03-08-2021, 11:23 AM
Taken from The Recusant Issue 29 – September 2015
1.Authority vs. ‘Liberty’ Religious
Authority vs. ‘Religious Liberty’
![[Image: recusant-29-1.png]](https://i.postimg.cc/26H4nk05/recusant-29-1.png)
Summary:
‘Authority’ has different forms: it does not have to mean official jurisdiction but can also include moral authority. If authority exists, we may not do whatever we choose. All authority comes from God who is the author of all things. Authority exists for good. God is good. Therefore authority exists for God and exists to bring us to Him. As a result, therefore:
1) Even the greatest authority on earth cannot be used to lead us away from God, since He is the source of all authority and He cannot be made to contradict Himself.
2) Like a refusal to obey authority on the part of subjects (e.g. the French Revolution), a refusal to exercise authority on the part of one who has been given it means a denial to serve the interests of good and is thus, in effect, a denial of God who is the source.
3) Religious Liberty represents, in effect, a denial of God’s authority and thus, in the end, a denial of God Himself. The authority of the Church, and all of Tradition and Scripture, is thus by its very existence an implicit denial of Religious Liberty.
2. The New Mass and Whether We Ought to Attend it
![[Image: recusant-29-2.png]](https://i.postimg.cc/vmLWF38R/recusant-29-2.png)
3. Bishop Williamson and Authority
“I think – I may be wrong – that [God] wants a loose network of independent pockets of Resistance, gathered around the Mass, freely contacting one another, but with no structure of false obedience [i.e. no structure] such as served to sink the mainstream Church in the 1960’s, and is now sinking the Society of St Pius X.” (Eleison Comments 277)
“A number of good souls wish that a Congregation were founded to replace the Society of St Pius X. But [Archbishop Lefebvre] ... had the Church’s authority to build a Congregation of the Church. … How many sane bishops are there left in the mainstream Church [today]? And how could any of them today approve of Traditional and anti-Conciliar Statutes? … And that is why, right now, I envisage being little more than father, adviser and friend for any souls calling for a bishop’s leadership and support.” (Eleison Comments #307)
“As for an alternative to the SSPX, we must learn the lessons to be drawn from its present severe crisis. The Catholic Church runs on authority, from the Pope downwards… We have, so to speak, run out of that peasant common sense that enabled Catholic authority to function.” (Eleison Comments #278)
“Again I am being urged by a valiant participant in today’s Catholic “Resistance” to put myself at the head of it. … But God gave the dying breath of true Church authority to Archbishop Lefebvre… ‘The wide diversity of opinion amongst Resistance priests confuses the laity.’ But to control opinions requires authority (see above). ... ‘There is no Church without a head or hierarchy. God wants us organized.’ Normally indeed there is no Church without head or hierarchy, but modern man has created an abnormal situation.” (Eleison Comments #311)
“But authority comes from the Pope. Which is why if the Pope is not in his right mind, you can’t get Catholic authority from above. You just can’t get it. … In which case the Church is crippled, the Church is paralysed. . . . I don’t have authority. I cannot have authority. Friendship, advice, contact, support: no problem. Authority: problem. Can you imagine that commanding resistant priests is like herding cats, can you imagine? In which case, is it worth trying if it is bound to fail?”
![[Image: recusant-29-3.png]](https://i.postimg.cc/qR1ygqCj/recusant-29-3.png)
4. Bishop Williamson and ‘Liberty’
1. There is absolutely no need for the excessively emotional language. Why say “hammer him” and “ram down her throat” when “tell him” and “seek to persuade her” would do just as well? This tends to serve as a distraction from the meaning of what is being said.
2. Is this not the essence of indifferentism? If God has given me the grace to find Catholic Tradition and to see the conciliar church for what it really is, am I not obliged by the law of Charity to help my neighbor to see too, to bring them to Tradition and ultimately to safety? Do we not risk being condemned for the good we did not do, for the souls we did not bring to the truth?
1. How can a bishop counsel somebody to hold an opinion if a) that opinion is dangerous and b) it leads to a risk of losing the Faith altogether?
2. God never requires us to endanger our Faith. Therefore no Catholic ever really “needs to hold” a dangerous opinion. An individual Catholic may feel or think he needs to, but that is subjective, not objective. But if it is objectively dangerous, then objectively there is no need to embrace it, quite the contrary.
3. Does not the permission (“If you ‘need to’ do it, do it!”) have the effect of cancelling out the prior warning? If the conclusion is that you can hold an opinion if you feel you need to, then the final result is that you can do what you like, all warnings to the contrary notwithstanding.
1. Nobody disputes that we are all ultimately responsible for our own decisions, and will be answerable for whose advice we accepted and whose we rejected. But a layman cannot accept or reject advice, he cannot decide for or against a course of action, unless he is actually given advice to begin with! What is the point in even asking a priest (or bishop!) for advice on such a question if this is what his answer amounts to?
2. Once again, if I know that the New Mass poses a danger, and another soul asks me for advice, does not the law of Charity demand that I tell the truth and leave up to them the question of whether they follow my advice or not? Does this not apply even more for a priest and a hundredfold the more so for a bishop?
![[Image: recusant-29-4.png]](https://i.postimg.cc/gJz3Y8rx/recusant-29-4.png)
Summary:
Bishop Williamson says consistently that he will not tell people, laity or priests, what they should do. Even with something as basic and important as the question of attending the New Mass, he insists on leaving people to make up their on minds. In practice, this means leaving their consciences completely uninformed and untroubled and leaving them with a readymade excuse to not do the right thing.
Bishop Williamson’s refusal to exercise even moral authority, to help compel souls towards the good even in the slightest way and his washing his hands of any responsibility for where they end up, leads in practice to a ‘soft’ version of Religious Liberty.
5. Objections:
Notice that the word “Resistance” always has quotation marks placed around it, whereas even the term “XSPX” does not! The effect of the quotation marks around “Resistance” is to suggest what he himself says elsewhere, that he does not really believe that there is such a thing as the “Resistance.”
Nevertheless, whether or not one believes in it, the Resistance does exist. It is and strives to be the continuation of the work of Archbishop Lefebvre: to save and to spread Catholic Tradition and to oppose Vatican II and conciliarism. It is the coalescing of laity and clergy to that end, the organizing of the apostolate to that end, the training of a new generation of priests to that end, and all the rest. That is the reality behind the term. It exists whether one wants it to or not, whether one believe in it or not, but it is up to us whether we wish to see it and support it. It seems that Bishop Williamson does not.
Whether mistakenly or out of convenience, the outside world and in particular the enemies of the Resistance (neo-SSPX, sedevacantists, etc.) see the Resistance and Bishop Williamson as being one and the same thing. The reality is otherwise. Bishop Williamson himself appears to be undecided as to whether or not he supports the Resistance, or whether there even is such a thing at all! He does not use the term except in quotation marks, and he does not believe in what it stands for.
Concerning ‘Liberty in Matters of Religion’ OR ‘Religious Liberty’,
Authority AND Whether we can attend the New Mass
1.Authority vs. ‘Liberty’ Religious
Authority vs. ‘Religious Liberty’
- “At the risk of destroying all authority, human liberty cannot be defined as freedom from any constraint. Constraints can be physical or moral. Moral constraint in the religious domain is extremely useful and is found throughout Sacred Scripture. ‘The Fear of God is the beginning of wisdom’ (Ps.110:10) Authority is there to help men do good and avoid evil. It is meant to help men use their freedom well.” (Archbishop Lefebvre, I Accuse the Council, p.30)
- “The search for truth, for men living on this earth, consists above all in obeying and submitting their intelligence to whatever authority may be concerned: be it familial, religious or even civil authority. How many men can reach the truth without the help of authority?” (Ibid. p.32)
- “Where, in point of fact, did this concept [Religious Liberty] come into force? Inside the Church or outside the Church? Clearly it made its appearance among the self styled philosophers of the 18th century: Hobbes, Locke, Rousseau, Voltaire. . . . In the middle of the 19th century, with Lamennais, the Liberal Catholics attempted to reconcile this concept with the Church’s doctrine. They were condemned by Pius IX. This concept, which in his encyclical Immortale Dei Leo XIII calls ‘a new law,’ was solemnly condemned by that Pontiff as contrary to sound philosophy and against Holy Scripture and Tradition.” (Ibid. p.87ff)
- “15. Every man is free to embrace and profess that religion which, guided by the light of reason, he shall consider true.” (Pius IX, Syllabus Errorum [syllabus of condemned propositions]) “If I really thought that I had religious liberty, I would find an easier religion to belong to. Why not be an Anglican? They have nicer churches, they are more musical, their laws are not as strict... But I am not an Anglican, I am a Catholic because I do not have ‘religious liberty’, I have no choice: I am bound in conscience to be a Catholic if I want to save my soul. G.K. Chesterton said: ‘If I were not a Catholic I would have a harem.’” (Fr. Gregory Hesse, Ten Errors of Vatican II, Recusant 16, May 2014)
Summary:
‘Authority’ has different forms: it does not have to mean official jurisdiction but can also include moral authority. If authority exists, we may not do whatever we choose. All authority comes from God who is the author of all things. Authority exists for good. God is good. Therefore authority exists for God and exists to bring us to Him. As a result, therefore:
1) Even the greatest authority on earth cannot be used to lead us away from God, since He is the source of all authority and He cannot be made to contradict Himself.
2) Like a refusal to obey authority on the part of subjects (e.g. the French Revolution), a refusal to exercise authority on the part of one who has been given it means a denial to serve the interests of good and is thus, in effect, a denial of God who is the source.
3) Religious Liberty represents, in effect, a denial of God’s authority and thus, in the end, a denial of God Himself. The authority of the Church, and all of Tradition and Scripture, is thus by its very existence an implicit denial of Religious Liberty.
2. The New Mass and Whether We Ought to Attend it
- “On the contrary, adherence to the truth and the love of God are the principles of authentic religious liberty, which we can define as the liberty to render to God the worship due to Him and to live according to His commandments.” (Archbishop Lefebvre, Open Letter to Confused Catholics, pp.83,84)
- “It seems to me preferable that scandal be given rather than a situation be maintained in which one slides into heresy. After considerable thought on the matter, I am convinced that one cannot take part in the New Mass, and even just to be present one must have a serious reason. We cannot collaborate in spreading a rite which, even if it is not heretical, leads to heresy. This is the rule I am giving my friends.” (Bishop de Castro Mayer, Letter to Archbishop Lefebvre, 29th Jan. 1970)
- “Little by little the Archbishop’s position hardened … In 1975 he admitted that one could ‘assist occasionally at the New Mass when one feared going without Communion for a long time.’ [. . .] Soon, Archbishop Lefebvre would no longer tolerate participation at Masses celebrated in the new rite except passively, for example at funerals. … He considered that it was bad in itself and not only because of the circumstances in which the rite was performed.” (Bishop Tissier de Mallerais, Marcel Lefebvre the Biography, p465 ff.)
- “To avoid conforming to the evolution slowly taking place in the minds of priests, we must avoid - I could almost say completely - assisting at the New Mass.” (Archbishop Lefebvre, Spiritual Conference at Écône, 21st March, 1977)
- “Born of liberalism and modernism, this Reform is poisoned through and through. It begins in heresy and ends in heresy even if not all its acts are formally heretical. Hence it is impossible for any informed and loyal Catholic to embrace this Reform or submit himself to it in any way whatsoever.” (Archbishop Lefebvre, November 1974 Declaration) “The New Mass, even when said with piety and respect for the liturgical rules, is [still] impregnated with the spirit of Protestantism. It bears within it a poison harmful to the Faith.” (Archbishop Lefebvre, “Open Letter to Confused Catholics”, p. 29)
3. Bishop Williamson and Authority
“I think – I may be wrong – that [God] wants a loose network of independent pockets of Resistance, gathered around the Mass, freely contacting one another, but with no structure of false obedience [i.e. no structure] such as served to sink the mainstream Church in the 1960’s, and is now sinking the Society of St Pius X.” (Eleison Comments 277)
“A number of good souls wish that a Congregation were founded to replace the Society of St Pius X. But [Archbishop Lefebvre] ... had the Church’s authority to build a Congregation of the Church. … How many sane bishops are there left in the mainstream Church [today]? And how could any of them today approve of Traditional and anti-Conciliar Statutes? … And that is why, right now, I envisage being little more than father, adviser and friend for any souls calling for a bishop’s leadership and support.” (Eleison Comments #307)
“As for an alternative to the SSPX, we must learn the lessons to be drawn from its present severe crisis. The Catholic Church runs on authority, from the Pope downwards… We have, so to speak, run out of that peasant common sense that enabled Catholic authority to function.” (Eleison Comments #278)
“Again I am being urged by a valiant participant in today’s Catholic “Resistance” to put myself at the head of it. … But God gave the dying breath of true Church authority to Archbishop Lefebvre… ‘The wide diversity of opinion amongst Resistance priests confuses the laity.’ But to control opinions requires authority (see above). ... ‘There is no Church without a head or hierarchy. God wants us organized.’ Normally indeed there is no Church without head or hierarchy, but modern man has created an abnormal situation.” (Eleison Comments #311)
“But authority comes from the Pope. Which is why if the Pope is not in his right mind, you can’t get Catholic authority from above. You just can’t get it. … In which case the Church is crippled, the Church is paralysed. . . . I don’t have authority. I cannot have authority. Friendship, advice, contact, support: no problem. Authority: problem. Can you imagine that commanding resistant priests is like herding cats, can you imagine? In which case, is it worth trying if it is bound to fail?”
4. Bishop Williamson and ‘Liberty’
- “Therefore, it seems to me, if James is convinced that to save his soul he must stay in the Newchurch, I need not hammer him to get out of it. If Clare is persuaded that there is no grave problem within the Society of St. Pius X, I need not ram down her throat why there is. And if John can see no way to keep the Faith without believing that the See of Rome is vacant, I need urge upon him no more than that that belief is not obligatory.” (Eleison Comments #348)
1. There is absolutely no need for the excessively emotional language. Why say “hammer him” and “ram down her throat” when “tell him” and “seek to persuade her” would do just as well? This tends to serve as a distraction from the meaning of what is being said.
2. Is this not the essence of indifferentism? If God has given me the grace to find Catholic Tradition and to see the conciliar church for what it really is, am I not obliged by the law of Charity to help my neighbor to see too, to bring them to Tradition and ultimately to safety? Do we not risk being condemned for the good we did not do, for the souls we did not bring to the truth?
- “[T]he opinion itself [i.e. sedevacantism] is dangerous precisely because it can be the beginning of a slide towards losing the Faith. … Now if a Catholic needs to hold that opinion in order not to lose his Catholic Faith, let him hold it.” (Eleison Comments #417)
1. How can a bishop counsel somebody to hold an opinion if a) that opinion is dangerous and b) it leads to a risk of losing the Faith altogether?
2. God never requires us to endanger our Faith. Therefore no Catholic ever really “needs to hold” a dangerous opinion. An individual Catholic may feel or think he needs to, but that is subjective, not objective. But if it is objectively dangerous, then objectively there is no need to embrace it, quite the contrary.
3. Does not the permission (“If you ‘need to’ do it, do it!”) have the effect of cancelling out the prior warning? If the conclusion is that you can hold an opinion if you feel you need to, then the final result is that you can do what you like, all warnings to the contrary notwithstanding.
- “I do not say to everybody inside the Novus Ordo, priests and laity, I don’t say: ‘You’ve got to get out!’ ” (St. Catherine’s, Ontario, Canada 5th November 2015) “At present I am more and more disinclined to impose even a true viewpoint on anybody.” (Eleison Comments #420)
- [As a reason for not advising priests to leave the SSPX]: “I believe in liberty!” [In answer to the question ‘Can I attend the New Mass during the week?’]: “Even there you may find the grace of God. If you do, make use of it in order to sanctify your soul.”
- “While the new religion is false, it’s dangerous, it strangles grace and it’s helping many people to lose the Faith: at the same time, there are still cases where it can be used and is used still to build the Faith.” “The essential principle is: do whatever you need to do to keep the Faith.” “You must work it out for yourselves. Any other question?” (New York, 28th June 2015)
1. Nobody disputes that we are all ultimately responsible for our own decisions, and will be answerable for whose advice we accepted and whose we rejected. But a layman cannot accept or reject advice, he cannot decide for or against a course of action, unless he is actually given advice to begin with! What is the point in even asking a priest (or bishop!) for advice on such a question if this is what his answer amounts to?
2. Once again, if I know that the New Mass poses a danger, and another soul asks me for advice, does not the law of Charity demand that I tell the truth and leave up to them the question of whether they follow my advice or not? Does this not apply even more for a priest and a hundredfold the more so for a bishop?
Summary:
Bishop Williamson says consistently that he will not tell people, laity or priests, what they should do. Even with something as basic and important as the question of attending the New Mass, he insists on leaving people to make up their on minds. In practice, this means leaving their consciences completely uninformed and untroubled and leaving them with a readymade excuse to not do the right thing.
Bishop Williamson’s refusal to exercise even moral authority, to help compel souls towards the good even in the slightest way and his washing his hands of any responsibility for where they end up, leads in practice to a ‘soft’ version of Religious Liberty.
5. Objections:
A) But you’re exposing a split in the Resistance!
How can anyone cause a split in the Resistance by disagreeing with someone who does not even believe in the Resistance?- “...any so-called movement of “Resistance” today…” (Eleison Comments #354)
- “...any number of us in the quote-unquote Resistance…” (Eleison Comments #386)
- “The second email comes from a “Resistance” priest…” (Eleison Comments #413)
- “...Society priests are not yet joining the “Resistance”…” (Eleison Comments #404)
- “...questions ranging over the Church, Tradition, the “Resistance” and the XSPX.” (Eleison Comments #395)
- “...one thinks of the present difficulties of the “Resistance”…” (Eleison Comments #375)
- “ If the “Resistance” is presently making so little apparent headway…” (Eleison Comments #370)
- “The resistant groups, the resistants - a - n - t - s - and I very much prefer the expression resistants to the expression resistance … I very much believe in the resistants, I’m not sure I believe in the Resistance.” (Post Falls, Idaho, USA, June 2014)
Notice that the word “Resistance” always has quotation marks placed around it, whereas even the term “XSPX” does not! The effect of the quotation marks around “Resistance” is to suggest what he himself says elsewhere, that he does not really believe that there is such a thing as the “Resistance.”
Nevertheless, whether or not one believes in it, the Resistance does exist. It is and strives to be the continuation of the work of Archbishop Lefebvre: to save and to spread Catholic Tradition and to oppose Vatican II and conciliarism. It is the coalescing of laity and clergy to that end, the organizing of the apostolate to that end, the training of a new generation of priests to that end, and all the rest. That is the reality behind the term. It exists whether one wants it to or not, whether one believe in it or not, but it is up to us whether we wish to see it and support it. It seems that Bishop Williamson does not.
- “It is not clear that the present need is to rebuild a classic Congregation or Seminary. Both may be somehow out-dated.” (Eleison Comments #278)
- “But God is God, and for the salvation of souls tomorrow it may be that he will no longer resort to the classical Congregation or seminary of yesterday.” (Ibid.)
- “In the early 21st century there seems to me to be just not enough Catholic straw left to make a Catholic brick like the SSPX of the late 20th century.” (Eleison Comments #311)
- “Don’t be under any illusion: it’s not going to be me who puts together a new SSPX. No way! The time for that is over. Put away your toys everybody and get with it. Grow up!” (St. Catherine’s, Ontario, Canada, 5th Nov. 2014)
Whether mistakenly or out of convenience, the outside world and in particular the enemies of the Resistance (neo-SSPX, sedevacantists, etc.) see the Resistance and Bishop Williamson as being one and the same thing. The reality is otherwise. Bishop Williamson himself appears to be undecided as to whether or not he supports the Resistance, or whether there even is such a thing at all! He does not use the term except in quotation marks, and he does not believe in what it stands for.
B) But you can’t disagree with him! He’s a bishop!
- “People followed the Archbishop because here was the truth. In other words, the truth created authority. … Then today what do we have? Today, since the Archbishop’s successors have turned against the truth, the Society is losing its authority as well.” (Mahopac, New York, 28th June 2015)
- “If you are following me, it is because you are following not me but true Catholic doctrine. If one day I cease giving you true Catholic doctrine or change what I teach you, leave me!” (Archbishop Lefebvre, various conferences to the seminarians at Écône)
- “Objective truth is above Masters and people alike, so that if the people have the truth on their side, they are superior to their Masters if the Masters do not have the truth. ... In brief, if they are right, they have the right.” (Eleison Comments #366)
- “I am interested in your accusation of disloyalty. I know exactly what you mean but I happen to see things exactly in reverse. The trouble is that people always think of loyalty as being due to themselves. You automatically think of loyalty as working upwards. This is natural as you spring from a well-to-do family... I come from an eminently respectable but very poor background... I, consequently, think of loyalty as working downwards. I don't say the Squire wasn't tough - he was - but we knew he would see us through: he was loyal to us humble folk... You see the point? You blame me for not being loyal to my superiors. It has never crossed my mind: they are perfectly capable of defending themselves and even of breaking me if they so wish ... I, on the other hand, accuse you of being disloyal to your inferiors. It has never crossed your mind, although they are totally defenceless against you. And your disloyalty, George, is quite irreparable: thanks to it countless souls are seared in this life and may be lost in the next. My disloyalty to you can do little more than melt your collar - if, in fact, I am disloyal.” (Fr. Bryan Houghton, Mitre and Crook)