Bishop Williamson Promotes Grave Errors in Interview August 2022

[Stone]

Taken from The Recusant #58 - September 2022

...Even More Delinquency: Bishop Williamson Continues to Recommend the Novus Ordo and the Conciliar Church

Think we’re exaggerating? Read on. See what you can make of this. In August 2022, just as we thought this issue of The Recusant was finished, there appeared an online interview (here: https://youtu.be/casxXTtQFPs) with Bishop Williamson on the youtube channel calling itself ‘Friends of Aquinas.’

Just as we were beginning to think he’d been awfully quiet of late regarding this particular delinquency - perhaps he’d got bored of it? - comes the following. The entire video is two hours long. The first hour features both Bishop Williamson and the wonderfully eccentric Dr E Michael Jones side-by-side, both being interviewed concurrently in a sort of debate. About an hour in, E Michael Jones has to go and thereafter Bishop Williamson alone is left to talk to the interviewer. And that is where the real nonsense begins.

The interviewer begins by presenting his negative view of the conciliar church and of many other so-called Traditionalists, and asks Bishop Williamson what he thinks he ought to do:

“Interviewer: I’m just a young Catholic who wants to live a Catholic life and how am I supposed to do that when there are such glaring contradictions here? … You have Vatican II and suddenly now the Jews did not kill Christ, suddenly now ‘There is no mission to convert the Jews’… then there is this modernism thing, you talked about the abandonment of Thomism. It is a whole new religion, is it not? And how am I as a young Catholic who sees this - I can’t go to the Novus Ordo and I can’t really go to these offshoot Traditionalist priests because half of them are heretics anyway because they believe that outside the Church there is salvation, which I think is the most ridiculous thing anyone has ever said; but, so they believe in the Vatican II –style [idea that] the Catholic Church subsists within the Church of God but [that] outside the Church of God somehow there is some salvific nature, which I completely reject. And so, how am I, as a Traditionallyminded Catholic, to deal with this situation?”

What an encouraging start! This young man, whoever he is, clearly has been given the grace to see through the imposture of the conciliar Church. He is right, it is “a whole new religion.” He is also quite right about there being no salvation outside the Church (see Recusant 43 which deals with this question… in passing, we note that Bishop Williamson says not one word in response to this particular point. Could it be that he too believes there is salvation outside the Church? He has suggested as much in the past, see for instance Recusant 41 p.42 ff.).

Bishop Williamson’s answer ought to surprise no one by now, least of all regular readers of these pages and those who have had the misfortune of being acquainted personally with him; nevertheless it remains scandalous. After recommending fifteen mysteries of the rosary every day, he quickly moves onto a familiar theme:

“Black is not white, white is not black. But all around us in real life are mixtures all the time of white with black and black with white. Now the mixture does not mean that black is white or white is black, but it does mean that in this life, in this poor vale of tears, evil and good are mixed all over the place. So you’ve got, in my opinion, in the Novus Ordo a measure of evil, a measure of black and a measure of white. There are a number of decent priests still operating as decent priests inside the Novus Ordo. And many of my colleagues would disagree with that, they’d be saying I’m too kind to the Novus Ordo.

Interviewer: I would say that as well, for what that’s worth.

Bishop Williamson: OK, fair enough, fair enough. Because you can have had some very nasty experiences, you’ve been dragged through a thorn hedge once and you don’t want to be dragged through it a second time. I completely understand.”

This talk of ‘real life isn’t black and white’ as a way of justifying attendance at the Novus Ordo and involvement with the conciliar church is as unconvincing as it is spurious. Here’s the problem:

• Contrary to his claim, “in real life” things often are black and white;

• For the analogy to work, ‘white’ must equal good and ‘black’ evil; very well. Because only good is good just as only white is white, white with any amount of black mixed-in will no longer be white, just as good with any amount of evil mixed-in is no longer good but becomes evil.

• In the same way, either a religion is the true religion or it is not. Either it is the only ark of salvation, or it is not. Any similarities which a false religion may have to the true religion are irrelevant and do not change the fact that it is false. Thus to point out that there is “some good” or “some truth” in the Novus Ordo or the conciliar religion is utterly irrelevant. It is the same as pointing out that there is some good and some truth in any one of the protestant sects, or any other false religion for that matter.

It is equally true but irrelevant that there are ‘decent priests’ inside the Novus Ordo. True, but so what? I’m sure my local Anglican church has a decent vicar. Who knows, maybe the local imam is also decent. So what? Do they represent the true religion or a false one? As for his “colleagues” disagreeing with him, we know what happens to a priest dependent on Bishop Williamson who dares to express the slightest disagreement.

The sacraments will be refused, both to the priest himself and to the faithful who go to his Mass; his name will be dragged through the dirt both in private and on the internet; he will even risk losing the roof over his head, his bank account, his Mass stipends. By the way, notice that is not “all my colleagues” or even “most of my colleagues,” it is just “many,” implying that there is a sizable number who do not disagree with him. Included in those who don’t disagree with him must surely be Bishops Faure, Tomas Aquinas and Zendejas, all three of whom are on record defending the grace-in-the-new-Mass thesis and all three of whom have played a part in persecuting any Resistance priest not on board with it. And they aren’t alone: the rot is spreading.

We note with a certain degree of satisfaction that the interviewer says he also agrees with these nameless ‘colleagues,’ although what Bishop Williamson is guilty of is not being “too kind” strictly speaking, but of being too much a respecter of persons, of not loving the truth enough and of misleading innocent souls.

“But, you know, that doesn’t mean that everything in the Novus Ordo is black. So when you say, ‘What am I going to do?’ and here again many of my colleagues could say I’m being far too soft on the Novus Ordo. OK, OK, OK, I deny nobody’s right to disagree with what I say.”

Yes you do. You absolutely do. But remember, the question was: “What should I do..?” This was all the build-up - after a few minutes comes the explicit answer:

“I think that for a Catholic like yourself who is looking for the truth, if you look for - I don’t know where you’re living, if you’re living in a big town or a big city - but if you look somewhere in your area, within reach of your car’s petrol tank, your gasoline tank, you will find, somewhere, you will find a decent Novus Ordo priest who is just waiting to hear properly a young man’s confession in order to give him back the state of grace.

"Which is his business as a priest. And he knows it. And I don’t believe that there are no priests in the Novus Ordo, in the Novus Ordo church who understand this. I believe there are some who do understand it and who still want to practice as good priests. Now, they’re forced to celebrate the New Mass. But I think if you look around you enough and long enough and carefully enough, you will even find young Novus Ordo priests saying the old Mass. More and more of them are being tempted by the old Mass, which is why [Pope] Francis is trying to stamp it out; it’s too late, he can’t do it.”

So in summary, what is Bishop Williamson’s advice to a youngster who can see through the Novus Ordo and the conciliar church and who wants to be a Traditional Catholic? Find yourself a “decent” Novus Ordo priest somewhere nearby, even if it is one who is “forced to say the New Mass.” If this particular chap is lucky, he “might even find” a Novus Ordo priest who says the Traditional Mass as well as the New Mass.

Plenty of our readers will have met such “decent” Novus Ordo priests, even the sort who say the Traditional Mass as well as the New Mass. To ask them about their formation in a Novus Ordo seminary is a real eye-opener. Often they are quite open about how bad it was and fulsome in their condemnation of it, and will openly tell you that they were badly formed or had virtually no formation to speak of and spent six years simply trying to keep their heads down and survive.

Anyone not familiar with just how bad Novus Ordo seminaries are and have been for decades will find plenty of truly harrowing first-hand accounts in the book “Goodbye Good Men” by Michael S Rose.

With such poor formation, how can anyone trust such a priest? Especially when he has not had the courage to break with his more outrageously modernist colleagues in the conciliar church, and when he himself is still
imbibing a daily dose of liberalism by continuing to say Mass according to a schismatic nonCatholic missal which turns people into Protestants? What sort of advice is such a “decent” priest going to give in the confessional? And if a young Catholic were to start going regularly to the church of such a priest in order to go to confession, is it really such a stretch to imagine him eventually staying for Mass?

Remember what Archbishop Lefebvre and the old SSPX used to say about the danger of putting your little finger into the machinery of the conciliar church… Who knows how many young would-be Trads (who happened not to live near Earlsfield or Broadstairs) have asked this delinquent conciliar-friendly bishop for advice and have
never been heard from again. The mind palls. These Novus Ordo priests “want to practice as good priests” but in the conciliar church and under modernist superiors and a modernist bishop; they don’t want “to practice as good priests” in the Resistance apostolate with all the uncertainty which that brings with it, not
to mention the disreputable appearance in the eyes of the world; nor do they even “want to practice as good priests” in the comparative respectability and financial security of the modern SSPX.

There was a time when a trickle of such priests used to make its way over to the SSPX. They would be given at least some remedial formation and a conditional ordination. Even in the late-1990s and early 2000s it still used to happen, but now those days are long gone. And who can wonder, when even Bishop Williamson, the man whom such priests might naively imagine to be even more ‘hard-line’ than the SSPX seems to think that they’re doing good work where they are and tells people to go to them?

As far back as 2014 we witnessed Bishop Williamson telling former Novus Ordo priests who wanted to be Traditional, who wanted conditional ordination, who wanted to join the Resistance: go back to the Novus Ordo, they’re good people in the Novus Ordo, they need you! I have lost track of the number of people who simply refused to believe that he had done or said such a thing. Perhaps now more people will start to believe it.

But perhaps no one is paying attention. Like the time Bishop Williamson told some Catholics of the Fake Resistance that their grandchildren would keep the Faith by going to the New Mass - there should have been uproar then, but there wasn’t. His cult followers don’t really care what he says, and though they will never honestly and openly admit it, deep down they will follow him wherever he leads, even back to the Novus Ordo.

The final point which we will note in closing is something which is totally absent from Bishop Williamson’s answer. Not once does he refer to Archbishop Lefebvre, or even mention him in passing. Small wonder, when one considers how different the Archbishop’s advice was on exactly the same question. It goes without saying that Archbishop Lefebvre never went about telling people to search out a “decent” Novus Ordo priest nearby, and we must remember that in his day there were still quite a few Novus Ordo priests who had at least received good training in seminary before the Council: now, there are none, they are all dead and gone. Here is what Archbishop Lefebvre actually had to say on this question. Spot the difference.

“So in such cases [i.e. conservative priests saying the Novus Ordo], it is possible that these Masses are valid. But this is not a reason, and it is very serious to put oneself in this danger, to risk little by little the faith in the Sacrifice of the Mass, and in any case, to make their faithful lose it also. It is unacceptable for a priest, when he realizes this. But little by little, it is a question of habit. One forms one’s conscience and one no longer sees; one becomes blind. This is why I think we must avoid going to these Masses. And even if we must be without Masses for a month, we are without Masses for a month. Parents are explaining to their children why they do not go to Mass and if they make a long journey to go to Mass once a month … You know, in our missions we visited our faithful once every three months. Most of our faithful had Mass once every three months. In South America … [as Superior General of the Holy Ghost Fathers] … in those
countries, when I arrived in Lima, they were visited once a year. And when I visited the Amazon where our Fathers had missions as well, some of these villages have only one visit every three years. Obviously it is not ideal, that is clear, but at least those people keep the Faith. They pray. On Sundays, they gather together: there is a catechist or a village chief, a president, who gathers them together … They get together, they pray, they sing, and they make a spiritual communion. They think of the Masses which are celebrated far away from them, but which are celebrated in the world. […] So one can keep the Faith without going to Mass every Sunday, rather than going to a Mass which is more or less poisoned, which makes one risk losing the Faith. But I think, however, since I do not believe, once again, that all these Masses are invalid, that on certain occasions, for the death of a close relative – in such a case, one does not go for the Mass, but one goes by filial piety, for example for one’s parents, one’s father, one’s mother, one’s brother, one’s sister … like one can possibly go to an Orthodox burial, like an Orthodox can come to assist also at our ceremonies, for extraordinary events.”

- Archbishop Marcel Lefebvre, 21st March 1978