BISHOP WILLIAMSON CONFERENCES- n°1
Fr Le Floch used to teach the great encyclicals, running from the early
1800s through to, as it then was, the 1920s.
The Church had not yet gone crazy in Fr Le Floch’s time. Then the Church went crazy in the 1960s, or the
churchmen went crazy in the 1960s, and when the Archbishop started his seminary
in the 1970s, he instituted, what I don’t think he’d had in his day, a course
on the encyclicals, a course on the full-blooded Church teaching on the modern
errors. I heard him quoted once, saying
to somebody, “We need to make more use of the encyclicals.” Those encyclicals nail the great errors of
the modern age, and the modern age squealed, especially the Syllabus. It really made the liberals yell. It touched a nerve. It hit the modern age where it hurts, and the
modern age didn’t like it. Gladstone,
the great Liberal prime minister, who was no Catholic, and I’m sure was nowhere
ever near the Catholic Church, he yelled, “This is a Catholic business. You don’t have to worry about what a Catholic
says,” but he did worry, because the Church was hitting on exactly what the
modern world was doing wrong. The Syllabus was hitting on exactly the
problem.
The modern problem begins with Protestantism. Protestantism is at the root of the modern
errors, which is in the 16th century. Protestantism is taking about a third of
Christendom and it’s yanking it off to the left – grace alone, scripture alone
and faith alone – the tremendous heresy of Protestantism, which undermined the
whole of Catholic teaching and the whole of the Catholic Church and it broke
Christendom. From then on Christendom
was fractured. You may remember the Five
Ages of the Church. The Fourth Age of
the Church lasted about 1,000 years.
Prior to that, the Age of the Apostles, the Age of the Martyrs, the Age
of the Doctors, and then things stabilise and tranquilise, and you’ve got 1,000
years with not much heresy. There is
heresy but there’s not much, and it’s more or less tranquil. The Church is always in trouble, but it’s relatively
tranquil for 1,000 years - the Church peacefully possessing civilisation. The later Middle Ages get decadent, and the
heresy of Protestantism breaks out with Martin Luther in 1517, and a whole
chunk of the Church swings left.
The Church reacts with the Counter-Reformation, which opposes
Protestantism, and it’s rebuilding the Church, and the Church begins to expand
again. Then there’s 1789, the French
Revolution, and Liberalism breaks out.
There was another 250 years of Catholic civilisation, 1517 to 1789, about
250 years, and the Jesuits are the counterattack of the Catholic Church against
Protestantism. St Ignatius is a
contemporary of Luther, and while Luther is going to sort out the Church by
rebelling, St Ignatius sorts out the Church by converting. That’s the Spiritual Exercises, which we
inherit from St Ignatius. He founded the
Spiritual Exercises, in the modern form at least, and every Catholic pope since
that time has praised the Spiritual Exercises and commended them and
recommended them, and they have been a tremendous means of fortifying Catholics
against the world being shaken and broken and infiltrated by Protestantism. So you’ve got 250 years of Catholicism and
Protestantism slugging it out.
Then the French Revolution is a rerun of Protestantism, only in the form
of Liberalism. It’s more subtle than
Protestantism. It’s less of a
sledgehammer. It’s more of a
scalpel. Liberalism pretends to be
Catholic. Actually, both Protestantism
and Liberalism pretend to be Catholic - one form after another of fake
Catholicism. Since the Fourth Age the
Church has triumphed. Everybody knows
that the Catholic Church is where it’s at and that we should all be Catholic,
so everybody has to pay homage to Catholicism, but they don’t want to be
Catholics, so all of this is hypocrisy.
It’s all pretence of being Catholic without the reality. It’s a break with Catholicism while pretending
to be Catholics. Liberalism is a more
refined form of Protestantism – liberty, equality, fraternity. Liberalism doesn’t pretend to be a religion
like Protestantism did, but, in effect, it’s a whole world view pretending to
save the world, and it’s basically rerunning the ideas of Protestantism, but
it’s Protestantism inside Catholic countries.
For example, Liberalism breaks out in France, which is a Catholic
country, where the Jesuits had been at work, and many other religious orders
and many saints have been at work for 250 years – St Francis de Sales, St
Vincent de Paul, St John Eudes and so on.
There was a good deal of Catholicism in 17th-century
France. France got its Catholic act
together, so to speak, but in the 18th century the 17th-century
Catholicism soured with Jansenism.
Jansenism was a form of Protestant Catholicism, and Jansenism led to
Liberalism. Jansenism is very strict, on
the right, and then the pendulum swings.
It’s unbalanced, it’s too far out, and the pendulum swings in the
opposite direction, and you get somebody who’s very strict suddenly becoming
very liberal, and so Jansenists turn into liberals.
The same thing happened in England.
The Puritans turned into Whigs about the same time, towards the end of
the 17th century. Catholicism
had been knocked out in England by then, stamped out by the wicked governments
of Henry VIII, Elizabeth I and James VI.
The English are tough. They’re
implacable. They put their foot on the
Church just like somebody would stamp on an insect and crush it out. That’s what the English did to the Catholic
Church, so the Catholic Church had been knocked out. Nevertheless, the Cavaliers were
semi-Catholic Protestants. In other
words, you had this tendency amongst the Protestants, they still had a great
respect for the Catholic Church and they wanted to be like Catholics. In fact, between them and the Puritans it
came to outright war, the Civil War in England of the 1640s, and King Charles I
had his head cut off, but then the English did come back after Oliver
Cromwell. The English restored the
monarchy, even though it was gutted, even though it was comparatively powerless,
and then it was a constitutional monarchy, and then the liberals took
over. The Puritans morphed into Whigs,
and then the Whigs dominated English politics for a long time.
In France, the Protestantism seeping into the Catholic Church, seeping
into the Counter-Reformation church, took a virulent form - Jansenism. Jansenism morphed into Liberalism. Liberalism produced the French Revolution of
1789.
Freemasonry was lodged in London in 1717. Freemasonry generated Liberalism. Liberalism is the result of Protestantism
dividing from Catholicism. When
Catholicism was in possession of civilisation, it was the Truth and everybody
knew it.
In Catholic Austria, Beethoven said, “God and the basic rules of music,
you don’t question.” In medieval Catholic
Europe, you didn’t question Catholicism.
It was in serene and complete possession. When Protestantism set up shop, you then had
two completely different systems. So a
soul says, “They can’t both be true, so which is true? The Protestants seem good guys, and the
Catholics can seem quite sloppy guys sometimes, so which is true?”
The Roundheads and the Cavaliers - the Roundheads are strict and they’ve
got strict morals, whereas the Cavaliers enjoy wine and women. You’ve got a choice.
Then what happens is the liberals come in and say, “OK, you Catholics, OK,
you Protestants, don’t worry. You be a
good Protestant and you be a good Catholic and that way we’ll all be happy and
we’ll live together and we won’t have any more of these terrible religious
wars.” That’s Liberalism. In other words, your different beliefs, your
different doctrines don’t matter.
Doctrine doesn’t matter. What
matters is it to be a nice guy and to live united. Unity in front of truth. “Let’s get together. Let’s all love one another. Don’t worry about the things that separate us. Let’s concentrate on the things that unite
us”- that’s another great slogan of the liberals.
Liberalism arises from the existence of Protestantism opposite Catholicism,
and the liberals come along and say, “Doctrine doesn’t matter. Let’s all get on together.” It’s the Peace of Westphalia of 1648. Liberalism doesn’t sweep off countries like
Protestantism did, but it sweeps off the politics. Liberalism has the effect of separating
politics from religion. Religion is
kicked out of politics by Liberalism.
The liberals say, “Look, every man in private can have his own
religion. That’s not a problem, but in
public we’re going to agree to disagree.
In public we’re not going to be Catholic. We’re not going to be Protestant. The State will not be Protestant or Catholic,
but the individuals will be what they like in their own lives.” That’s Liberalism.
Liberalism arises from the coexistence of Protestantism with
Catholicism. Without Protestantism there
would never have become Liberalism.
Liberalism is “let’s all be free; freedom for everybody; let’s agree to
differ; ideas don’t matter all that much.
What matters is getting on together, being good guys. You can have what religion you like in
private, only don’t try and force it on anybody in public.” That’s the United States, which is soaked in
Liberalism; and England, also, but in a different way from the United States.
The Church reacts with the 19th-century popes against
Liberalism. They’re fighting Liberalism,
just as the Counter-Reformation fought Protestantism. The 19th-century popes write the
encyclicals. One of the first is in 1832,
Mirari Vos of Gregory XVI. These are the encyclicals that Archbishop
Lefebvre loved and wanted to use.
An encyclical is from the Greek.
It’s like “cycle”. A monocycle is
a cycle with just one wheel; a bicycle is a cycle with two wheels; a tricycle
is a cycle with three wheels. “Cycle”
means “wheel” or “circle”. It’s a
circular letter which is going to go the round of all the bishops of the
world. That’s why it’s called an “encyclical”
letter. The encyclicals are written for
bishops, so they’re on a substantial level.
The Archbishop loved them because they are the answer to Liberalism,
which is a tremendous problem in the modern world. If Protestantism originated the problems of
the modern world, Liberalism certainly developed them. It is apparently less hateful towards
Catholicism but more undermining. At least
the Protestants stood up and said, “We hate you. We’re going to smash you.” It was an open fight. Liberalism says, “We love you but we also
love Protestants. We love
everybody. We’re agreeing with
everybody.” It’s apparently friendly but
in reality it’s deadly. It’s more deadly
in a way than Protestantism. The
Protestant is wrong but at least his mind is still firm. Luther says, “Here I stand. I can do no other.” He takes a stand. He’s not wishy-washy, but every liberal is
wishy-washy. By his very principles he’s
wishy-washy because he says, “Ideas don’t matter. Let’s all agree to disagree. No problem.
Let’s not make a problem of doctrine or a problem of ideas. Let’s just live together and be happy
together and coexist together, and let each man have his own convictions in
private.” Liberalism is apparently nicer
than Protestantism but it’s more deadly, and the modern world is full of
Liberalism.
Protestants morph into liberals.
Today there are few convinced Protestants. They do still exist, but the general state of
people’s minds today is Liberalism. In
philosophy it’s Kant, the deadly, terrible Immanuel Kant, the German philosopher. He systematised the idea that ideas are
useless. He created a system around the
proposition that we cannot know reality, that the mind cannot know
reality. Then the mind really is at sea.
The liberal Kant, who disconnected the
mind from objective reality, is the real nigger in the woodpile of Modernism,
the real uranium of Modernism. That’s
the heart of Modernism. Therefore there are
100 people, there are 100 truths – that’s Kant.
He made it into a system. You go
to any university today, you go to the philosophy department, and automatically
it’s built on Kant. It’s never built on
St Thomas Aquinas. Today not even the
Catholic universities are built on St Thomas Aquinas. St Thomas Aquinas is included in the
syllabus, but the automatic supposition is that if you want to philosophise
you’re going to have to start out from Kant.
That’s Liberalism.
The 19th-century popes stand up to Liberalism, and again the
Church expands. There’s a great
missionary effort in the 19th century. For instance, Africa is opened up. A lot of French missionaries go to Africa,
which has only had contact with Europeans more or less around its coast. The Europeans had never penetrated much into
the interior. With the 19th-century
missions, the Catholics going to the inside of the continent, and so Africa
opens up. Also Asia and Oceania open up
with missions. The Catholic Church gets
its act together and again it expands.
That’s the pattern – pulls itself together, expands; corrupts, shrinks.
Modernism is around the end of the 1800s, and that’s more subtle still, more
subtle than Liberalism. Liberalism is
more subtle and poisonous than Protestantism.
Modernism is more subtle and poisonous than Liberalism or
Protestantism. The heresy gets more and
more refined as time goes on. There’s a
handful of Catholics at the end of the 19th century who are bewitched
by the wonderful modern world that is being created by the liberals and Protestants. They say, “Hey, what’s so wrong with the
modern world? It’s OK. Look at the progress in science. Look at the progress all over the world. Look at the development of the nations. Look at our free politics. Look how we all get on now.” So the modern world is, in its own way,
glamorous. Once you see through it, it’s
not nearly as glamorous as it looks, but it does look glamorous. If you don’t look deep, it’s very attractive
- people mow their lawns and the trains run on time, and you can catch a train
from London to Bristol in two hours, what used to be, in Jane Austen’s day, a
journey with a stagecoach of three or four days from London to Bristol. Today, of course, with an aeroplane it’s one
hour. The trains are fast, but the
aeroplanes are even faster. Look at
progress. There’s been marvellous
material progress.
Africa’s been opened up, and Asia’s been opened up. There’s also been great material progress,
because as things spiritual are being made doubtful by Protestantism and
Liberalism, as it seems that there’s no one clear truth any longer, as it used
to seem in the Middle Ages, then as religion becomes purely personal then
religion is obviously not that important - the truth is unknowable; we don’t
know the truth so it’s not that important.
So where do the best of men’s minds go?
If they’re no longer going to things spiritual they’re going to go to
things material, and therefore as the spiritual is discredited, so materialism
rises. As some very talented men give
the best of their minds to things material, materialism flourishes, and that’s
a large part of why the modern world is so glamorous, because of the
flourishing of materialism - trains, motor cars, aeroplanes, electronics and so
on. This material progress has gone ever
since, and it’s a child essentially of Protestantism and Liberalism.
Catholics don’t care so much for material progress. It’s not in itself sinful but it’s not that
important and it’s not where it’s at.
Where it’s at for Catholics is getting to heaven. Money and materialism, there’s a danger
there. The Catholics don’t worry about
materialism. Liberalism and
Protestantism develop materialism. They
develop a very successful and glamorous modern world to the point that a lot of
the European peoples are falling away from the Faith.
The Faith is being undermined by Liberalism and Protestantism,
Liberalism especially, and so the popes have to fight it. As they fight it, the Church expands in the
19th century, but by the end of the 19th century there
are these Catholics who say, “Hey, look, the modern world is triumphant. It succeeds.
It works. It’s wonderful.”
So we’ve got to develop and find a new way of pretending to be Catholic
while not being Catholic, going with the material progress, going with modern
science, going with materialism, going with Liberalism while still appearing to
be Catholic, and this is Modernism.
Modernism is keeping the appearances while emptying out the
substance. I give the example of a
pharmacist. The afternoon of Wednesday
you go into the pharmacist’s shop, and all the little pills are each in their
bottles with the correct label. Then in the middle of the night somebody
breaks into the pharmacy, empties out all the little jars, a great heap of
pills on the floor, and then the pills are loaded back into the jars. The label is the same, the little pill jars
are the same but the contents are quite different. That’s Modernism.
A classic and very simple example - the Resurrection. The original content, the Wednesday afternoon
content of the Resurrection, is that the actual physical body of Our Lord, the
one that was crucified on the Cross, Whose body and soul were brought together by
Our Lord Himself on the Sunday morning, and came back to life with the same
body but yet mysteriously different, and then He broke out of the tomb - that’s
what Catholics believe. That’s the
reality. That’s the proper content of
that bottle. Now it’s difficult to
believe, because people don’t usually rise from the dead. You don’t usually get people bursting out of
the grave and walking through walls and talking and then eating fish and so on,
as we know from the Gospels that Our Risen Lord did. So what do you do? Well, the Modernist says, “What the
Resurrection really means is that when two or three or four or five living
human beings are getting together, and when they all are thinking of Jesus
Christ and they’re all loving Jesus Christ, Jesus Christ comes back to life
amongst them. That’s the
Resurrection.” That doesn’t require any
faith at all. That’s just completely
natural. That’s just people feeling good
because they’re all thinking about Jesus.
So the content is quite different but they keep the same word. That’s Modernism. You keep all the words, you keep all the
appearances, but the content is completely changed.
Therefore, these characters are threatened. There’s only a handful of them, and a number
of them are priests, and they are a very serious threat because they will
completely empty out the Catholic religion and the Catholic Church if they’re
left alone. The one who fights that is
Pius X. That is exactly why Archbishop
Lefebvre chose Pius X as the name of the Society, because, as the Archbishop
knew, that today’s problem is just like Modernism, and therefore the patron of
the Society is the man who really administered a body-blow to Modernism, and
that was Pius X by the great encyclical Pascendi
of 1907, and Lamentabili, which
is a list of modern errors, like the Syllabus. Pius X scotched Modernism. If you picked up a Catholic seminary manual
of 1930 or 1940, you would read in it, “Modernism was a slight, little problem
raised by argumentative French priests.”
So – “But it’s over and done with. Modernism is finished. It’s dead.
It was dealt with by Pius X, and we are now great Catholics.”
Again the Church actually did expand.
There was also some tremendous 20th-century mission
work. The Church had a great flourishing
at the very beginning of the 20th century under Pius X. For instance, in England there was the generation
of Benson, Chesterton and Belloc before the First World War and after. It was a good time for the Church. In France at the same time there was a
flourishing of the Church. But the Devil
doesn’t sleep, and so while Pius X scotched it, apparently, this disease of
wanting to adapt the Church to the modern world continued, which is
Modernism. That’s why it’s called
Modernism, because you want to change the substance of Catholicism to fit the
modern world. The modern world is
intrinsically anti-Catholic, and it’s very uncomfortable to live as a Catholic
in the modern world because the modern world is so deep-down, subtly,
insidiously, cleverly pressuring against being a Catholic - “I’m in this
tension and in this crossfire and I don’t like it, so I am going to empty out
the substance of Catholicism. I’m going
to change it so that it will fit the modern world.” That’s Modernism. There are more and more Catholics that are
tainted by the idea that we need to adapt the fuddy-duddy old Church, the
medieval Church, the Constantinian Church, the Tridentine Church - it’s too old
and old fashioned.
Contraception – “How can a married couple possibly live in a modern city
and have all the children that they would have if they weren’t able to use
contraception?” That’s a real example of
the pressure of the modern world upon Catholic morals. Of course, artificial means of birth control
are wrong. They’re intrinsically wrong
and they will always be wrong – “But that’s severe. That’s difficult. Ah, the Church has got to get with it. It’s impossible to not use artificial means
of birth control today. It’s just not
possible. The Church is out of
touch.” I’m sure you’ve heard this kind
of thing.
We go through two world wars, which shake the whole civilisation, and
make all ideas questionable and promote Liberalism, because when some Nazis,
for instance, have some strong and clear ideas - they gas six million Jews, so
it’s thought – then ideas take another discrediting, which is another great
advance of Liberalism. Modernism is, of
course, in synch with Liberalism and Protestantism. It’s Liberalism and Protestantism brought
even more subtly, even more deeply inside the Church. The attack is always against the Church. Protestantism is obviously against the
Catholic Church. Liberalism is more
subtly against the Church but undermining the Catholic Church. Modernism undermines every doctrine of the
Church. The Church needs to be updated –
“You need to update the Ave Maria. You
need to update the Stations of the Cross.
If anything isn’t updated it’s not living, it’s not real and it’s not
authentic. Everything has to be changed
in order to be authentic.” That’s the idea
of Modernism.
The modern world is pressing more and more, so by the 1960s it’s the
great mass of Catholics that swing to the left, and this is Vatican II. This is Neo-Modernism, or the rerun of
Modernism. Vatican II is the churchmen
going along with the modern world - the churchmen adapting the whole of the
Catholic religion to the modern world. Pius
X had scotched Modernism and driven it underground like a snake, but modern men
love their modern world. There’s a
famous Modernist called Marc Sangnier, who headed a movement called the Sillon.
Pius X condemned it because it was false and liberal, but Marc Sangnier
said, “Oh, yes, Holy Father, I agree.
Yes, I submit, I submit, I submit, Holy Father, yeah.” But really he didn’t, and again we get the
hypocrisy of modern times.
Modern man is difficult to convince.
You could try to persuade him, but arguments don’t have a grip on modern
man. Modern man doesn’t go by
arguments. He doesn’t think. How many people do you know today that really
think? Not many. People today go by their feelings. They go by their sentiments, which is why
politics work by television. Who’s got
the more toothpaste-y smile on television?
Who looks good on television? A
politician today has to look good on television. It’s absolutely indispensable. Politics go by television. They don’t go by the content. Modern man is not a content man. He’s not a content man and he’s not
content.
This time it is the mass of Catholics, because you’ve got a lot of
Catholics living in the big city by the 1960s, big cities all over the world,
and in the big city, for instance, artificial means of birth control are seen
necessary and indispensable, and so there’s a great pressure from many, many,
many Catholics upon their priests, upon their cardinals. The cardinals and priests also are not
praying enough. That’s undoubtedly a
serious problem. They’re not praying
enough and they don’t have grace. That’s
what St Thomas More said about the clergy in England at the time of Protestantism. Television and radio and the newspapers are
distracting the churchmen. There is pressure
from many of the laity, not by any means all of the laity. There was more resistance to Vatican II
amongst the laity then there was amongst the priests. One reason for that is that the Devil works
harder on priests than he does on the laity, because if the Devil can catch one
priest, he’s going to catch maybe a hundred souls. If he catches one layman, it’s one layman and
perhaps his family, so eight or ten souls.
There’s much more payload to corrupt a priest than to corrupt a
layman. The Devil works hard on the
churchmen. With centuries of more
subtlety, more pervasiveness, more corruption, and this time almost the whole
Church swings over to the left. Neo-Modernism
is exactly parallel to Modernism, to Liberalism and Protestantism. It’s always a swing, since the French
Revolution, to the left.
When people start talking about right and left and why, the answer is it
was the French Revolution. It was at one
of the sessions of the parliament that was making the French Revolution, and at
one point they divided right and left, with the moderate revolutionaries on the
right, and the rabid revolutionaries on the left, and that’s why we talk ever
since of right and left. Actually if you
go back to the French Revolution, interestingly both the right and the left
were revolutionary, only the right was more moderately revolutionary than the
left.
So these are all swings to the left.
You could call all of this the revolution against the Catholic Church.
END OF CONFERENCE