The Bishop's Weekly Column from the Parish Bulletin

OUR LADY OF FATIMA

CATHOLIC CHURCH

"Sink the Bismarck !"

December 6th, 2007

The HMS Nelson during a practice salvo.

When Germany's prize battleship the Bismarck sank the British battlecruiser HMS Hood in 20 minutes flat during World War II and damaged the HMS Prince of Wales, Britain's Prime Minister Winston Churchill gave the order: "Sink the Bismarck !". The British Royal Navy went on high alert. The battleship HMS Nelson which was docked at Gibraltar was ordered to stand ready for combat. The task, however, of laying low Germany's pride would fall to Her sister ship HMS Rodney and HMS King George V. The rest would be history. After the fateful encounter, it seems, although there is considerable debate amongst the experts over this, that the Germans scuttled their own ship in order to prevent her capture by the British.

Another "Nelson" is firing salvos at another "Bismarck" of late. Richard Nelson Williamson has recently written an entry on his blog decrying his excommunication by Pope John Paul II as "invalid". I can well recall the good bishop telling me in a private conversation in the early 1990s that he was excommunicated in virtue of his having received episcopal consecration without the permission of John Paul II.

Here I am not interested in the canonical wranglings that Traddie types go through to try and justify their resistance towards all the chaos in the modern church. My only purpose here is to point out one definite caveat...

It is clear, to me, (at least) that Pope Benedict XVI means business about trying to correct the mess in the Church. To constantly thumb one's nose at a Pope who wants to solve the problems is not without problem itself. Bishop Williamson is on record saying that he doubts anything good can come from this papacy. Others share his negativity. Could we have imagined a Motu proprio freeing the Latin Mass 3 years ago ? If Pope Benedict looks set to want to lift the excommunications incurred in 1988 he obviously wants to right a wrong. Why bother decrying the excommunication and saying it doesn't exist when all we really need is to work with the man ?

This is not the time to "sink" the Bismarck !

+TF