you raining on our parade?
B.W.: Arithmetic is a question of truth. Two and two can only make four.
Del.: Of course it is a question of truth! We all know that! And we all know that two and two make four. But now we know that they can make five or fifteen as well as just making four! We have broadened truth!
B.W.: But truth is what it is, independently of all of us arithmeticians. None of us can make two and two equal anything other than what they equal.
Del.: Of course truth is what it is! But what it is broader now than what it was. We have freedom today!
B.W.: But truth cannot change, nor can it be changed.
Del.: Of course truth can't be changed! But we're not changing it. We are merely discovering an extra dimension of truth that modern times have revealed. After all, we're no longer peasants!
B.W.: But two and two can still only make four!!
Del.: Of course two and two make four! But can't you get it into your head that at the same time they can make six or sixty? Computers today can work wonders!
B.W.: Look, if you say two and two can at one and the same time make four or five or six, then you are completely dissolving arithmetic! No number is then what it is, it can be any other number, you have total confusion!
Del.: You think we're confused? We're liberated! We're H-A-P-P-Y!
B.W.: Oh, go to - Heaven!
Del.: Now, you're not being nice. Be careful. If you're not nice, if you don't join us, then we may make things nasty for you!
B.W.: Be my guest. I would rather think straight on my own than think crooked with the whole world.
At which point the delegates gave up trying to persuade Back Ward. But they were resolved in their own minds that he should not be allowed to continue to rain on their parade, and already on their way home they were planning sticks (and even carrots!) with which to bring, or force, him over. And the sticks and carrots continue to this day!
Dear Fr. J., between Conciliarism and Catholicism lies the gulf that lies between two totally different ideas of truth. The gulf could not be deeper. And when the Conciliarists - like, surely, our present Pope - sincerely believe that they believe in Catholicism at the same time that they also believe in Conciliarism, that proves that they have no real grasp of Catholicism, just as the arithmetician who believes that he believes that two and two make four, even while he also believes that they can make five or whatever, proves that he is a dissolver of arithmetic with no understanding at all of what makes arithmetic.
Of course, that two and two making four EXCLUDES two and two making anything else is clear to anybody with a grain of common sense. It is, admittedly, less clear that the Nicene Creed excludes Conciliarism. But - one clear example -Pope Pius XI's "Mortalium Animos" excludes today's ecumenism. Yet today's ecumenists do not think so! "'Mortalium Animos' was valid in the 1920's", they will say, "but not from the 1960's onwards". In other words, Truth swings with swinging decades!
Fr. J., are you getting a glimmer of the problem? The Second Vatican Council rests upon principles so opposed to the Catholic Faith that for a Catholic to believe in that Council is like an arithmetician believing that two and two can make both four and five, either at the same time or alternatingly. But to believe such a thing, even alternatingly, is to dissolve arithmetic. Similarly to believe in the Council, even a little bit, is to dissolve the Catholic Faith.
Now all of today's Romans that have any clout believe more or less in Vatican Two. Therefore they have all more or less dissolved the Faith in their own heads, and they are - with however good intentions - dissolving it in the heads of all Catholics world-wide who are following and obeying Rome. The problem could not be more grave, because this dissolution of truth, at a supernatural or natural level, rots the mind. Whosoever accepts Vatican Two will end up losing his mind, while still persuaded that he is being Catholic, following the Pope, etc. etc.. And who loses his mind is well on the way to losing his soul. It is all about souls!
You may ask where all this began, and how it ends. It began, let us say, 700 years ago, in the High Middle Ages, when men began to detach their minds from reality and attach them to fantasy. The process took a giant step forwards with the philosophy of Immanuel Kant (1724-1804). St. Pius X said, "Kantism is the modern heresy". In brief, Kant makes truth no longer objective, but subjective, depending upon man's subjective desires or perceptions.
And where does it end? In my gentle opinion the process is today too far gone to end in anything other than a gigantic reality check, human and/or divine. A human World War III is at our doors, but as WWI and WWII were not enough to make modern man change course, so one may doubt whether even a cataclysmic WWIII would bring 21st century man to his knees. In which case the Lord God Himself may well intervene, because the Triumph of the Immaculate Heart promised by our Lady at Fatima and still to come suggests we are not yet at the end of the world. But her Heart cannot triumph amongst Kantians. That is why God may intervene. When in the time of Noah He cleaned up mankind with the Flood, He promised He would never use water again for that purpose. I conclude that Kantism will be cleaned out of the Catholic Church by a deluge of fire...
Dear Fr. J., do read the enclosed letter of Bishop Fellay. He does not speak of a deluge of fire, but he does ask the key question: if Rome wants to offer to the SSPX the most magnificent and suitable of "apostolic administrations", would they found it upon the shifting sands of Vatican Two, or upon the Rock of Peter? That says it all, in a nutshell. The SSPX must wait for Romans to climb back onto the Rock of Peter. Until then, we must pray and do penance. Pray especially the true Mass and the Rosary, do penance especially in Lent, coming up.
May God have mercy upon us all! Dear Friends and Benefactors, always, thank you.
In Christ,
+ Richard Williamson
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