"Conservatives" Fail to Conserve
July 2008
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+Bishop Richard Williamson
Letter from La Reja
There is a phenomenon of modern politics which many observers have noticed, that is, how often successful politicians today speak in favor of old-fashioned values and ideals, but act in favor of the Brave New World. In France, General De Gaulle proclaimed in public his understanding of the French Algerian colonists, only to hand over Algeria to the Revolution. In England, Harold Macmillan seemed to embody the values of the British Empire even while he dismantled it. In the USA, Ronald Reagan praised all conservative ideals even while the Socialist State marched ahead beneath him. Etc., etc.
To explain why this political phenomenon derives in fact from a religious problem, it will help to lay out the vision of world and Church history which underlay the "Eleison Comments" of May 3. It is the vision of the Seven Ages of the Church, as presented by the Venerable Bartholomew Holzhauser in his Commentary on Chapters II and III of the Book of Revelation. According to the Venerable Holzhauser, each of the seven Letters to the seven Churches of St. John's Archdiocese of Ephesus represents a distinct Age of the Church, from Jesus Christ through to the Antichrist.
The seven Ages would then resemble an arch, rising almost vertically off the launching-pad of Christ's redeeming death on the Cross, to pass successively through the first three Ages of the Apostles (33-70 AD) Martyrs (70-313 AD) and Doctors (313 AD to the early Middle Ages). The Middle Ages form the grand central span of the arch or the fourth Age, the glorious centuries of Christendom, but already beginning to fall in the Late Middle Ages. With Luther's revolt, say 1520 AD, and the outbreak of Protestantism, begins the fifth Age, the Age of Apostasy, in which mankind falls more and more vertically towards the Antichrist. The almost free fall observable around us today will soon be briefly interrupted by the sixth Age, corresponding to the Triumph of the Immaculate Heart of Mary, but then the fall will be resumed, more vertical than ever, into the seventh Age of the Antichrist and the end of the world.
There is a pleasing symmetry in this vision of three Ages rising, the Middle Ages, and then three Ages falling. But the symmetry also makes sense. We human beings are gifted by God with the glory of free-will, but we are also tainted from Adam with the corruption of original sin. Alas, all human history shows how what God gives, man corrupts. So it was normal that God's stupendous gift of His Incarnation, Death and Resurrection should lift up mankind as it had never before been lifted up, but–alas–it was also normal that eventually mankind would corrupt even this stupendous gift, so that its last state would be worse than its first, worse than ever. There was a certain sad inevitability about the arrival of Vatican II. As the waters of sin rose through the fifth Age, good churchmen built up the dikes, but in the end they were overwhelmed, and now the Catholic Church, which had resisted the modern flood-waters for so long, found her own structures (not Constitution) flooded, in many cases damaged beyond repair, by heresy and immorality.
But this is not the only light cast upon our own times, the fifth Age, by the vision of the arch. That the first three Ages preceded Christendom while the last three follow it, entails this significant difference: before Christendom triumphed, men did not need to be hypocrites in the way in which ever since its triumph they have had to be. In the first three Ages of the Church, when she was still struggling to overcome bloody persecutions (second Age) and heresy (third Age), no homage needed yet to be paid to her as that Queen of Civilization which she had not yet proved herself to be. But from the beginning of the Age of Apostasy onwards, it was clear to everybody that she was the only begetter of the glories and happiness of Christian civilization, so that whoever wished to turn his back on her nevertheless had to recognize her achievements and virtues. That is why the Age of Apostasy has also been an Age of Hypocrisy. That is why hypocrisy is a deep-down characteristic of our sad times. That is why left-wing politicians talk right-wing.
Let us take a few clear examples from Church history of the last 500 years, starting with Protestantism. Martin Luther pretended to be reforming Christianity, and liars have established for his work the name of "Reformation." But Luther's fruits show that a truer name would be "Deformation," because countless ills of the modern world can be traced back to his breaking of the doctrine and unity of Catholic Christendom. Therefore Protestantism, especially in its extreme forms such as Puritanism, is a pharisaic hypocrisy, breaking the true worship of God while pretending to re-make it.
Similarly Liberalism pretends to be a liberation of man, when in fact it enslaves man to sin. "We have established glorious freedom," chant the liberals, even while electronic media are fouling up the children's souls and enslaving them to the filth that the liberal parents are so proud of refusing to prohibit! Thus the appearance of progress is made to disguise the exact opposite. That is hypocrisy. A third religious example would be the neo-modernism of Vatican II, following exactly the Protestant model. Pretending to re-shape the Catholic Church so as to make it more easy of access to modern man, the Second Vatican Council, judged by its fruits, could not have a done a better job of destroying the Church if it had tried. Such an appearance of bringing closer to God while in fact pushing away from Him, is clear hypocrisy.
From the world, let us take the double example of Socialism and Communism. Socialism was and is supposed to restore human society from the ravages of selfish individualism, but as Pius XI says in Quadragesimo Anno, the new principles on which it pretends to re-found society are so false that the new society it creates is more inhuman than ever. As for Communism, it has always been cried up as a messianism that will create a new paradise on earth, but never has there been a system of ideas that did more to create for mankind a hell on earth. Winston Churchill saw clearly this hypocrisy of Communism when he called it "Christianity with a tomahawk," i.e., a system pretending to love people but hating them in fact, by, for instance, smashing anybody who gets in its way.
Thus the last 500 years of history in Church and world show how mankind is all the time moving away from the love of God and of neighbour while pretending to move closer. But as the Lord God and His Incarnate Son, Jesus Christ, have been more and more dropped out of the picture, so the only religious struggle left amongst men becomes the struggle between the conservatives who want to conserve something of the old godly order, and the radicals who want to be rid of it altogether, in other words the advocates of a slow, or fast, apostasy respectively.
The French Revolution shows who wins in this struggle between "right-wingers" and "left-wingers," as they then began to be called. For it was at a particular meeting of the Revolutionary Deputies in 1789 that they divided, physically, into the moderate Revolutionaries on the right side of the House, and the extremists on the left. But as is well-known, the moderates proved incapable of holding back the extremists, or of preventing the Terror. This was because the moderates were half-and-half Revolutionaries, while the extremists were all-of-a-piece Revolutionaries, and all-of-a-piece will always prevail over half-and-half. The same basic pattern could be observed in the Russian Revolution of 1917. Half-and-half conservatives conserve little or nothing.
If we come back to the Church, the same pattern can be observed in Vatican II. Cardinal Suenens said that Vatican II was 1789 in the Church. Archbishop Lefebvre said that the Council's religious liberty, collegiality and ecumenism were the equivalent of the French Revolution's liberty, equality and fraternity. This suggests that we will find supporters of the Council dividing into moderate conservatives and extreme radicals, with the moderate conservatives proving unable to conserve very much.
Sure enough. Is not Pope Benedict XVI a classic case of the conservative Revolutionary, who ends up by conserving very little? He is certainly an intelligent man, with a praiseworthy respect for the Catholic Liturgy that he knew in his childhood and youth before he began his seminary studies. However, once those studies began, he drank in the poison of those modern principles with which he helped to make the Council happen, principles to which he has clung ever since. So the "Motu Proprio" of last year was proof not that he had ceased to be a Vatican II Revolutionary, but merely that he was and is a moderate Revolutionary. So if he can be called a conservative, he is one more conservative of the kind that is liable to conserve little or nothing.
On the other hand Archbishop Lefebvre not only conserved, he positively restored and re-built. How? Precisely by stepping right out of the apostasy of 500 years and by refusing the apostatic basis of the superficial clash between today's "right-wing and left-wing," "conservative and liberal," "extremist and moderate." Yet after more than 40 years of poisoned fruits of the Council contrasting with a little less than 40 years of Catholic fruits of the Archbishop's work, still many conservatives–and liberals–who consider themselves to be Catholic cannot see that the Archbishop's thorough condemnation of Vatican II and the New Mass, in both of which apostasy is embedded, was and is the line to take if one wishes to remain Catholic and to save one's soul.
Patience. Wind, rain and storm are coming which will blow away every house of the "conservatives" and "liberals," built on sands of apostasy (See Mt. 7:26, 27). One wishes that as many of them as possible may see it in time!
+Bishop Richard Williamson
The Seven Ages
The seven Ages would then resemble an arch, rising almost vertically off the launching-pad of Christ's redeeming death on the Cross, to pass successively through the first three Ages of the Apostles (33-70) Martyrs (70-313) and Doctors (313 to the early Middle Ages). The Middle Ages form the grand central span of the arch or the fourth Age, the glorious centuries of Christendom, but already beginning to fall in the Late Middle Ages. With Luther's revolt, say A.D. 1520, and the outbreak of Protestantism, begins the fifth Age, the Age of Apostasy, in which mankind falls more and more vertically towards the Antichrist. The almost free fall observable around us today will soon be briefly interrupted by the sixth Age, corresponding to the Triumph of the Immaculate Heart of Mary, but then the fall will be resumed, more vertical than ever, into the seventh Age of the Antichrist and the end of the world.
Ridgefield Letters Volume I
From "The Nine" to the Episcopal Consecrations of 1988
Sixty-two letters of then Fr. Richard Williamson from his appointment as Rector of St. Thomas Aquinas Seminary in early 1983 to June 1, 1988–just preceding the episcopal consecrations. Utterly fascinating, the letters break down into three main categories dealing with: Sedevacantism (the split of "the Nine"), relations and contacts between Rome and Archbishop Lefebvre, and the disastrous ecumenical meeting at Assisi and the "build-up" to the 1988 episcopal consecrations. Of course, not all the letters deal with these three topics, but these three topics run as a theme through these ALWAYS entertaining and edifying letters. For example, one letter is on the death of Fr. Williamson's father; another gem is his first impression of the seminary property in Winona. There are many more like it. Yes, this IS one of those books that you can't put down.
302pp, softcover, STK# 8222. $24.99
"What an excellent idea to have published this first volume of His Lordship Richard Williamson's Letters! It is a book full of history, philosophy, sound doctrine and practical advice; a rich commentary of a small part, a big part, of one decade of the ending of the 20th century."
–Bishop Bernard Tissier de Mallerais
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