The Bishop's Weekly Column from the Parish Bulletin

OUR LADY OF FATIMA

CATHOLIC CHURCH

The "Empire" Strikes Back...
...(no "wiggle-room" for Fellay now !)

September 1st, 2006

Making it up as he goes along (the usual stuff)

Just last Sunday I posted the few forlorn comments of Bishop Fellay in a telephone interview. It said in part:

The bishop said he was certain there would be new contacts with the Vatican and more discussion in the future, but he predicted that reconciliation would take a long time, perhaps years.

Well just as Fellay was whining from Switzerland - down in Argentina "Britannia's Bishop" (Williamson by name) was striking back. In an interview conveniently timed to appear in the SSPX American magazine the Angelus in October, Williamson continues his under-cutting of Fellay's attempts to come to some arrangement with Rome. The coincidence of timing is no accident, October is the month that the SSPX is set to deliver their 1 million rosaries to the Pope (for his conversion). October was also touted by one confidante of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith (CDF) as the month in which the Pope would finally say something about the Tridentine Mass. Presto, Williamson intervenes and goes back to Tissier's hissy:

Heiner:... Your Excellency, going back to the interview I did with Bishop [Bernard] Tissier [de Mallerais, one of the other three bishops consecrated in 1988] for the Remnant in April, Fr. Anthony Cekada [a Sedevacantist cleric somewhat well-known in America] wrote an article in response that said that for Bishop Tissier, there are no consequences for professing heresy. Is that a fair assessment?

+ Williamson: Bishop Tissier would certainly say that what he calls the heresy of Benedict XVI has the very gravest consequences, namely the destruction of the Catholic Church!

H: Then what do you think Fr. Cekada had in mind?

+W: From today´s destruction of the Church, Fr. Cekada concludes that Benedict XVI cannot possibly be a true Pope. Fr. Cekada surely wishes that Bishop Tissier would draw the same conclusion.

Williamson's first public endorsement of Tissier's heresy charges ! (Definitely calculated to scuttle a Rome accord for Fellay.)

H: Is Fr. Cekada right or is Bishop Tissier right?

+W: Myself, I believe that Benedict XVI is the true Pope, so I think Bishop Tissier is right.

Well this is one for the books: Williamson's first, clear, unequivocal admission that Benedict XVI is the true Pope. Unfortunately, as we shall see, he goes on to effectively deny what he has here posited. As he would say imitating an American accent: "We gad a problem !"

H: But what about Benedict XVI´s heresy?

+ W: To be such a heretic as to so put oneself out of the Catholic Church that one cannot possibly any longer be its head, i.e. Pope, one must know that one is denying what one knows to be a defined dogma of the Catholic Faith, because such a denial amounts to deliberate apostasy. To become, or to continue being, a Catholic, is a choice. If I know what a Catholic must believe in order to be Catholic, and if I refuse to believe it, then I am choosing to be a heretic instead of a Catholic, and I put myself outside the Church.

Unfortunately Mr. Heiner has already swallowed Tissier's allegations. I and others have already disproved the "heresy" charge. However the charge is beginning to stick, as they say: "repeat a lie often enough and someone will begin to believe it" - Williamson skillfully uses a lie to "deceive the elect". The problem is the charge is not founded on reality. In addition, the charge is a great subterfuge since it deflects the charge of schism laid at the SSPX door. Who's worried about the separation from Rome when the Pope is "suspect of heresy". Very nicely done !

BTW who says Benedict XVI (the theologian par excellence) doesn't know what being a Catholic is ?

H: So Fr. Cekada would believe that this is the case of Benedict XVI, and you believe it is not?

+ W: Correct.

Ooopps - slight problem here - Since when do heresy and papacy reside in the same man ? St Robert Bellarmine (a Doctor of the Church - hence you would think he knew a thing or two about theology) says it cannot. Now let the mental hand-stands begin...(and they do in short order !!!!)

H: Why?

+W: Because modern minds are very sick, as minds, and Benedict XVI has a modern mind, like millions and millions of modern people, including churchmen, around him.

See I told you so - the mental handstands begin - Benedict XVI's mind is "very sick" - follow the logic of the reasoning - that is what he infers. I seem to think people with sick minds are incapable of holding office within the Church. Does this fellow know canon law ? No he doesn't, he told me so in 1993: "Terence my dear boy, I don't know any canon law!" (from the horse's mouth !)

H: Firstly, in what does the sickness consist, and secondly, how can Benedict XVI not be aware of it?

+W: The sickness consists in believing that there is no fixed, objective truth which absolutely excludes error. For example, I may believe that 2 and 2 are 4, but I will believe that they can also be 5 or 6 or 600,000 or whatever. The “truth” is what my mind makes it. But the mind is made for objective truth like lungs are made for oxygen, so just as lungs without external oxygen are sick to death, so a mind with no external truth is sick to death.

Objective truth... hmmm like "heretics cannot be Popes" ??? 2 and 2 are 4 in Catholic theology, but not in the world of subjectivism that is SSPX-land.

H: And how do we see this in someone like Benedict XVI?

+W: Benedict XVI believes that Catholic “truth” can evolve. For instance, very serious statements of Catholic truth that cannot change, like the Syllabus or Pascendi, he calls merely “substantial anchorages” in Church doctrine, meaning that the Church could anchor there, and usefully anchored there for a while, but in modern times the Church needs new “substantial anchorages” in doctrine. He cannot see that this anti-modern Catholic doctrine of his predecessors is of such a nature that it cannot change, and not even as Pope can he change it. His poor mind, however gifted, is sick with that modern – especially German – philosophy which unhooks the mind from its object, like cutting off lungs from oxygen.

Yes and truth evolves for Williamson too: the Pope can both be a "heretic" and Pope at the same time - all because his mind is sick. So was Luther's "mind" how come he was excommunicated ?

H: But – and that was my follow-up question – how can Benedict XVI not be aware of his condition? He is an educated man, a high churchman, learned in philosophy and theology!

+W: Yes, but like so many high churchmen, even before Vatican II, he is learned in the wrong philosophy! And since in our sick age the wrong philosophy (2 and 2 are 4 but can be, or become, 5) has become “normal”, then he cannot imagine he may be wrong. When John Paul II promoted “conservative” conciliarism, 2000 bishops praised him for being “conservative” and the other 2000 blasted him for being so. Only two bishops dared to protest to his face that he was not truly conservative at all, because he was conciliar. Humanly speaking, repeat, humanly speaking, how could he believe that the two were normal and the four thousand were abnormal? How could he not think he was being “normal”?

He learnt the wrong stuff !!! No the Pope studied scholasticism but he didn't take to it. (Of course that is the source of his theological problems - but he did study St Thomas).

Yes and 2 bishops kept the Faith and all the rest didn't (in other words the entire hierarchy defected - a theological impossibility) No "Oliver" don't send me another e-mail !!!!!

Then the dichotomy between "conciliarism" and the true Church... I need a little Ratzinger to wake me up from this nightnare:

The explanation which Msgr. Lefebvre has given, for the retraction of his agreement, is revealing. He declared that he has finally understood that the agreement he signed aimed only at integrating his foundation into the 'Conciliar Church.'. The Catholic Church in union with the Pope is, according to him, the 'Conciliar Church' which has broken with its own past. It seems indeed that he is no longer able to see that we are dealing with the Catholic Church in the totality of its Tradition, and that Vatican II belongs to that.

Thank you your Eminence ! To think I was educated by this man where are the smoke and mirrors when you need them most ?

H: Well, how could he?

+W: In the good old days, a Catholic Pope put very intelligent and orthodox theologians in the Holy Office, formerly known as the Inquisition, and these would interrogate a neo-modernist thus: “You have written that Pascendi is only a ´substantial anchorage´. This amounts to heresy. Either you retract, or the Pope has authority to excommunicate you. Kindly choose.” And the neo-modernist would have had to choose, having been made aware, by Church authority, of his heresy.

Oh no - here we go again: In the good old days, a Catholic Pope put very intelligent and orthodox theologians in the Holy Office (Like a Pope could be anything other than Catholic!!!)

Whose mind was "very sick" - was that Ratzinger ????

H: In other words, a heretic might have blinded himself, but Mother Church used to use her God-given authority to force him to be aware of his heresy.

+W: Correct. But this last resort is unavailable to today´s churchmen, because they are the authority! As Archbishop Lefebvre said in the 70s to the Conciliar Holy Office when they interrogated him on his anti-Conciliarism, “I should be sitting in your place, and you should be sitting in mine”. God bless him, the Archbishop never lost his grip on objective Catholic truth!

He lets the cat out of the bag - he doesn't want to be reconciled with Rome he wants to hold the inquisition and condemn all these men as heretics. Again the Archbishop has the grip on "objectivism" - one of two bishops who opposed the Council. What did Bishop Fessler say about the duty of a few bishops to conform their minds to the teaching of an ecumenical council which is guaranteed free from error when they disagree with that teaching ???

H: Then churchmen such as Benedict XVI are completely innocent of what they are doing?

+W: I did not say that. If they are the authorities of God’s Church, then logically the Lord God is offering them all the graces they need to lead the Church rightly. If then they are misleading the Church, they are refusing those graces, which means that they cannot, inside themselves, be innocent. But we are entering into inner depths upon which God alone can judge.

If they're not innocent, they must be guilty and (according to moral theology) CULPABLE. What kind of logic course did this man have ? Almost 25 years as seminary rector and not a single quote from a canonist, theologian, philosopher, Saint or any authority at all other than Marcel Lefebvre.

When will real trads wake up to all this utter nonsense. This is the reasoning of a man who is digging his heels in as hard as he can: the Pope's a heretic, his mind is sick, he ought to be judged by trads, we ought to occupy the halls of authority, we're the only real Catholics... and on and on and on.... pure Williamsonischism !

+TF

PS. You're darn right I've got my dander up ! It was three years of this man's ravings that led me to adopt sedevacantism. Since 1998 I have evidently seen the error of that position. Honestly these stupid made-up-on-the-spot answers are hardly the work of a great Catholic thinker, still less a serious theologian. Why does the mystique of the SSPX blind so many to this truth ?