Interview conducted for The Angelus Press by Malcolm Brennan

Bishop Richard Williamson gives us some insight to the situation in the Society and the Church since the consecrations took place last June.

Bishop Williamson giving Confirmation in New Orleans, April 26, 1989.

For Archbishop Lefebvre to resume negotiations with the Vatican, "what will have to happen is that they will restart on the basis of dogma. In other words, he is no longer going to talk diplomacies, discipline, questions of excommunication, schism, cannon law. He is going to talk doctrine." So said Bishop Richard P. Williamson in an interview granted to The Angelus on January 21 in Dickinson, Texas.

Bishop Williamson had spoken with Archbishop Lefebvre earlier in the month and reported him to be in good health, despite his 83 years, and in good spirits. Insinuations that the Archbishop is senile are "absolute nonsense. His senility is wishful thinking on the part of his adversaries."

As long as the Archbishop was without episcopal successors, Bishop Williamson explained, he felt constrained to talk with the Vatican about the technicalities of his position and the formalities of arranging Rome's approval for a bishop to succeed him. But now that four bishops have been provided (Bishop Williamson is one), the Archbishop can address the real problem. "The problem centers around doctrine, in Archbishop Lefebvre's mind, and he is absolutely right", Bishop Williamson said.

 

The Heart of the Crisis

Doctrinal errors are the ultimate source of the crisis the Church is in, the emergency which justified Archbishop Lefebvre's consecrations without Vatican approval. The "essence of the crisis is: a group of prelates and leaders occupying the position of power in Rome, who even after years and years of obvious disasters—like the churches emptying, the monasteries emptying, the whole Church collapsing—even after years and years cling to their doctrinal errors."

"It's as though engineers had been building bridges for twenty years on the basis that 2+2=5. And the bridges collapse, and the bridges keep collapsing for twenty years. And they've got the wreckage of the bridges for twenty years in front of their eyes, and still they insist that 2+2=5."

The multitude of errors seems to be crystallized around Vatican II's erroneous doctrine on religious liberty.

 

Rome is Silent

Archbishop Lefebvre has had no dealings with Rome since last summer, nor does he expect any for 6 to 12 months. A major reason for this is that Rome is preoccupied with establishing the commission created by Ecclesia Dei. This is the body envisioned during the Vatican's negotiations with the Archbishop last spring; a commission headed by Cardinal Mayer to promote the restoration of tradition in the Church, mainly by the restoration of the traditional Latin liturgy.

The trouble which Rome faces is that many diocesan bishops are resisting the commission's attempt to have Tridentine Masses set up in their jurisdictions. Bishop Williamson points out that it is quite logical for the bishops to resist; he imagines them saying to Rome, 'Now look, you have been imposing the Council on us for twenty years, and now you want to backtrack on the Council. Make up your mind. What do you want to do?'

 

Contradictions

This is only one of the contradictions that Vatican officials got themselves into, Bishop Williamson said. For example, "On the one hand they excommunicate the Archbishop for practicing the old faith, and immediately after excommunicating him, the pope puts out a decree saying we must practice the old faith, and Cardinal Ratzinger speaks to the bishops of Chile saying the old faith is not such a bad thing. I mean, it's just so much contradiction. It's just so much absurdity that they get into. They pretend to be Catholic, or they've got to stop hammering the Archbishop; one or the other. But there they are, they go on doing both. It shows the absurdity of their situation."

 

Rome Supports Tradition, Sort of...

Rome's major instrument for its new policy of fostering tradition, inside the embrace of the Conciliar Church, is the Ecclesia Dei commission. And the commission's major instrument seems to be the Society of St. Peter.

Bishop Williamson explained: "The Society of St. Peter is a carbon copy of the Society of Saint Pius X, which the Archbishop founded in 1970. It was founded by priests of the Society of Saint Pius X who this last summer couldn't go along with the decision of the consecrations and therefore decided to form a society of their own which would 'continue to do what the Society of Saint Pius X was doing', but while accepting the protocol of May 5."

The attitude of the Society of St. Pius X toward the Tridentine Masses which the commission will seek to establish is one of tolerant skepticism. Tolerant, because "if the Tridentine Mass is said, grace does flow," more so than through Novus Ordo Masses. But skeptical also, because "you cannot entrust the feeding of chickens to the fox. Behind (diocesan sponsored Tridentine Masses) are the official structures of the Church, and behind the Society of St. Peter are, by the choice of the personnel themselves, the official structures of the Church. Now these are in the hands of the modernists, who are foxes, and the defense of tradition is the feeding of chickens. You can't entrust the foxes with the feeding of chickens."

The priests who say these Masses are not suspect necessarily, nor even less the faithful who attend them; but the truth is that both are carrying out the policies of men whose careers show twenty years of catastrophic wreckage in the Church—foxes, one might say, whose bridges keep collapsing. "We can credit modernists with the very best intentions, but the fact of the matter is that they do not understand tradition," said Bishop Williamson. "And they will do their best, once they have disengaged traditionalists from Archbishop Lefebvre, they will do their best to lead them step by step into the happy Conciliar kindergarten; the children's playground of Vatican II."

 

Society's Works Prosper

Meanwhile, the Society of St. Pius X continues to flourish, said the Bishop. The large increase in Mass attendance that followed the publicity given to last summer's episcopal consecrations proved to be temporary, but we are settling down to a modest but healthy increase of 10% to 15% since that event.

That surge of interest and the continual growth of attendance at the Society's Masses show that Catholics have not been intimidated by charges of excommunication and schism. "The reason why Catholics are quite rightly unimpressed is because they sense that you can't excommunicate somebody for doing and saying and practicing exactly what Catholics have done and said and practiced for centuries and centuries. So Catholics are rightly unimpressed. It is not that they don't take seriously excommunication and schism, it's that they don't take seriously this excommunication and this so-called schism. And they are quite right."

Besides Mass attendance, the Society of St. Pius X has continued its normal growth in its seminarians, sisters, brothers, and monks. A few priests left the Society and took come seminarians with them (to form the Society of St. Peter), and one monastery accepted Rome's terms. But for the most part the Society has been galvanized rather than demoralized by last summer's events.

 

Why Negotiations Failed

Bishop Williamson was asked why the negotiations between Archbishop Lefebvre and the Vatican failed. It was because, he said, the Archbishop discovered that the Vatican negotiators really did not mean to do what they promised. He illustrated:

"At the very time of the signing of the protocol—if I have the details correct in my head—the Archbishop asked, 'When can we have this bishop that you agree to? Can we have him June 30?' 'Ah, no. That would be too early. We have to agree on a candidate.' 'Well, can we have him by August 15?' 'Ah, no. Then there's nobody in Rome, they're all on vacation.' 'Well then, can we have him in late autumn?' 'Ah, well, you see, these documents take time to prepare.' 'Well, can we have him by Christmas?' 'Ah well...' Then the Archbishop realized that they don't really intend to implement what he asked for. What they pretend to grant they don't really mean to grant. They say that they are willing to grant a bishop, but then they hum and haw on the nuts and bolts."

 

Flawless Decision?

The followers of Archbishop Lefebvre, it has been said, treat him as if he were more infallible than the pope. But that is not so, Bishop Williamson said. The Archbishop himself acknowledges his errors: on May 6 last year he recognized that he should not have signed the agreement of the day before, and promptly corrected his error by withdrawing his signature. Bishop Williamson: "I don't think that, wise after the event, we could say, or history could say, that the Archbishop was flawless in conducting these negotiations."

"The Archbishop is human, his love of Rome is human, he's a Churchman of tens of years; a great Churchman, and it breaks him apart to have to break with the apparent official structures of the Church. That's why he went as far as he could and further, in order to stay with the structures of the Church. He is a human instrument; no one in his right mind says the Archbishop is infallible."

"On the other hand, even while saying that, I would say that the fruits demonstrate that the final decision he made was correct. Even if it wasn't flawless, it was correct in its essentials. And that's why so many Catholics so resoundingly continue to support the Archbishop." In addition, "he has a long track record of making substantially correct decisions."

"We don't have to agree with every detail, but Catholic common sense tells us that he is the leader, the shepherd that God has given us in this crisis to guide us on the main lines through today's situation."

 

New Bishops Busy

Bishop Williamson recently spent five weeks in South Africa and in New Zealand, will soon spend a week in the Caribbean. In the spring he will make a five or six week tour of the U.S. and Canada for confirmations.

While each of the four new bishops will work predominately in areas where his mother tongue is spoken, the Superior General has scheduled them to cross language barriers. "I think he is going to attempt to keep us crossing those language frontiers, precisely in order to stop the idea arising that we have anything like dioceses or territorial jurisdiction," because claiming territorial jurisdiction "is the hallmark of a true schism."