“The truly Catholic press is altogether Catholic, that is to say, it defends
Catholic doctrine in all its principles and applications; it opposes
all false teaching (known as such) always and entirely,
opposita per diametrum [diametrically opposed], as St Ignatius says in that golden book of his exercises. Arrayed with unceasing vigilance against error, it places itself on the frontier, always face-to-face with the enemy. It never bivouacs with the hostile forces, as the compromising press loves to do. Its opposition is definite and determined; it is not simply opposed to certain undeniable manoeuvres of the foe, letting others escape its vigilance, but watches, guards, and resists at every point.”
- Liberalism is a Sin, p.140
FROM THE DESK OF THE EDITOR:
Dear Reader,
In the past six months, two of the four bishops consecrated by Archbishop Lefebvre in 1988 have died. Bernard Tissier de Mallerais went to his reward in October 2024, at the age of 79. Richard Williamson died at the end of January 2025 aged 84. Both of them had been first hospitalised, and both seem to have spent their last few days on this earth in a more or less comatose condition, unable to communicate - a timely reminder to those of us who fondly imagine that our own death will be like that of Lord Marchmain, and that there will be plenty of opportunity to repent one last time during our last moments: beware, it doesn’t always happen the way you imagine! But let that be. They are both dead.
Bishop Tissier’s requiem and burial were held at Écône, shortly after he died. In the case of Bishop Williamson, nobody seemed to know anything about his requiem or burial for weeks, indeed details only seemed to become known shortly before it took place, nearly a full month later in late February. Why that might be, your guess is as good as mine. His requiem was held in a rented hall in Canterbury, and he was buried at the Novus Ordo, St Augustine’s in Ramsgate. This latter detail was supposed to be kept super-secret even after it happened for some reason (again, why?). Picture taking was banned at the requiem, but a video was released in late April, two months later.
De mortuis nil nisi bonum - yes, as a rule of thumb, but let us be careful not to succumb to the soft honey of a false charity. I could pretend to be nice and say only nice things, and everyone would say what a nice man I am (well, some of them still wouldn’t, but you know what I mean), but that would just be a means of serving my own selfish interests, make life nicer for me in other words. No, that won’t do. There is too much at stake here. And since the death of Richard Nelson Williamson was followed with hagiographies by all sorts of shameless ‘Trad’ grifters (using, one suspects, the news of Bishop Williamson’s death to promote themselves and to appear virtuous); since there will be no shortage of people falling over each other to tell you what a living saint he was, let us try to put things into perspective. Speaking well of the dead should never be done at the risk of doing yourself or others harm. Bishop Williamson may be dead, but his poisonous ideas are still very much alive and well. Ask yourself this. How many Trads suddenly decided to say only nice things about JPII when he died in 2005, or Benedict VI more recently, or Paul VI back in 1978 ? That’s right, none.
If a man’s legacy is a harmful one, then that has to be owned and admitted-to for what it is, and it isn’t somehow “uncharitable” to point out the reality and warn of the danger - quite the contrary. I am convinced that more people will, in time, come to realise the truth, but for the present Bishop Williamson still seems to have fans all over the world, here and there, very few of whom knew all that much about him beyond the grossly simplified mainstream media persona (“Holocaust Denying Traditionalist Bishop Who Says That Women Should Be In The Home And Mass Should Be In Latin!”)
Since therefore I perceive that right now nobody is prepared to stick his neck out and say the least little thing which might accurately reflect the legacy of the late lamented bishop, and not merely because it is also likely that there are others afraid to speak up due to the wave of blind hatred which they perceive will be directed at them, and since this little newsletter has never shied away from being the only one to say what others are thinking, to be the lightning rod, that lone voice shouting: “The emperor has no clothes...” - let us take a cold, hard, brutal look at the legacy of the late Richard Nelson Williamson.
Bishop Williamson and the Start of The Resistance
Bishop Williamson had been saying that something was wrong at the top of the SSPX for some time, and by Easter 2012 conclusive proof had appeared in public that he was right. Menzingen, the Headquarters of the SSPX, together with several of the SSPX’s District Superiors, was mounting a campaign to become the latest addition to the Indult / Ecclesia Dei pantheon, and to convince priests and faithful that this Traditional-Mass-with-permission (as long as you’re well behaved!) approach was the right one. The generals were preparing to sign a surrender without telling the troops, as it were. Although this Menzingen propaganda campaign lasted weeks if not months and was quite open and public, Bishop Williamson’s opposition to it was relatively private. He gave a conference here, a sermon there, he talked to people, influential people perhaps, but the closest he came to publicly opposing it was a conference at the SSPX retreat centre, St Saviour’s House, Bristol which a layman filmed and uploaded to youtube, meaning that the bishop himself could not be said to have been responsible (perhaps that was the idea all along?). He also gave, for instance, a conference to a group of thirty or so souls after Mass in the church hall at St. Joseph & Padarn’s in North London, at which I was present: his “Walrus and the Carpenter” talk. The very grainy recording which I managed to make on my not-very-state-of-the-art phone was lost and then found again and uploaded a couple of years late (it is
here, if anyone is still interested).
When the SSPX’s General Chapter met in June 2012, Bishop Williamson, one of its forty members, was pointedly not invited. Several of those close to him advised him to turn up anyway, park his tanks on their lawn so to speak. He had every right to be there and “possession is nine tenths of the law,” ran the argument: if they are going to physically bar you, with all the bad publicity and bad feeling that will cause, at least force them to do that.
At least then everyone will see what they are capable of doing. Don’t give in to this sort of thing so easily, don’t give them an easy ride! ...but he could not be prevailed upon and for whatever reason, decided not to go.
The General Chapter failed to stand up to the delinquent Superior General and his two complicit assistants, and without a whimper of protest it rubber-stamped his betrayal. At some point in the summer of 2012 I asked Bishop Williamson what the solution now was. What were we to do? Another Chapter was a full six years off, and if the current one contained both liberal yes-men and more old-school members, the intervening six years would give even more time for the liberals to stack things in their favour. He replied with a well-known line from Virgil:
infandum regina iubes renovare dolorem. (...from at the start of
Aeneid Book II, for those of you who don’t recognise it). He had no solution, in other words, and the very question was painful to him. I took it to mean that he didn’t wish to speak about it and didn’t press the matter.
During May and June 2012, various priests (Fr. Pfeiffer and Fr. Chazal most notably) had been thrown out of the SSPX for saying publicly what Bishop Williamson had been saying privately, and for bringing the betrayal of the SSPX and its opposition to a wider audience. Bishop Williamson had promised to support them before they made their public stand and in many if not most (probably all) cases, it was his private promise of support which gave them the courage to stand up and speak out.
These freshly punished priests, together with others who were concerned and wanted to take action, planned to gather in August 2012 so as to organise themselves. Bishop Williamson withdrew his support at the last minute and said that his reason for doing so was twofold
Firstly, said he, the General Chapter had been a success, the good guys had defeated the bad guys, at least for the time being, so all was back to normal in the SSPX and open resistance was to be avoided.
Secondly, the SSPX, said he, were going to expel him but they were planning on making him an offer. That latter point is an important one and we will return to it
shortly.
The other point to grasp about all of this, is that Bishop Williamson was not saying any of these things openly. This was all going on in private. We now know and have the proof, because one of those priests, Fr Joseph Pfeiffer, subsequently made public a voicemail which he received from Bishop Williamson in which he backed out of the August 2012 priests’ meeting and suggested to him that he too should submit to the SSPX instead and go back to the Philippines. Here are the relevant bits.
Quote:“[…] The good guys have put, at least for the moment, a serious block in the way of the delinquent Bishop Fellay. Now, the immediate danger is to that extent over. The text I think will come out, will show that. […] So Bishop Tissier said it was a compromise text, he was modest and he said ‘We did our best’ as though he had failed, but in fact it looks like he, those guys succeeded as far as they got. They did not succeed in unhorsing Bishop Fellay which would have been the ideal. But they did at least block him. Okay. Where does this leave you? Um, it, it, I’m also on the exit ramp, I don’t know yet details but I am under the guillotine. Um, don’t, don’t make, don’t solidify plans yet for the 7th August. Sketch things out, make things, see what’s necessary, see what’s possible, various possibilities, but don’t yet commit me because I, er, I don’t know what I’m going to do. I haven’t yet had the alternatives proposed to me but I know that there’s going to be a proposition. But, so, er, okay, the proposition will be an amiable separation. Now, I’ve got to get the details, and I’m going to have to make a decision.
Um, but, I don’t yet know what I’m going to do. So don’t yet count on me. Um, there’s less necessity for such a meeting because the Society has at least a reprieve, a reprieve for perhaps at least a year until, as I said, Fellay will crank up his nonsense again. He’s an absolute delinquent. But if he does crank up his nonsense after the very clear, apparently, 80% satisfactory text of the Chapter, it’s going to be difficult for him to get, work around it. It’s going to be difficult for him to say in just one year it seems completely different. And the third world war could easily start between now and then. Any moment now, the Third World War, it seems, so, but that’s another question. So Father, I would say, think rather of going back to the Philippines …”
Let us leave aside for one moment the fact that he seemed to think that the text of the 2012 General Chapter Declaration was somehow a good thing. Anyone unsure can find it
here. It’s the one which had attached to it six conditions for being accepted by modern Rome, three of which were only “desirable,” remember that? Well perhaps that wasn’t Bishop Williamson’s fault, perhaps he hadn’t read it yet, perhaps he had only heard about it from Fr. Paul Morgan or some other sympathetic chapter member.
What ought to stand out is this: “
I know there’s going to be a proposition.” And this: “
I know the proposition is going to be an amiable separation.” What exactly did Bishop Williamson agree to with the SSPX Superiors? They allowed him to go and live quietly in retirement, that much seems evident, and even allowed Fr. Stephen Abraham to go and live with him and be his housekeeper. Very well, but that would only have been their end of the deal. What was his end of the deal? We cannot know for certain but he does seem to have done everything in his power right from ‘day one’ to prevent any kind of organised opposition to the SSPX forming.
Could that be a mere coincidence? Think about it: what else did he have to offer them? Just take a moment to let it sink in. Bishop Williamson tells the preacher of the famous “Dog Barking”
sermon, a priest who arrived in the USA at the start of his holiday visit home to discover that he was forbidden from saying Mass in any SSPX chapel in the whole country, and who later went on to found most of the Resistance Mass centres in that country, that he should go back to his SSPX superiors in the Philippines, that he should accept being muzzled, silenced in other words, never to be heard-from again. In his own words, Bishop Williamson admitted that the Resistance priests could not rely on him helping them (“
Don’t yet count on me…”). Ask yourself - are these the actions of a man who is setting up an organisation to resist the new SSPX, are these the actions of a man who can be considered the founder and leader of the Resistance? Or are they the actions of a man who is trying to stop the Resistance by using his influence from within?
This one example is not an outlier - every one of his subsequent actions was in line with it. He was expelled from the SSPX in October 2012 but did not say a single Mass for the Resistance, even privately, until June 2013 and only at the very firm insistence of the editor of this newsletter. And when he turned up to say Mass for the Resistance for the first ever time in June 2013, he disavowed any responsibility. And from day one, he attempted to use what influence he had over the faithful present at the Resistance to turn them and send them back in the direction of the SSPX. But he did so surreptitiously, sneakily, not in an open and honest way: he did so in such a way that people would leave but nobody would connect it with him.
That was 2013. By 2014 he had begun to preach his brand of demoralisation openly in sermons. Don’t be too apostolic, he said, because it could cause you to lose the Faith. In order to keep the Faith it might be the case that you have to choose to be less apostolic (notice the “might” - nice hedge there!) Don’t bother about all this Resistance stuff, said another sermon, none of that matters anyway because World War Three is about to break out in the next few weeks. At the same time,
Eleison Comments said that he was less and lees inclined to give anyone the truth or even a true viewpoint and that if a particular layman feels the need to be part of the conciliar church, he wouldn’t make any effort to persuade such a person of the contrary. We could go on. That was 2014. What happened after that can be found in these pages and will doubtless be familiar to many veteran readers.
December 2014 / January 2015 was when a new “Resistance” Mass centre began in London, to rival the original one which had already been going for 18 months. He did nothing in 2013 to help set up the original and for 18 months had only turned up to say Mass “under protest” as it were, but suddenly was more than happy to assist this new rival venture. Make of that what you will. 2015 was also the year in which he began to promote the New Mass and, as a supporting piece of “evidence” on which to rest his new ideas, the
Novus Ordo “miracles”. His supposed “Traditionalism” quickly unravelled from there. To save time and space, as well as sanity, we will summarise all the rest in an article which follows.
New Bishops
The other thing of course which will be considered by many as Bishop Williamson’s legacy is the new bishops whom he consecrated. Superficially, of course, this is true. In general terms it is better that there be more bishops than less, the SSPX ought to have consecrated new bishops years ago. Beyond that, however, the manner and motivation matter a great deal. The Church acts openly and publicly - is this a work of the Church? Are these episcopal consecrations a continuation of the work of Archbishop Lefebvre, or do they have a decidedly Wiliamsonian character?
Remember that Archbishop Lefebvre consecrated all four bishops on the same day, at the same ceremony. He told everyone well in advance, priests, faithful and secular media alike, so that as many as possible could be present. And at that event he preached a sermon which is magnificent for its simplicity and clarity, explaining what he was doing and why.
Bishop Williamson, by contrast, did nothing and gave no hint of action for more than two years. Then suddenly, in March 2015, half way through the third year of his expulsion from the SSPX, and when many around the world had given up hoping and asking, he suddenly (so it seemed) decided to consecrate a bishop. It was announced at very little notice and many could not make it, furthermore, it took place in rural Brazil. And the priest he chose was Fr. Jean Michel Faure, a man only one year his junior! Let that last fact sink in: Bishop Williamson has now died. Bishop Faure is now in his mid-80s and too infirm to travel much outside France. Why him? The answer is not the very dubious story, put about at the time of his consecration, that Faure had been originally chosen by Archbishop Lefebvre. We even printed it here: we ought to have been more careful. What is the source for that story, other than the very man himself, Jean-Michel Faure? And what sort of a man would tell such a story about himself? He says that he turned down Archbishop Lefebvre “out of humility”..? Really? Does that make even sense? The same “humility” didn’t stop him telling the story of how humble he had been though, did it?!
The following year, He consecrated Dom Tomas Aquinas from Brazil. Though not quite as old as Faure and Williamson, he was not too far off, still fairly old, however and known to suffer from poor health. That was early 2016. Six months or so before this, summer 2015, Bishop Williamson had begun his promotion of
Novus Ordo miracles and “grace in the New Mass.” Many people thought that Dom Tomas Aquinas might stand against this, but alas he published a series of articles defending it (entitled: “
In Defence of Bishop Williamson”), in late 2015. It is surely a complete coincidence that he was chosen for episcopal consecration by the very man he had just been defending. Within a few months Bishop Tomas Aquinas was persecuting his erstwhile priestly and religious colleague, Fr. Rafael Arizaga OSB, for the crime of saying that the New Mass won’t give you grace and you shouldn’t go to it (See, for instance,
here p.14 ff. and
here p.38).
The year after that, 2017, he consecrated Fr Gerardo Zendejas. This priest, at least, was not elderly and was not in poor health. That he had a track record of secrecy and nobody was sure quite why he had originally left the SSPX or what he stood for did not help, however.
After this there were no more episcopal consecrations for a few years until some time around 2022 it emerged that he had secretly consecrated Frs. Giacomo Ballini, Paul Morgan and Michal Stobnicki. The first two were former SSPX priests. The latter had spent a short amount of time as a seminarian of the SSPX before being asked to leave the seminary; not much more is known other than that it was Bishop Williamson who had also ordained him to the priesthood. Details of these three consecrations are few and far between. Even after the death of Bishop Williamson, no footage has emerged of Ballini’s consecration, nor do people seem sure of crucial details such as who the witnesses were.
Why did Bishop Williamson string out his episcopal consecrations, performing them one after the other in different years, whereas Archbishop Lefebvre did them all in one go? And why those priests in particular? And why, increasingly, in secret rather than in public and with a prior announcement? One answer, it seems, is that he was using the carrot of access to episcopal sacraments in general, and episcopal consecration in particular, as a means of manipulating priests into submitting to his hidden will. There may be another explanation, but I have yet to discover it. It just looks downright manipulative, there is no getting away from it.
Again, this is not what Archbishop Lefebvre did.
The other way in which the consecrations of these new bishops seems to have a decidedly Williamsonian character is the motive for doing them. Ask yourself: why? Surely the first answer to suggest itself would be “To pass on the episcopacy to a successor,” or something similar. Very well. But in that case why would your first candidate be someone only one year younger than you?
Another reason which one might expect would be to provide an alternative to the new SSPX, to convert the modernists or something along those lines. But the man himself said clearly that the consecration of Bishop Zendejas “has no ambition either to save or to convert either the Newchurch or the Newsociety.” (
Eleison Comments 514), and elsewhere he told the world that his motive for consecrating those first three new bishops was something very akin to territorial jurisdiction:
Quote:“As of now the ‘Resistance’ has two in Europe and one in South America. There remains a gap in North America. God willing, this coming May 11 Fr. Gerardo Zendejas will be consecrated bishop in the Traditional parish of Fr Ronald Ringrose in Vienna, Virginia , USA. Please pray for the blessing of Almighty God upon the ceremony – and for good weather!” (Eleison Comments #504 “Fourth Bishop”)
The weather, by the way, was atrocious: thunder and lighting together with torrential rain - make of that what you will, it is not what is important here. What is important is that he appears to be saying that he consecrated these three bishops to be resident in and “cover” or “take care of” various continents around the world. Never mind the fact that they will be covering those continents for a “Resistance” - his quotation marks, as always! - in which he does not believe. He also had the barefaced effrontery to try to implicate Archbishop Lefebvre in this, whereas in reality Archbishop Lefebvre pointedly did not consecrate bishops for different parts of the world. He chose men with different languages, yes, but he did not assign them to continents. Bishop Williamson in the same
Eleison Comments also says that Archbishop Lefebvre consecrated new bishops in 1988, “...to maintain a Catholic authority that would protect God’s Truth” before going on to say that he is doing the same thing. Again, this is totally untrue: anyone who is unsure need only read or listen to Archbishop Lefebvre’s 1988 consecrations sermon, it is all there in black and white.
In summary then, in his own words Bishop Williamson’s motives for consecrating the first
three bishops, Faure, Tomas Aquinas and Zendejas, were
1. So that each one would have a quasi territorial jurisdiction over Europe, South America and North America respectively, and
2. to give them “authority” with which to “protect truth.”
This, despite his insistence that he had no authority and could never have any authority. Make of that what you will. And since his episcopal consecration, what has Bishop Zendejas used his “authority” for, what “truth” has he “protected”? Not the truth about the New Mass, since he accepts fully the new teaching that it gives grace even to Traditionalists. Not to defend the authority of the Holy Office prior to Vatican II, since he has had nothing to say about the false prophecies, revelations, apparitions, devotions and the like which Bishop Williamson has been promoting in recent years.
Indeed, the man who as a priest famously rebuked the faithful for asking him why he had left the SSPX, since becoming a bishop has it seems remained entirely silent: even weddings are not allowed to be filmed lest his sermon should appear in a video. And of course, his Mass times and locations remain super-secret to this day. So much for his “authority”!
In a similar way, regular readers will recall how, when still a priest, Fr. Zendejas made his newsletter totally private in late 2015, after large portions of it were quoted here and people were invited to take a look at exactly what he actually teaches! This included such gems as:
- the problem with Vatican II is its ambiguity;
- the good guys won at Vatican II, but then the bad guys gained the upper-hand after the Council;
- speaking of himself, the only thing a priest can give the faithful is sacraments (not the Faith?), and that he should stay in one place and help only those who help him, and shouldn’t even seek to grow his congregation;
and much more besides. He also attempted to promote Fr. Stephen Abraham by offering him to the faithful in the United States - happily, this offer was rejected. (See
Recusant 40, p.40 ff.).
The case of Fr. - later Bishop - Gerardo Zendejas is interesting for another reason. Time after time many of us (myself included) personally witnessed priests who were on the point of leaving the SSPX and joining the Resistance being persuaded by Bishop Williamson to stay put and not leave the SSPX. He even persuaded one priest, a Fr. Iglesias, who had joined the Resistance straight from the
Novus Ordo, to return to his conciliar diocese in Spain (“They’re good people,” he told him, “they need you.”).
Fr. Zendejas was a rare example of a priest whom Bishop Williamson sent in the opposite direction. And what did he do, under Bishop Williamson’s direction? He turned up at several of the largest and most successful Resistance Mass centres, in the part of USA where the Resistance was making the most progress under Fr. Pfeiffer and Fr. Hewko, but he turned up without telling these very priests who had established those Mass centres and who had been looking after them ever since. He then announced to those faithful that he was to be their priest from now on and that they should make out all donations to him; he got angry with them when they tried to ask him what he stood for, why he had left the SSPX, and so forth; he promised them more regular sacraments if they accepted him instead and managed to persuade some, but not all, of the faithful to come with him, effectively splitting everything in two. He did all this almost certainly with the blessing and the advice, and almost certainly at the actual direction of Bishop Williamson and was rewarded a couple of years later with a mitre.
All of which is by way of saying that Bishop Williamson’s actions, from day one have been those of a man trying to keep the Resistance from establishing itself and growing. Plenty of people will not accept it because they do not want to; but to those who have been paying attention, there is very little room for any doubt.
The Company You Keep...
One more thing stands out when considering Bishop Williamson’s actions during the last decade or so of his life, his role in the Resistance, and it is the thorny issue of child-molesters in the priesthood. An unpleasant topic, but it needs to be dealt with. Plenty of people would rather forget all about this, for obvious reasons. But anyone seeking to be honest must deal with it squarely.
Fr. Stephen Abraham, justly and rightly suspended from all priestly ministry by his SSPX superiors, had his suspension taken away by Bishop Williamson in 2014 and has been acting publicly as a priest ever since. Bishop Williamson not only remained his housemate until the day he died, but he even refused to move into Broadstairs to begin with unless Fr. Abraham went to live there with him too. He then systematically denied any and all requests from other priests to stay there, even just for a few weeks. All this has been known for some time.
But there is another priest who in 2014 joined the Resistance in France, a Fr. Philippe Peignot. Like Fr. Abraham, Fr. Peignot admitted to the sexual abuse of boys. The history of his victims is worse than that of Fr. Abraham and includes Vincent Lambert, as noted here in the previous issue. At the time of this priest’s joining the Resistance, there was only one bishop: Richard Nelson Williamson. Is it possible, is it in any way conceivable that he did not have the blessing of the latter, or that Bishop Williamson allowed him to join without any knowledge or even suspicion of why he had been in trouble with the SSPX? I find that very difficult to believe. At any rate, he knew all about Fr. Abraham and yet he decided to turn his wrath on any faithful who raised concerns with him, even privately. In more recent times, there is the unfortunate case of one Fr. Kerry Moran, dealt with elsewhere.
Three priests in little more than ten years. Is that a coincidence? What is going on? And at what point does one have to start asking questions about the man himself, the authority figure around whom they seem to gather? Remember also that in his SSPX days, Bishop Williamson was the man who ordained and promoted Fr. Carlos Urrutigoity. For those unaware or who have forgotten it, the unhappy story is this. Urrutigoity had been a seminarian at the SSPX seminary in La Reja, Argentina. In 1989 he was expelled for homosexual behaviour. He was then accepted into the SSPX’s North American seminary in Winona, Minnesota, by its then rector, Bishop Williamson. Fr. Andres Morello, the rector of La Reja who had expelled him, warned Williamson not to accept Urrutigoity into the seminary and even travelled in person to the USA to try to persuade him not to ordain this man to the priesthood. But ordain him he did, and went on to appoint him vice-rector of the seminary.
Approximately six years later, this deviant priest left the seminary at Winona taking several priests and seminarians with him to form an Indult / Ecclesia Dei breakaway, the Society of St. John, where he continued the sexual abuse of young men and minors. Evidently, had Fr. Morello’s will prevailed, and not that of Bishop Williamson, there would never have been a Society of St John, nor any of the horrific homo/paedo scandals which emerged from it a decade or so after it was founded.
All of which is circumstantial evidence, yes. There is no smoking gun to prove that he was, for example, at the centre of a network of perverts. But because it does not reflect well on him, it will be doggedly ignored by his adoring fans. In a similar “circumstantial” category is this interesting quote from a 2009 interview with the old lady who had been Richard Williamson’s nanny when he was a boy:
Quote:“‘Mrs Williamson was a fine woman and a very talented pianist but she had very strong opinions about things, just like Richard, I suppose,’ says Mrs Andrews.
‘Frankly, I didn’t think he took much notice of what was going on with his father and brother at work. He was thinking of becoming a priest by this time and was mostly in a little world of his own. He was the best looking of the three brothers, but there was never a girlfriend. To be honest, I thought he was gay.’ ”
Make of that what you will - on its own, any one piece of circumstantial evidence proves nothing, but it is one which nobody will dare mention, if they even remember it at all. But please note - evidence does not constitute proof. At present we cannot know the truth for certain, just as with all the details about his deliberate subversion of the Resistance. Was it really Fr. Ramon Angles who was his handler, the sinister SSPX priest who remained his firm friend and whom he addressed as “Maestro!”..? Perhaps we will never know for certain. But equally, we should not just look away and pretend not to have noticed, merely because it suggests unpleasant possibilities which we would rather not think about. And in any case, as has been emphasised here again and again, sound doctrine is what matters most. And thus it is Bishop Williamson’s false teaching which ought to trouble us far more than the man himself. Regarding Bishop Williamson’s teaching, please refer to the article which follows on page18 and treat the matter with the seriousness which it deserves.
What about Bishop Tissier?
Well, he at least didn’t promote child-molesting pederasts, as far as we know. Nor did he spend his final years on earth promoting the New Mass across the globe. But let’s be honest, that’s setting the bar pretty low. A son of Archbishop Lefebvre ought to be expected to act like Archbishop Lefebvre, and Archbishop Lefebvre set the bar pretty high.
Like his episcopal colleague, Bishop Tissier started out faithful to the legacy of Archbishop Lefebvre, but appeared to weaken alarmingly towards the end of his life. In the days before 2012 he was known as being, if anything, more of a “hard liner” than Bishop Williamson.
He consistently referred to Rome and the
Novus Ordo bishops and cardinals as “the conciliar sect”. Then of course, there was his famous 2006 interview with
The Remnant, where he went as far as interrupting his own interview to rebuke the interviewer, Stephen Heiner, telling him that he hadn’t asked the right questions (the last thing he asked him about was something to do with validity, interestingly enough!), before going on to talk about the heresies of Benedict XVI (“worse than Luther, much worse!”), rejecting sedevacantism (“No, no, no, no. He is the Pope …
Ecclesia supplet. The Church supplies. It is even in the code of canon law: ‘in case of doubt, the Church supplies the executive power.’ He is the Pope”), and saying that Vatican II can “absolutely not” be interpreted “in the light of Tradition”:
Quote:“No, we would read the Council in the light of the ‘new philosophy.’ Yes, that is the real “light” (chuckles). That is the only “light” by which you can read it. … You cannot read Vatican II as a Catholic work. It is based on the philosophy of Immanuel Kant. … One day the Church should erase this Council. She will not speak of it anymore. She must forget it.”
The whole interview is well worth a read. The old version of Bishop Tissier, Bishop Tissier as he used to be represents everything we of the Resistance stand for today infinitely better than the modern SSPX of today.
Even as the disaster loomed and SSPX encountered the denouement of years of subversion, the thinking of this bishop, although perhaps in hindsight it had already begun to soften a little, appeared to be as uncompromising as it always had been, leading many to hope that he would be the one to step in and do something. In April 2012, along with Bishop de Galarreta, he added his name to Bishop Williamson’s
letter to the three SSPX Superiors. On Trinity Sunday he preached a
sermon in St Nicolas du Chardonnet in which he contradicted outright a recent article by Fr Iscara on the US District website (
St Basil’s Economy of Silence) and insisted on the need to profess the Catholic Faith loud and clear, refusing even ambiguity:
Quote:“So, St. Basil didn't use ambiguous expressions with those who wanted to return to the Church. He demanded that they profess the entire Catholic Faith but using a gentler way of saying it. He was not willing to sign ambiguous texts, dear faithful. That’s what we must do today. We must refuse ambiguous texts, continue to condemn error and to correctly profess the Catholic Faith. When the Conciliarists come back, one day, in twenty five years, repenting of the council, when they see the ongoing catastrophes, the empty seminaries, the churches in ruins, apostasy everywhere, immorality everywhere, then they will repent deeply. When they do, when they begin to come back, full of repentance we can use “gentle” expressions to help them. But not now! The crisis is in full swing, now we have to be firm and condemn the errors of the council, especially the denial of Christ the King, the refusal of Christ the King. That, dear faithful, is our plan of action. There's no point in deceiving ourselves, there’s no way the crisis is almost over, the crisis is far from being over, the fight is going to last a long time and so we need to get organised, to last out and to continue to profess the whole Catholic Faith in full confidence in the power of Our Lord Jesus Christ. ”
Not long after, in June 2012, he gave an interview to Jerome Bourbon, editor of the French magazine
Rivarol. Once again, it is well worth a read and represents a useful reminder of what the SSPX used to stand for before its subversion:
Quote:“They made a new religion that is not the Catholic religion. We want no compromise with this religion, no risk of corruption, not even any appearance of reconciliation, and it is this appearance that we would give with our so called ‘regularization.’ ”
Regarding the burning question of the SSPX being “regularised” by modernist Rome, he had the following to say:
Quote:“One would wish to place our lamp under the bushel for our integration in the Conciliar world. … The irregularity is not ours. It is that of Rome. A Modernist Rome. A Liberal Rome that has renounced Christ the King. A Rome that had been condemned in advance by all Popes up until the eve of the Council. On the other hand, the experience of the priestly societies that have joined current Rome is that all, one after the other, including Campos and the Good Shepherd Institute, have been constrained to accept the Vatican II Council. And we know what has become of Bp. Rifan, of Campos, who now has no objection to celebrating the new mass and who has forbidden his priests from criticizing the Council!
We refuse a purely practical agreement because the doctrinal question is fundamental.
Faith comes before legality. We cannot accept a legalization without the problem of the faith being solved.
. . . I would like us to produce a text that, renouncing diplomatic subterfuges, clearly affirms our faith and, consequently, our rejection of the conciliar errors. This proclamation would have the advantage, first, of saying the truth openly to Pope Benedict XVI, who is the first to have the right to the truth, and second to restore the unity of the Catholics of Tradition around a combative and unequivocal profession of faith.”
But alas, it was not to be. Several such texts were produced, but not by the SSPX - rather by various gatherings and conventions of priests who had been expelled for speaking exactly the same way as the bishop. Re-read those early
Open Letters,
Declarations and the like, from 2012, 2013 and 2014 and look in vain for this bishop’s name: you won’t find it, it isn’t there.
Bishop Tissier did not support those priests, he ignored them and left them to their fate. Those who do not act as they believe will end up believing as they act. Plenty of priests secretly supported the Resistance in its early years from a place of material comfort inside the SSPX; nowadays they agree wholeheartedly with the new SSPX and condemn the Resistance.
That Bernard Tissier de Mallerais proved no exception to this rule should surprise no one. It did not happen immediately, but it did happen. On 1st January 2015 he preached a “good” sermon in Chicago (reproduced in
Recusant 26) which said all the right things for 2012 but ignored everything which had happened since and left many with the impression of a man living in denial. It was as though there had never been a Doctrinal Declaration which accepted Vatican II and the New Mass, no mass punishment of priests and no 2012 General Chapter with its “Six Conditions” for cuddling up to the men who have been destroying the Church.
Only a few weeks after this sermon, the Argentine government officially recognised the SSPX as Catholic because the conciliar hierarchy there (Pope Francis’s old archdiocese, remember) had vouched for the SSPX. Within the SSPX liberalism also continued to run rampant. By May 2015 the French district was promoting the 1965 missal among its priest-friends and Bishop Fellay used his
Letter to Friends and Benefactors to encourage everyone to participate in the ‘Year of Mercy.’
At the start of the summer,
Fr. Pfeiffer and Fr. Hewko met the bishop and spoke to him, and only because they managed to visit his priory at a time when the SSPX prior (his ‘prison warden’ as it were!) was out. He was very polite and charming, but no more than that and they left, in effect, empty handed. Following this visit it became even harder for people to make contact with the bishop, and he went from rarely being heard in public to being totally silent. At the end of the summer 2015, Pope Francis announced that he was granting ordinary jurisdiction to the SSPX as part of his ‘Year of Mercy’ and the SSPX officially expressed its gratitude. In the summer of 2020, he was moved from Chicago back to Écône. A little while after that, a letter from Fr. Hewko was hand-delivered to him at an SSPX chapel where he had just done confirmations. When he learned who it was from, he made a rude gesture and discarded it. He left no doubt about where his loyalties lay.
When did the change happen? When did Bishop Tissier go from “resisting from within” to actually agreeing with the new SSPX and its newfound home within the conciliar pantheon? It is difficult to say precisely. In March 2016, he gave an interview to the French District website
La Porte Latine, in which he ended up sounding just like Bishop Fellay, telling the world that:
Quote:“It became clear, in May and June 2012, that Benedict XVI still required as a condition, as he had said plainly at the start, that we accept the Council and the legitimacy of the reforms. It was a failure. But now there is very clearly a disposition on Pope Francis’ side to recognize us without these conditions. We say ‘Prudence!’ For things are moving and progress is still needed.
Archbishop Lefebvre never laid down as a condition for us to be recognized by Rome that Rome abandon the errors and the conciliar reforms. Even if he did say something like that to Andre Cagnon in 1990, he would never have done so, because that was never his line of conduct, his strategy with modernist Rome.
Archbishop Lefebvre requested with acumen ‘that we at least be tolerated’: ‘this would be a major advance,’ he said. And ‘that we be recognized as we are,’ that is, with our practice that follows from our doctrinal positions. Well, today we see in Rome a disposition to bear our existence and our theoretical and practical positions. I say ‘bear’ because one tolerates evil! Already, doctrinally, they no longer force us to admit ‘the whole Council’ or religious liberty; some of the errors we denounce are on the point of being considered by our interlocutors as open for free discussion, or continued debate. This is progress.”
In case anyone has any doubts, that is utter nonsense. One has only to read any one of the three interviews Archbishop Lefebvre gave to
Fideliter between 1988 and 1991, or indeed the first few pages of his book
Spiritual Journey to see that the Archbishop Lefebvre which Tissier is talking about here is little more than a fictional character! There are plenty of ways to prove how false Bishop Tissier’s words are, not least Bishop Tissier’s own words from past years, including his January 2015 Chicago sermon, mentioned above:
Quote:“Be sure, my dear faithful, be sure there is no question of making any compromise between the Society of St. Pius X and the occupying powers of the church. We never will draw [the Society of] St. Pius X to the new religion. St. Pius X would not have
accepted to be reconciled with the new religion! So, be sure, there will be no compromise, with the powers occupying the church.”
Spot the difference!
So much for his words. As to his deeds, Bishop Tissier de Mallerais continued as a bishop of the SSPX, ordaining priests at SSPX seminaries and confirming faithful at SSPX chapels. In October 2023 there appeared a video of
SSPX confirmations in Florida which took place in a
Novus Ordo parish church, one still in use by the local conciliar diocese. Who was the bishop whom the SSPX had sent to administer confirmations and say Mass in this
Novus Ordo parish? That’s right: the very same Bernard Tissier de Mallerais. Such a thing would have been unthinkable in years past.
That is what he did and said in public. In private, he appears to have worked actively to turn souls away from the Resistance and proved useful to the SSPX leadership in keeping priests and faithful ‘on board’ who might otherwise have stood up and openly opposed them.
Final Verdict?
Posterity will be the judge, but I do not think it will judge either of these two bishops with any great kindness. They were given an inestimable legacy by Archbishop Lefebvre: first and foremost the Catholic Faith and a personal example of how to profess it against modern errors, loud and clear. And secondly, of course, the sacrament of holy orders in the form of episcopal consecration.
Tradidi Quod Et Accepi - Archbishop Lefebvre took what he had himself received and handed it on to these two. What did they do with it? Did they hand it on in turn?
Bernard Tissier de Mallerais failed hand on the episcopal holy orders he had received from Archbishop Lefebvre and failed to hand on the Faith he had received from him as well.
Richard Nelson Williamson did hand on the holy orders he had received from Archbishop Lefebvre but failed to hand on the Faith he had received from him.
What use are holy orders without the Faith? Or are sacraments what matter most now? Anyone in doubt should give our article on
p.32 his careful consideration. As for these two bishops, they remind one of Fulton Sheen. He was good before the crisis, but when the great upheaval came he failed to rise to the challenge and consequently he ended badly. Pray for their souls, but do not be misled by their bad example.
Requiescant in pace.
Participation in Another’s Guilt
With the death of the delinquent Bishop Williamson, subverter of Tradition, many are already asking about the six bishops whom he consecrated, particularly the last three: Ballini, Morgan and Stobnicki. My brief advice would be: don’t go getting your hopes up.
First of all, there is the fact that he chose them each individually to be made bishops. Taken together with the fact that he secretly valued personal loyalty above all else (anyone who knew him knows that), one must ask, really, is there any chance at all that he would have chosen any of them had he thought that there was the tiniest risk of them turning out to be another Archbishop Lefebvre?
I think not. Beyond that, it is true that they have not been zealously and evangelically promoting the grace in the New Mass and the bogus “miracles” all over the world like he did, but that is not enough. One does not have to actually give voice to an error or scandal in order to help spread it: all that is needed is that one fail to raise one’s voice to condemn it.
Or let us put it another way.
The Penny Catechism is the English equivalent of the Baltimore Catechism. It was published with
Imprimatur and
Nihil Obstat from Westminster Archdiocese and its last edition was 1973 before it disappeared altogether from parishes all over the country. There was a very similar catechism in use in Ireland. Generations of Catholic school children before the Council were made to learn it by heart and to say the answers to the questions out loud from memory. One of the later questions asks about participating in the sin of another. Here is what it says:
“We may either cause or share the guilt of another’s sin in nine ways:
1. By counsel
2. By command
3. By consent
4. By provocation
5. By Praise or Flattery
6. By concealment
7. By being a partner
8. By silence
9. By defending the ill done.”
Now tell me that those new Willliamsonian Bishops are somehow nothing at all to do with the man who consecrated them. Everyone associates them automatically with the man who made them bishops, and they know it. And they did nothing to stop the spread of his errors. Counsel and command probably don’t apply to them: I don’t think any of them told him to do it or advised him how best to do it. “Consent” means giving one’s permission, for instance. It is perhaps not the most relevant of them. “Provocation” is self-evident and not super relevant here either. But “Praise or Flattery” is an interesting one. Who knows how many priests and bishops of the Fake Resistance, laity too, ought to do a serious bit of soul searching over that one. Bishop Williamson was, in my experience, constantly surrounded by flatterers; it was people prepared to disagree with him to his face and risk his ire who were in short supply.
Had more of his “friends” and groupies stood up to him, perhaps he wouldn’t have been quite so delinquent. How many people even realise that flattery makes you share in another’s guilt? “Concealment” - has this priest, that bishop, or the other layman been telling people that Fr. Abraham did nothing wrong, that he is innocent, it’s all lies invented by the wicked, evil editor of
The Recusant, and so forth? What about a priest who knows that some of his faithful are mistakenly fans and supporters of Bishop Williamson and does nothing to put them right, is he not concealing Bishop Williamson’s errors and evils from them? In which case, how does he not share in the guilt? Fr. Brendan King, Bishop Ballini, I’m looking at you.
I recall clearly Fr. Francois Chazal telling me that he was “covering his father’s nakedness” by saying nothing about the errors and scandals of Bishop Williamson. In reality of course, what he was doing was concealing them out of self-interest in much the same way as many an SSPX priest chose to “cover” Bishop Fellay’s “nakedness” in 2012 out of self-interest; or indeed as a Fraternity of St. Peter priest will “cover” the “nakedness” of his local bishop or the Pope.
“Silence” is the one to which I was referring a moment ago: it is the same as that famous saying of Pope St. Felix III, that: “Not to oppose error is to approve it; and not to defend truth is to suppress it; and indeed to neglect to confound evil men, when we can do it, is no less a sin than to encourage them.” All six bishops, every priest, even a layman if he has any voice or influence be it ever so slight, if he did not raise his voice against Bishop Wiliamson’s monstrosities - how is he not thereby guilty of the same himself?
“Defending the evil done” - that’s right: if someone does an evil thing and you had nothing to do with it, you weren’t in the country at the time, you weren’t even born yet, but you later go on to defend it, then you share in the guilt of it. Let that sink in. Anyone who tried to defend Bishop Williamson following Mahopac in July 2015 has been defending the evil done. Sean Johnson, Hugh Akins, I’m looking at you. Just as anyone who knew about Fr. Abraham and defended his going back into public circulation has been defending the evil done - how do they not share in the guilt? Fr. Francois Pivert, I’m looking at you.
Plenty of priests stayed silent, concealed and/or defended Bishop Williamson’s evils out of self interest. “I’ve got a bishop and you haven’t, so there!” I witnessed Fr. Chazal tell Fr. Pfeiffer and Fr. Hewko in 2016. Well, they may have gained the sacraments of confirmation and holy orders, holy oils, the comfort of “having a bishop” or may even have become bishops themselves; but at what price? We are never allowed to do evil that good may come of it.
Oremus pro Pontifice Nostro…
The other person whose bad example we must not allow to mislead us, is of course Pope Francis. On 21st April, he went to his eternal reward. Requiescat in pace. We have a duty to pray even for our enemies, hence it really ought not need to be said that we should pray for his soul too. Don’t worry, if it turns out that he can’t benefit from your prayers, someone else will benefit from them and will no doubt be extremely grateful to you for them.
And at the same time, it is surely our duty also to pray and do penance for the upcoming conclave. No, I don’t hold out much hope either. No, I can’t see how it won’t be another total whacky modernist, and in all likelihood someone far worse even than Francis. But imagine praying for something only if you thought the outcome likely to happen anyway. With God all things are possible: people have sudden conversions of heart, hopeless situations turn into victories, restorations occur when all seems lost... But perhaps things need to get worse before they can get better. We will see. Indeed, one is tempted to wonder whether a “conservative” looking Pope would be worse, because then he would manage to reconcile more people to the conciliar church. Remember that Pope Francis was a modernist who looked like a modernist; Benedict XVI was a modernist who looked like a Traditionalist. Which is the more dangerous? In the end, of course, it depends on what Our Lord wants to happen and what He allows to happen, but we should do our bit and have confidence that prayer is always heard.
[
Update - after a determined effort on the part of Resistance faithful praying for the intention of the conclave, Francis has been replaced it seems by Leo XIV
Oremus pro pontifice nostro Leone. The same applies: don’t get your hopes up, but do pray.] In the meantime, let me close by wishing a Happy Easter to all our readers, friend and foe alike.
- The Editor
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