BISHOP WILLIAMSON CONFERENCES- Conference n°5
We were looking at Cardinal Casaroli’s humanism as an example of this
delinquency at the top of the official Church.
These delinquents in the mainstream Church are going to reinforce the SSPX
priests in their “strange and unnatural isolation” from the mainstream
Church. The Archbishop is about to die
but he can see the priests need to be strengthened in their conviction that
they are right, and in their resolve to carry on the SSPX alone without help
from the mainstream Church. That’s what
did happen for 12 years until the mainstream Church came back with carrot
instead of stick, and then the SSPX began to fall apart and began to submit, so
to speak. Two years after the
consecrations the Archbishop is saying, “Stay the course.”
He moves on to Cardinal Ratzinger, our well-known Cardinal Ratzinger,
who made the remark that the Vatican II document Gaudium et Spes was a counter-Syllabus. The most typical document of Vatican II, and
one of the last documents, is Gaudium et
Spes, literally Joy and Hope. “Catholics, everything in the modern world is
joy and everything is hope!” - that is Gaudium
et Spes, more or less. Ratzinger
says it’s a counter-Syllabus. It’s the opposite of Pius IX’s Syllabus in 1864.
“The Cardinal, nevertheless, finds it awkward to have made such a
remark, because people are now constantly quoting it back to him as a criticism
– ‘You said that Vatican II is a counter-Syllabus. Hey, wait a moment, that’s serious.’” So, says the Archbishop, he’s found an
explanation. “He gave it just a little
while ago on June 27th 1990.”
The Archbishop enjoyed this one.
As the Americans say, he’s caught Cardinal Ratzinger with his hand in
the cookie jar. You catch the child with
his hand in the cookie jar and the child can’t get out of it. He can’t make an excuse. “So you know that Rome recently issued a
major document to explain the relationship between the Magisterium and
theologians. With all the problems that
the theologians are causing them on all sides, Rome no longer knows what to do,
so they have to try to keep the theologians in line without coming down too
hard on them.”
When you preach Liberalism, it’s difficult to control your troops
because Liberalism means there shouldn’t be control. Liberalism is liberty, so how do you
construct an organisation based on liberty?
If you base it on Truth then you’re absolutely reasonable to come down
on anybody who talks error. That’s the
Catholic Church - the constant war against error, which is what used to be the
Holy Office, and the strict control of doctrine in the Catholic Church, which
is completely reasonable if the organisation’s about Truth. But if an organisation’s about liberty, how
do you control it when the youngsters begin to go free? So Rome has got to somehow control the
theologians without controlling them. So
the Archbishop says that they’ve got a problem.
“Now in the presentation of the document, Cardinal Ratzinger gives us
his thinking on the possibility of saying the opposite of what popes have
previously decided 100 years ago or so.
The Instruction on the Ecclesial
Vocation of the Theologian, says the Cardinal in his introduction, ‘States
for the first time with such clarity’ – “Indeed, I think it’s true,” comments
the Archbishop – ‘that there are decisions of the Magisterium which cannot be
and are not intended to be the last word on the matter as such but are a substantial
anchorage in the problem.’
“Ah,” says the Archbishop, “the cardinal is an Artful Dodger.” The Archbishop comments - “There are decisions
of the Magisterium, that are not just any decisions, which cannot be the last
word on the matter as such but are merely a substantial anchorage in the
problem.” Anchorage, meaning that the
Barque of Peter arrives at the port of the Syllabus,
it puts down anchor, and it’s a very good port and it’s a very good
anchorage, but the world moves on, and so the Church pulls up anchorage and
moves on to Vatican II, and so these serious and defining documents of the
Magisterium, of the Church’s most solemn teaching authority, are simply a temporary
phase in Church doctrine. So the Church
doctrine of 1,800 years is just a series of passing phases; and the Church puts
down anchorage here, and then it puts down anchorage there, and some anchorages
are more substantial than others, and so the Syllabus of Pius IX is a pretty substantial anchorage, it’s pretty
serious stuff; but it was good for the 19th century but it’s no
longer good for the 20th century, so we need to pull up the anchor
of Pius IX and move on to Vatican II.
“The Cardinal continues - ‘And they are first and foremost an expression
of pastoral prudence, a sort of provisional disposition.’ Listen,” says the Archbishop, “definitive
decisions of the Holy See being turned into provisional dispositions.” The Cardinal goes on – ‘Their core remains
valid but’” – there’s always that ‘but’ with Modernists – “‘but the individual
details influenced by the circumstances of the time may need further
rectification.’”
So the Syllabus of Errors, well,
yes, it was pretty serious but it needs adjusting, so when the Syllabus says that the Pope must not
move with the times, what he really meant to say, if you adjust the details, is
that the Pope must move with the
times, but that’s only a detail. Pius IX
was a very wise and great pope in his day, and we recognise the validity of so
many things that he says, but when he says Church and State must not be
separated, when you adjust it, what he really meant was Church and State must be separated. It’s only little details, and they were great
documents in their day, and they were great popes in their day, but the world
does move on. Time passes and the world
moves on, so the Church must move with the times - big toothpaste smile!
“‘Their core remains valid but
the individual details influenced by the circumstances of the time may need
further clarification.’ In this regard
one can refer to the statements of the popes during the last century on
religious freedom as well as the anti-Modernistic decisions at the beginning of
this century, especially the decisions of the Biblical Commission of that
time.” So he’s talking about religious
freedom. That was, above all, Quanta Cura and the Syllabus that condemned religious freedom, which is a favourite
error of Vatican II. So the Cardinal is
saying forget about Quanta Cura and
the Syllabus. He is saying forget about these three
great pillars of Church doctrine during the 19th and early 20th
centuries, which are the Quanta Cura,
the Syllabus and Pascendi, and then the decisions of the Biblical Commission - we’ve
got to move on; we’ve got to leave that behind.
The Archbishop goes on, “Those are the decisions that the Cardinal could
not digest. Hence three definitive
statements of the Magisterium may be put aside because they were only
‘provisional’. Listen to the Cardinal,
who goes on to say that these anti-Modernist decisions of the Church rendered a
great service in their day by ‘warning against hasty and superficial
adaptations’ and ‘by keeping the Church from sinking into the liberal,
bourgeois world … but the details of their contents were later superseded once
they’d carried out their pastoral duty at a particular moment.’
In other words, that Kant is junk is just a pastoral disposition – “It’s
just a temporary warning to the people that Kant is not a good idea right at
this moment, but if in 100 years Kant becomes a good idea or an irresistible
idea, well, then, we’re going to forget about Pius X solemnly condemning Kant,
or the essential idea of Kant. We’ll
forget about it because it wasn’t doctrine.
It was just pastorality. It was
just an adaptation of the circumstances of the time. There’s no permanent truth in these great
statements of the great popes. They’re
not concerned with permanent truth.
They’re just concerned with adaptation, and so they adapted and now we
adapted, and so we’re going to forget everything that he ever said and say the
exact opposite. That’s why we’ve got Gaudium et Spes, joy and hope instead of
doom and gloom of Pascendi and the Syllabus and the condemnations and the
dispersing and the scattering and the uprooting and all of that. No, we’re going to plant exactly what they
uprooted,” says Osservatore Romano, English
edition, July 2nd 1990, page 5.
So the Syllabus, Pascendi¸
these great anti-Modern, anti-liberal, anti-dissolution documents attempting to
hold together the Church’s grip on Truth - we forget about it; we forget about
Truth; we’re going to have joy and hope; sailing with the breeze; and enjoying
ourselves and having a great, big party.
So the Archbishop goes on, “So you see how the Cardinal’s got out of the
accusation of going a bit far when he calls Vatican an anti-Syllabus, when he opposes the pontifical
decisions and opposes the Magisterium of the past? He’s found the way out.”
“‘The core remains valid,’” and the Archbishop comments, “What
core? What core remains valid?” In fact, Ratzinger is stripping out the guts
of Pascendi and the Syllabus with Gaudium et Spes, so what core is there that remains? No idea, no definition.
“‘But the individual details influenced by the circumstances of that
time may need further rectification,’” and there he has it, comments the
Archbishop, he’s out of his difficulty.
So the Archbishop is saying to his priests, “Look, these characters are
tearing up the past of the Church.
They’ve got no idea of Truth.
They’ve got no idea of objective truth.
They are adrift and at sea in their philosophy and theology of
subjectivism.” Freedom for every
theologian, for every churchman to think exactly what he likes - no
problem. We are no free. This is the age of freedom, and they don’t
need to pay attention to very serious declarations of the past - forget
it.
So the Archbishop says, “You priests of the SSPX, how can you deal with
these people? You can’t have anything to
do with these people. They’re
adrift. They are lost. They’re out of their minds. They’ve gone.
They’re unhooking their minds from solemn statements of the Church from
the past, solemn statements for the errors of our age, and all they’re doing is
unhooking their minds from it and wanting to move on. You can’t defend the Faith with these
people,” says the Archbishop. “You’ve
got to go on your own. Stand on your
own. Continue on your own. How’s it all going to sort out? I don't know.
That’s God’s problem. What I do
know is that here and now we’ve got to stay on track, because one of the
arguments of the liberals is we’ve got to go back to the Church because this
situation can’t go on indefinitely.”
Well, the Society survived for 40 years, and it was hanging together
perfectly well. What shakes it to pieces
is not staying away from the Romans but the idea of going back with the Romans,
and it shakes the Society to pieces because the Society was built on Truth and
not on going adrift. Now the management
of the Society say, “We must go adrift like everybody else.” As they say in French, that’s the end of the
beans for the Society. The Society is
built on the necessity to fasten one’s mind according to the great dogmas,
definitions and decisions of the past Church because from Vatican II the Church
began to go mad, and now the Society says we’ve got to go with these Conciliarists,
we’ve got to go back with the Romans, the Council wasn’t as bad as all
that.
Some of you, I’m sure, saw that interview on television with CNS,
Catholic News Service, in the United States, and they had an interview with
Bishop Fellay. They visited him in
Menzingen. It’s a documentary, and it begins
with a picture of the cows in Menzingen.
Then it’s Albinoni, so the tone is set with Albinoni and cows, and then
we meet Bishop Fellay, who’s got his tremendous smile. Then the interview goes on, various subjects,
and then the Council. “What about the
Council?” “Well,” says Bishop Fellay,
“the Council is not as bad as we’ve always thought. The Council, people think it makes big
mistakes but it’s not making big mistakes.
It’s making much less than we’ve always said.” Bishop Fellay is going clean against
everything that the Society was built on.
No wonder the Society is going through a crisis. He’s putting a stick of dynamite beneath the
foundations of the Society and blowing it sky high.
Then Bishop Fellay comes on to religious liberty in the same interview, and
he says, “Religious liberty - well, I think many people haven’t understood what
the Council really says about religious liberty. I think that the religious liberty that the
Council is really proposing is very, very limited. It’s very limited.” In other words, the Archbishop said that this
religious liberty is odious, it’s a blasphemy and it’s destroying the divinity
of Our Lord Jesus Christ. By saying that
States should not impose, even when they can suitably do so, that States should
never impose the Catholic religion, or States should never stop false religions
on their territory, they’re saying that Jesus Christ is not necessarily King,
because if Jesus Christ is God and King, the Social Kingship of Christ the
King, then where it’s possible and reasonable and prudent, a State must check
the public practice of false religions. Vatican
II said a State must not prosecute or persecute the public practice of false
religions. Implicitly that is to deny
the divinity of Our Lord Jesus Christ.
Obviously the State is a creature of God, and all creatures of God must
worship God, all human beings must worship God - First Commandment, thou shalt
love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, with all thy soul, with all thy
strength and with all thy mind. A State
is nothing but a collection of human beings.
Why should the State, which is a collection of human beings, have a
right to disregard the First Commandment when every individual human being has
not got the right? To say that the State
can defy the First Commandment is to say that the First Commandment is not
binding on human beings. As soon as human
beings get together in a State, they don’t need to obey the First Commandment? The Archbishop called it an odious blasphemy,
and here is Bishop Fellay in public saying, “Oh, it’s very, very limited.” When people try to defend Vatican II on this
point, that’s what they say - it’s very, very limited. That’s the excuse, because the way Vatican II
says it, if you look at the actual texts, there are sort of let-outs, there are
sort of excuses. For instance – “the State
within duly limits …” Well, what duly limits?
It’s not said. That’s ambiguous. It leaves it open. So the thing in the texts of Vatican II, it’s
sort of ambiguous, but the push and drive behind it and the real meaning of it
is God is not God. That’s why the
Archbishop called it an odious blasphemy, but here’s Bishop Fellay saying the
opposite, as though he really believes the opposite of what the Archbishop said
and believed, and the opposite of what the Society was founded on - the grave
errors of doctrine of Vatican II. That’s
what the Society was founded on - to combat the destruction of Catholic
doctrine by the Council and by the Conciliar Church. Bishop Fellay is going clean against the
Archbishop. I don’t see how you can get
round that.
Then if you said that to Bishop Fellay, just like Vatican II he would immediately
say, “Oh, no, that’s not what I really said.”
“What the American district superior said was that …” “Oh, that remark has been taken out of
context.”
Bishop Fellay says, “The idea of religious liberty presented in the
Council is very, very limited, very limited.”
That’s what he said. How can you
take that remark out of context? It’s
like saying 2+2=5. When somebody says
2+2=5, how can you take it out of context?
Surely if he thinks that, why hasn’t he clarified it, then? Why hasn’t Bishop Fellay clarified it? He must be quite happy with what he said.
Yes, that’s a reasonable supposition.
He did clarify it in the next sentence of the interview. He said that he hoped that Vatican II would
be seen to be part of the great tradition of the Church.
Yes, and then he clarified that.
He said, in French he said, “I wish I hoped” or “I hope I wish” or
something like that. Bishop Fellay’s
playing with words. He’s trying to
please the Romans. It’s in order to
please the Romans that he says the Council isn’t as bad as all that. Some people go up in arms in the Society and
say, “You can’t say that.” And they say,
“Oh, well, I only half said it. I half
meant it.” You can’t do that. He’s ambiguous, just like Vatican II. Vatican II is ambiguous between the Church
and the world, and Bishop Fellay is ambiguous between the Church and the
Council, so if ambiguous means between the Church and the world that you’re
half and half, and if you’re ambiguous with the Council, the half and half
Council, it’s still three quarters, one quarter, but you can’t play around with
doctrine that’s even just one quarter wrong.
You can’t do that, but that’s what Bishop Fellay is doing. It’s very serious. I don’t know how this problem inside the
Society is going to resolve, but it is a doctrinal problem. When Bishop Fellay makes public statements
like that – “the idea of religious liberty is very, very limited” - that’s
exactly what the Conciliarists say. They
pretend that it isn’t a direct and flagrant contradiction of the First Commandment. The Archbishop took it to be a direct
contradiction of the First Commandment.
The Conciliarists say, “No, it isn’t,” and they start weaselling around,
and now Bishop Fellay is starting to weasel around. It’s not good.
The Archbishop goes on to servants of globalism – “So, by way of
conclusion, either we are heirs of the Catholic Church with all the popes down
to the Council, and with the great majority of the bishops prior to the
Council, for the reign of Our Lord Jesus Christ and for the salvation of souls,
or else we are the heirs of those who strive, even at the price of breaking
with the Catholic Church and with her doctrine, to acknowledge the principles
of the rights of man” - we are the heirs of Vatican II, lining itself up on the
French Revolution - “based on a veritable apostasy, and the Church is doing
this in order to obtain a place as servants in the revolutionary world
government. They will manage to get
quite a good place in the revolutionary world government because by saying that
they’re in favour of the rights of man, in favour of religious liberty,
democracy and human equality, clearly they are worth being given a position as
servants in the world government.”
So the Archbishop sees that the idea that religion has nothing to do
with politics is ridiculous. What’s
going on is a huge apostasy. The world
is turning away from God. This is
spelling out as a world government, a godless world government. That’s globalism, and Vatican II is the
Church getting itself in synch with globalism.
That’s it. So the politics of
globalism correspond with the religion of globalism, and the churchmen inside
the Church, who want the Church to go with the world, correspond to the
politicians who want the Church to change itself so that it can go with their
brave new world.
A young American priest was on the phone to me the other day, and he
said that the picture of the Society in the United States at this moment is not
good. The picture is this – many of the
priests are going along with this schmoozing with Rome, and they’re being more
and more persuaded that it’s a good idea to schmooze with Rome and get back
with Rome and so on. This young priest,
who’s not a schmoozer, he said, “The attitude is - we are on our way to a brave
new world. Don’t you stop us.” That’s how he described the attitude. That’s a good summary – “We liberals, we have
our dream. Like Martin Luther King, we
have a dream - a dream of everybody being united, and the war between Tradition
and the Council being over. We have a
dream of nobody worrying about Truth any longer, for everybody just getting together
- unity, unity, unity, the whole of mankind unified in a lie. Forget about Truth.” That’s the brotherhood of Masonry - forget
about doctrine, forget about different religions, we just want to all get together. That’s Freemasonry, and it’s now the Conciliar
Church, and now Bishop Fellay is well on his way to that, unless he watches
out. We’ve got to pray for him because
he’s doing a lot of damage. We’ve got to
pray that God gives him some light, otherwise he’s going to destroy the
Society. He’s already changed it
considerably. He’s been very skillful in
changing it. Inside the Society he’s a
skillful politician.
The Archbishop says, “Our strength is in the Lord. I think that if I say these things to you it
is to put our own fight in its historical context.” The Archbishop constantly had this picture in
his mind, thanks to Fr Le Floch, of the encyclicals in the 19th
century, the fight of the Church against the modern world, the wrongness of the
modern world, the necessity of Truth, the necessity of the Church’s unchanging,
down-the-ages true doctrine. The
Archbishop constantly had that picture in his mind. Somebody once quoted me Bishop Fellay saying,
“I don’t want to hear about the end of the world.” I’m not certain he said it. He was quoted as saying it. That was the effect of his remark. If he said something like that it belongs to
the same mentality – “I don’t want to hear doom and gloom. I don’t want to hear the modern world is all
that bad. I don’t want to, I don’t want
to, I don’t want to, I’ve got my dream.
Don’t stop me.” That’s the
attitude. That’s a caricature of the
attitude, obviously, but that’s basically what it is, and that’s like a lot of
liberals today - “We’ve got our
dream. We are recreating the world. God did a bad job and we’re straightening Him out,
and He had better move out. Let God move
aside and let us take over, and we’re going to construct our society, our
world, our brave new Church.” That’s
it. It’s a whole different ballgame, and
it’s absolutely anti-God and it’s apostasy.
It’s the Church joining in the apostasy, which is the falling away of
mankind from God.
“This fight did not begin with Vatican II, obviously. It goes much further back. It is a tough fight, very painful. Blood has flowed in this fight, and in
quantities. And then the persecutions,
the separation of Church and State, religious and nuns driven into exile” -
like in 1905 in France when the Church was separated from the State, and the
State persecuted all the convents and monasteries, and, for the blessing of
many other countries, the French religious and sisters had to flee France. They founded one or two monasteries and
convents here in England, and in many other countries, as well.
“This is a question of Church property and so on, and not only in France
but also in Switzerland, in Germany, in Italy; the occupation of the Pontifical
States, driving the Pope back into the Vatican; abominations across the
Pope. Frightening,” says the
Archbishop. “Well, are we with all of
these innovators and against the doctrine professed by the popes, against their
voice raised in protest to defend the Church’s rights, Our Lord’s rights, to
defend souls? I think we have truly a
strength and a base to stand on, which do not come from us, and that is what is
good. It is not our fight. It is Our Lord’s fight which the Church has
carried on, and so we cannot waver.
Either we are for the Church or we are against the Church and we are for
the new Conciliar Church, which has nothing to do with the Catholic
Church.”
The Conciliar Church has nothing to do with the Catholic Church – there
it is, and now the SSPX wants to schmooze with the Conciliar Church. It’s the end of the SSPX. If you use something for a purpose which it is
absolutely not made for, you’re going to destroy it. For instance, if I try to do the shopping
with a lawnmower, I go in and out of town on the lawnmower on tarmac all the
way, I’m going to shake the lawnmower to pieces. I’m going to destroy it. Or if I try to mow the lawn with the motorcar
and then I destroy the lawn. Drive the motorcar
backwards and forwards across the lawn, it’s going to destroy the lawn. It may not destroy the motorcar, unless it’s
very wet and it gets bogged down, but it will destroy the lawn. What was the Society made for? It was made to defend Catholic doctrine
against the modern conciliar apostasy.
If a Conciliar churchman decides that the Council is wrong, he’s going
to destroy the Council. He’s either got
to get out of the Conciliar Church or he’s going do his best to destroy the
Council. That’s what the Council was
made for - to destroy the Church. If you
see that, you can’t go on inside the Conciliar Church. You become a Traditionalist. You knock on the door of the SSPX, like a few
priests have done, and you work with the SSPX to rebuild the Church, instead of
destroying it. If you want to destroy
the SSPX you should go and join the Conciliar Church. So we may hope that all the members of the
SSPX who persevere in this idea that the SSPX must go Conciliar, we may hope
and pray that they will quit the SSPX. They
will leave it alone and they will go and join their friends in the Conciliar
Church and they will do the Conciliar thing.
Good luck to them, but let them get out of the SSPX. It’s reasonable, but, of course, they won’t,
because they want to take the whole SSPX with them into the Conciliar Church.
“I think we have truly a strength and a base to stand on which do not
come from us, and that is what is good.
It’s not our fight. It’s Our
Lord’s fight, which the Church has carried on.
We cannot waver. Either we are
for the Church or we are against the Church, or we are against the Church and
for the new conciliar church which has nothing to do with the Catholic Church,
or less and less to do with it.” He’s
corrected himself. It’s not “nothing” to
do with the Catholic Church but “less and less”. Each day the Conciliar Church becomes less
and less Catholic. There’s less and less
that’s Catholic left in the Conciliar Church, but in truth there is still
something Catholic. You might say quite
a lot Catholic inside the Conciliar Church.
There are a number of souls that undoubtedly still have the Faith. There are a number of priests that still have
the Faith. There are even certainly some
bishops inside the Conciliar Church that still have the Faith, and some of them
try to do their best to maintain what’s Catholic inside the Conciliar
Church. It’s a heroic attempt. It’s doomed.
In the end it’s doomed. It’s more
or less difficult, more or less impossible to maintain anything Catholic inside
the Conciliar structure. It’s every day
less and less Catholic.
“For when the Pope used to speak about the rights of man, to begin with
he used to allude also to the duties of man.”
That was Leo XIII - the duties of man as well as the rights of man. Men do have certain rights, but you don’t
inflate those rights like today, but when the Pope used to mention the rights
of man, he mentioned the duties of man, which is the Ten Commandments, but
today people don’t want to hear about the Ten Commandments. “And this insisting on everything for man,
everything by man - truly appalling.”
The Society fights on. “I wish to
lay out a few of these thoughts for you to fortify yourselves and so that you
realise the fight you are carrying on,” he says to the SSPX priests. “You’re taking part in a gigantic fight of
centuries, not just the last 20 years since the Council.” At that point in time it was 20 years since
the Council. “You’re taking part in a
gigantic fight for the Faith and for the Truth against a whole world that’s
apostatising, falling away from God, defying God, denying God.”
It’s a big fight. Don’t think
it’s peanuts, the fight you’re in. It’s
not a little matter. It’s huge.
“With the grace of God, because it’s obvious we would no longer be in
existence if the good Lord was not with us.
That is clear. There have been at
least four or five occasions when the Society of St Pius X should have
disappeared. Well, here we are still, thanks
be to God, and, goodness gracious, we carry on.”
Notice how humble the Archbishop is.
He’s not saying that the SSPX is the beginning and end of the Catholic
Church. He’s saying that we’re not
really very much and we should have disappeared. There’s plenty of reason why we could easily
be history, including the consecrations.
Some Catholics stood up and said, “You’re disobedient.” There were some that did that but they
weren’t the majority. There were a lot
of Catholics who stood up and said, “Rah, rah, rah, Your Grace, go to it, go at
it. They’re bums in Rome. Go at it!”
I remember the Archbishop saying at the time that the strength of the
support he got from the consecrations surprised him. He did expect support but I don’t think he
expected as much support as there was, because, thanks be to God, there’s still
a good deal of Faith, and people understood what the Archbishop was doing.
To tell you the honest truth, I don’t think Bishop Fellay has ever
understood what the Archbishop was about.
I think Bishop Fellay was a very pious young man in Switzerland. He went to a Novus Ordo school, as it then was.
When must he have been a schoolboy?
Perhaps in the 1970s. He lived at
the foot of the hill at Econe, and they came up the hill for Mass, and so he
was experiencing both the Novus Ordo and
Tradition. He described on Gloria TV in
Austria that he had the choice and finally he chose Tradition. He went to the seminary of the Archbishop
rather than the local seminary of the diocesan bishop. In other words, it wasn’t a clear thing from
the very start for him that Tradition was right and the modern Church was
wrong. It was like that, and he’s been
deep down like that ever since. For him,
as for many people at the time, the Archbishop was simply the best continuation
of the Church of the 1950s. The Church
of the 1950s was blown out of the water by Vatican II, but the Archbishop kept
the Church of the 1950s going, and that’s what a number of Traditional
Catholics want and that’s what they’re doing, and that’s what the Lord God doesn’t
want. They’re recreating the Church of
the 1950s. The Church of the 1950s was
at a height, otherwise Vatican II couldn’t have been such a fall, but the
Church of the 1950s, there was also something seriously wrong with it. It was on the very edge of the abyss and so
it fell off. There were both - something
still right and something definitely wrong in the Church of the 1950s. The Lord God says, “I don’t want you
recreating the Church of the 1950s. I
want My Church, which is going to stand against the world for Truth and is
going to save souls, which is not going to put souls on the edge of the abyss,
like the Church of the 1950s. I don’t
want Hollywood Catholicism. I’ve had
enough of it,” says the Lord God. So if
Hollywood Catholicism is coming back inside the Society, then, says the Lord
God, “I am going to give the Society a shaking.
I’m going to allow the Society to go through a shaking.” That’s exactly what’s happening. I think it’s because the Lord God has had
enough of wishy-washy, sentimental, chocolate Catholicism, and he doesn’t want
any more of it.
That’s not how the Church was built.
The Church was built by martyrs being torn to pieces by the lions in the
Colosseum in Rome. It wasn’t built by
chocolate Catholics. Every morning in
any of the Society’s houses, Prime is read, and part of the office of Prime is
reading what’s called the Martyrology, which is the story of the martyrs. For each day of the year there are martyrs of
that day, martyrs and saints, but a lot of them are martyrs, and you hear how
these martyrs are torn to pieces, and the sufferings and torments that they all
underwent simply because they would not renounce the Faith. That is what converted Rome. To see young girls, virgins, going through
these torments and being torn to pieces and still happy, it blew these virile
Romans’ minds, and eventually the virile Romans said, “OK, there’s got to be
something here. What is it? Tell me about it.” “Well, God is three in one, one in three. He died on the Cross.” “Oh, it’s crazy, all that stuff.” Then he goes back to the arena to watch the
girls being torn to pieces. They’re
still there, and there’s always more of them, and the Emperors smash down and
they destroy all the Catholics, and then they come back again and they’re still
there. So this old veteran of Roman
wars, he says, “Hey, there’s got to be something here.” He learns about the doctrine. He says, “This doctrine is noble. There’s something true about it.” Then he studies the doctrine. “Old man, come to Mass. We’ll be an hour at the catacombs at such and
such time.” So he goes down and he
attends Mass in the catacombs. “Oh,
there’s something there.” He’s a man. He’s not a woman, and it’s no use despising
women when you watch how these girls behaved under the Roman emperor, getting
torn to pieces. Eventually he
submits. He says, “Yes, I admit,” and he
becomes a Catholic.
The Roman Empire was converted.
The Roman Empire was not converted by chocolate Catholics. It was converted by blood-and-guts Catholics,
and what the Lord God wants in today’s apostasy is blood-and-guts
Catholics. He needs some more
martyrs. He needs another crop of martyrs
to spill their blood. There were a lot
of martyrs in the Communist countries, and surely there’s going to be another
bunch of martyrs. I don't know but it’s
very possible, very probable.
“So there have been at least four or five occasions where the Society
should have disappeared. Well, here we
are still, thanks be to God, and, goodness gracious, we carry on. We should especially have disappeared at the
time of the consecrations two years ago, so that’s what we were told
beforehand. All the prophets of doom,
and even amongst those close to us said, ‘No, no, Your Grace, don’t do
that. That will be the end of the
Society, you can be sure. We assure
you. That will be the end. It will be all over. You can close down.’ Well, we survived,” says the Archbishop, “we’re
still there. No, the Lord God does not want
his fight to come to an end, a fight in which there had been martyrs, the
martyrs of the Revolution, to all those who had been moral martyrs by dent of
the persecutions they underwent throughout the 19th century. Even in our own century, St Pius X was a
martyr. All those heroes of the Faith,
the persecuted bishops, the sequestered convents, the exiled nuns, all of these
are for nothing? That whole fight was
for nothing? And we’ve, all of us, got
to go and join the apostasy of the modern world? It was a fight for nothing, a fight in vain,
a fight which makes everything those victims did vain, and the martyrs were all
in vain? It’s not possible. So we find ourselves caught up in the
continuation of the same fight, and we thank God. So,” the Archbishop says to his beloved
priests, “my dear priests, you fight, you stay the course, you stay straight,
and you do not go over to the Council, and you do not give in.”
END OF CONFERENCE