Chaos Organized, The Plan of Bp. Williamson

John where is the war against Bishop Williamson?  Can you explain your comment?  Is it Doctrinal or personal in your view?  On our view it is doctrinal, hence our many references for doctrinal clarity clearly shown to also be against his founder Archbishop Lefebvre.

So actually John you have NOT answered the previous questions.  You actually avoided them as others have pointed out.  The contention is with particular duplicit statements Bishop Williamson more than provided his context and aims, which we highlighted, and you responded with non sequiturs by adding other quotes, showing the duplicity in fact proving our point, as if one nulls the other.  It doesn't.  One of them needs to be retracted less confusion reigns under his mantle; as it does presently.

John to your comment that "Our Lord instituted seven sacraments and ALL of them will always be available for souls until the end of the world", that is not the question.  However for the context we are speaking of, our Lord only spoke of faith being the premise of confusion in the Church, not the authorities.  Our Lord said, "will there be any Faith at the end of the world", He asked in consternation towards the legal representatives of his Church.  Without faith, sacraments mean NOTHING, as much as there may be hundreds of unfaithful bishops in the world.

It is necessary to understand the existence of the Church is with our Lord not with men, bishops or any other creatures.  You seem to place as a sine qua non a bishop must be left to the end of the world, and Bishop Williamson for you, is.  Please understand men are not the equation or condition of salvation our Lord spoke of.  He spoke of faith as the primacy of existence to please Him and the survival of faithful souls "Without faith it is impossible to please God" (Hebrews 11)

The question we are having is what is that faith?  What is the doctrinal understanding of that Faith?  Is the bishop speaking error or being faithful to the deposits of the Faith?

If you begin your premise in condition one needs to have a bishop, and Bishop Williamson is the only bishop, you say, and we must be around him and listen to him or we are in error as Catholics, that would place an understanding the rule of faith for you is based on the Magisterium.  Many say the same for Bishop Fellay and for following the pope.  Why John do you not follow them in the Magisterium than just Bishop Williamson?  Is it because of doctrine?  If so, then we need to be fair and ask the same questions toward Bishop Williamson as we do to the others if he is faithful in the same way or in error as the other bishops and popes are.

John, the reason you discern as you do for the other bishops and pope in not following them is because of the Rule of faith is based on what is revealed by God in which we must surround ourselves to.   So picking and choosing as you are insinuation one can follow the Rule of faith in one regard and the Rule of the Magisterium in another has a double meaning not acceptable for any honest conversation.  Wouldn't you agree?

By the way, I repeat, Bishop Williamson has NO jurisdiction.  He is not our or your bishop.  He can't be.  It is your local Diocesan Bishop who is the legal Catholic shepherd for you, as bad as he may be, he is nonetheless your bishop.  As my local bishop is mine.  So why do you not follow him?  Is it personal or doctrinal?  That said, there are still bishops in the world isn't there.  They may be following idolatry, as Aaron did, but they are the legal representation of the Church showing the Church is still present in their consecration.  So to say Bishop Williamson is the only bishop in the world is not true.  Are you saying the other three bishops (Fellay, Tissier, de Galleretta) are not real bishops continuing in their consecrations the legacy of the Church?  That is absurd isn't it.  So what is the "visible" Church?  The Catechism speaks of the Four Marks of the Church are the Visibility of the Church, as already explained to you earlier, and Archbishop Lefebvre demonstrated many times.

With that let's return to the doctrinal problems Bishop Williamson is injecting in his sphere we are trying to have a discussion about.

Without adding more subject matter for you at this time, The Recusant drew a very good presentation of Bishop Williamson's duplicit statements, erroneous in fact, that can be applied for further conversation we can address one by one.  If you are willing to have this honest debate to delineate what is doctrinally erroneous and what is doctrinally true, as Archbishop Lefebvre guided for objective understanding, this is what is needed for the Catholic State than a round robin leaving pathways of conflation and further error.  Our Lord asks this of us as He does for his bishops to speak clearly.

Recognizing you had made a response in your next post to The Recusant, I will let him answer it.  However, it is recognized in your post to him John you had returned with more non sequiturs.  You cannot just quote the bishop with something else hoping it will null the other and it will go away.  It doesn't.  You know that.   So the specific statement of Bishop Williamson we brought forward as a contention against Catholic genome must be addressed, in full.  Will you do this for good order?

So for the sake of transparency, please address one of the FOUR specific statements in full The Resusant is asking for you to respond to.  Knowing each one is a very serious contention Bishop Williamson must answer himself, you can give your understanding, as we do, to help others see the disparity and draw all of us to what the Catholic Church teaches.

Good evening John,

OK, good. I notice you've chosen not to go with any of the bishop's many, many false statements about the New Mass. That's absolutely fine. Perhaps we can look at that another time, later on. Let's start by looking at this one chosen by you.


I disagree.


Two things. First, is that what he actually said? Secondly, is there not something deserving of careful consideration in regard to the implications in terms of one's duty towards one's neighbour? I will elaborate.


Quite so, but that is not what Bishop Williamson says. 


What I recall saying is that this statement is the latest example of Bishop Williamson preaching indifferentism, which is not quite the same. You are taking one small passage on its own, isolating it, and then reading your own meaning into it in order to defend it. If you read what I have written on the subject of Bishop Williamson's liberalism (which even he admits to in private, by the way, and which amounts in the practical realm to indifferentism) you might notice that I try always to discuss it in the context of his other statements on the topic and his actions. Taken together as a whole, "indifferentism" is exactly what this amounts to.


Here, again, is what Bishop Williamson said, as quoted by you above:
What he says above is that the confusion in the crisis in the Church is so bad that many "clear-sighted" Catholics prefer not to make the effort to argue or teach. Very well... That may well be true, and would be understandable, after all, it can be quite an effort at times. But are they right to do so? Arguably they should be encouraged to make the effort anyway. Your neighbour is worthy of you attempting to persuade him. He has a soul which needs to be saved, just the same as you. True, in the course of trying to persuade him you may discover that you are not getting through. But how will you know if you do not at least try? We have to sow the seed even on the rough ground and the thorny ground, not only on the good ground. In the end, it is for Divine Providence to decide whether or not to make that seed grow.

You will notice, however, that Bishop Williamson does not say whether "many a clear-sighted Catholic" is right to adopt such an attitude. He only says that they do so. In no way does he appear to be censuring them, deploring or regretting their attitude, or urging them to think again. I invite you to show otherwise.

He continues:
At first glance, Bishop Williamson appears to be saying that some people cannot be reached with the truth, and that your attempt to reach them will only make matters worse. And that, I think, is what 99% of his readers probably came away with after reading it (which is bad enough). Now, obviously, that isn't true, and even if it were, no one, least of all a bishop, should never say so publicly since to do so would amount to a charter for the worldly and indolent. 

But if you re-read it carefully, you might notice that even Bishop Williamson heavily qualifies his statement with "seem" and "risk". Your efforts, he says, can "seem" to "risk" increasing their confusion. Even he doesn't quite say what he appears to be saying, it's as though he can't bring himself to say that your efforts will increase their confusion. What he says means that they might not lead to confusion, they might only risk it; in fact, they might not even risk it, they might only seem to risk it.

The problem is this. Appearances can be very, very deceptive. You can try to get through to someone and you can "seem" not to be making progress, but then suddenly one day they convert, "seemingly" out of nowhere. That sort of thing happens all the time. You can never know what is going on in the depths someone's mind or heart, and very often a person can continue to argue from the position of devil's advocate long after, secretly, on the inside, they have begun to be won over. Because of that, what "seems" to be in such cases is as good as worthless. So why mention it at all? You will notice that Bishop Williamson doesn't say any of these things. If he had said this, if that was what he really meant, I would have agreed and congratulated. Alas, he does't say it because he doesn't think it. What he does think is made explicitly clear, as I said above, in his other words and actions concerning this question. 

Am I really misinterpreting Bishop Williamson when I say that he appears to want to say that we should just keep quiet and not put ourselves out there, trying to convert souls to the truth? Here is a selection of evidence, though by no means all of it, to provide some context for the passage you quoted. 

Firstly, in the very same email (EC #513):

Professor Romano Amerio, wrote, as readers of EC 400 may remember, that if the Conciliar crisis was internal to the Church like no crisis before it, then we were “headed for a formless darkness ( . . . ) in the face of which there will be no alternative but to keep silence.”
A full century after Fatima we are well on our way to that darkness.

So Romano Amerio said that the time would come when we would have no alternative but to keep silence. Bishop Williamson adds his own comment that today, "we are well on the way to" that time. What is that supposed to convey, if not that a time is either coming very soon or is already upon us when the right thing to do is to stay silent and not to speak the truth or try to win souls back from error..?

Tell me, John. Which do you think: that pronouncements like this are more likely to stir up apostolic zeal in the faithful who read them, or to encourage them to cowardliness, indolence and self-interested silence? Which do you think is the more likely?

Again, from the same EC#513:

Our Lord tells us not to throw pearls in front of swine, in other words not to teach people unfit to learn, and He tells His Apostles to shake off from their feet the dust of a town that will not listen (Mt. VII, 6; Lk. IX, 5). Our Lord gave the example of keeping silent, in front of the Sanhedrin (Mt. XXVII, 12, 14), Herod (Lk. XXIII, 9) and Pilate (Jn. XIX, 9). Many souls today are likewise unfit to hear the truth. And when it comes to fighting, Our Lord Himself in the Garden of Gethsemane told Peter to put up his sword.

As for Our Lord telling Peter to put up his sword - tell that to the Crusaders of the Middle Ages. Our Lord, being God, has the right to order us to put up our swords and cease fighting on His behalf. We do not have the right to decide to stop fighting on his behalf. This goes back to St. Thomas's point that you must turn your own cheek, but you can never turn someone else's "other cheek." To suffer in silence is a virtue, as long as it is your own suffering. To remain silent while someone else suffers is most definitely not. If we are not allowed to remain silent and turn the other cheek when our neighbour is suffering, is lied about, is persecuted - how much more so if that "neighbour" is actually Our Lord?

As for: "Many souls today are unfit to hear the truth" - What a thing to say! Even if we allow, for argument's sake, that it is true, that there are many such souls: who is to say who they are? You? I? Am I really expected to take it upon myself to judge someone as "unfit to hear the truth"..?! Can you imagine? And if we can't know for sure, if we can't judge, then how are we to behave?

Our Lord kept silence before Herod, Pilate and the Sanhedrin, yes. The Gospel makes it quite clear that Our Lord, being God, knew exactly what was in their hearts. He knew in advance that it would be a wasted effort and would only damn them further. Can we ever know that for sure? Recall, for example, that the martyr St. Valentine was killed for telling the Roman Emperor that he should convert and become a Catholic.The emperor in question was a brutal tyrant who was busy persecuting the Church, and there was no indication at all that there was any likelihood of him converting. If only he had kept quiet, Valentine could have lived. What would he make of Bishop Williamson's words, I wonder? 


Still from the same EC#513:

Beware, fighters for Our Lord – if your fighting does not work, you risk running away from Him!

Is this really true? Who is more likely to lapse and who to remain faithful to the last: the missionary priest, living frugally, roughing it, travelling by mule through the remotest rainforests or the heart of darkest Africa; or the secular parish priest in a big city parish, living in comfort in a big rectory, saying Mass a hundred yards from his front door, with hundreds of faithful around him to take care of his needs, constantly surrounded by flattery and praise...? Who is more likely to lapse and who remain faithful: the Chinese Catholic or the East European Catholic in the days of the Iron Curtian, constantly hounded, going in and out of prison, attacked and slandered by his government and society at large, fired from his job, labeled a subversive, made to feel a social outcast, having to attend Mass in remote or awkward locations, etc. - or the American or British Catholic of the 1950s, able to get along just fine with his divorcee work colleagues, his Anglican neighbours and the Agnostic who lives across the street, regarded as a respectable member of society and admitted to polite conversation, into which his religion almost never enters? As far as I can see, the truth is the exact opposite of what Bishop Williamson says here. It is not fighting for Our Lord which leads to people losing the Faith!

But no. Fighting, apparently, specifically fighting for Our Lord, Christ the King, and His rights, is a spiritual danger which can lead to losing the Faith (!?) especially if it "does not work." (??!!) Tell that to the Christeros. Tell that to the Vendeens. Tell that to the Englishmen who gave their lives in the Pilgrimage of Grace or the Western Rising of 1549.

Or does he mean "fighting" in the metaphorical sense? Tell that to all those who lent their efforts to Sheed & Ward's 'Catholic Evidence Guild' before the Council. Think of the thousands and thousands Catholic converts who never would have been, had Frank Sheed thought the same way as Bishop Williamson. 

That is only from that one EC email. There are plenty, plenty of other examples I could give you. Souls from the neo-SSPX who showed up at the Resistance, only to be pointed back in the direction of the neo-SSPX. Souls from the Novus Ordo who showed up at the Resistance only to be encouraged back into the Novus Ordo. Then there is this little tid-bit from EC #348:

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.

Would you care to explain this one? Can you not see why I might think him an indifferentist when he says this sort of thing?

Or how about this one:

“I don’t say to everybody inside the Novus Ordo, priests and laity, I don’t say: ‘You’ve got to get out!’ ”

Can you not see how this appears to be indifferentism in regards to the Novus Ordo?

With regards to his actions, once again: he goes to say Mass and give confirmations at a Feeneyite chapel more than once in the past three or four years. Do you not think such actions even suggest indifferentism, John? 

What about his public speech one year ago? He said that he is a Catholic, 

 ...because a Catholic has a much better chance of getting to heaven [than a non-Catholic]

Can you not see anything wrong with this? Does this not suggest that one can also get to heaven as a non-Catholic, that becoming a Catholic only gives you "a much better chance"..? 

As far as I know, Bishop Williamson hasn't stopped giving sermons to persuade souls to come back to the Catholic Church and most of them are available on the Internet.

"As far as I know" is quite a hefty qualifier. Only a tiny fraction of his sermons since 2013 are available on the internet. I have a recording of every sermon he gave in London between June 2013 and the end of 2014. There is very little of him encouraging people to leave the SSPX. Plenty of him providing people with excuses to go back there, though. 

If His Excellency was indifferent, he wouldn't try to persuade so much in his sermons.

"Trying to persuade" people of what? If you mean "trying to persuade people not to be apostolic," "trying to persuade people that the Novus Ordo isn't as bad as they thought," then I would agree with you.
He doesn't, on the whole, spend most of his time in sermons trying to "persuade" people of the collapse of the SSPX or the justice of the Resistance cause. When he does say bad things about the neo-SSPX, it is usually qualified, either with "It seems to me..." "It is only my opinion, feel free to to disagree..." or something similar. Or he goes on to say something which will also give comfort to those who are determined to stay inside the neo-SSPX and thus to undermine his previous point altogether. That is my experience. Most people probably don't notice, because they don't listen to what he says too closely, they only pick up the "vibe" (Bishop Fellay = bad guy, or whatever it might be).

But never mind, let's say for argument's sake that you're right: he does use his sermons to try to persuade people to leave the neo-SSPX. All the time. That still does not help your cause in the end. It is a logical fallacy to claim that a good sermon makes up for a scandalous one, or that some good teaching makes up for or somehow "cancels out" some heterodox, deviant or otherwise dubious teaching. All I have to do is to show that there are some of his sermons in the Resistance over the past few years which are the opposite of what you say, and my point stands. Remember John, malum ex quocumque defectu. 

And also, if your interpretation of this statement is right, how can you explain that the good bishop would be ready to be martyred to save souls if he doesn't care about them ? Do you really think that I will believe that a bishop who is ready be martyred to save souls don't care about them ?

This is a very, very weak argument. In fact, truth be told, it is no argument at all. Whether you or I or Bishop Williamson are ready for martyrdom is known only to God. Many English martyrs on their way to the scaffold told the Catholics in the crowd to pray for them that they remain faithful to the last. Listen John my friend, you cannot and must not base your judgement of objective words and deeds on assumptions concerning the interior disposition of another man which you cannot know, which even he cannot know.

Therefore, you have only two choices left :

#1 - Or you say that Bishop Williamson is a hypocrite and a duplicit. (For me, it's impossible to believe that when I see how sincere the good bishop is when he speaks).



#2 - Or you admit that you have twisted the statement that Bishop Williamson made in his Eleison Comment #513.

...or,  #3. I pay close attention to what he actually says and does, even though hardly anyone else does, and hence I pick up on what he actually did say rather than what I thought he said or the impression his sermon or EC left me with; likewise, what he actually does and fails to do, rather than what I fondly imagine he does based on three or four youtube videos each year, the remarks made to me by fellow members of his fanclub, and a few glossy photos on Reconquista.

I try to base my judgement on what Bishop Williamson does and says, not on assumptions about how "sincere" he is, how ready for martyrdom he is, and so forth. I already wrote to you showing what he said and what my problem with it is. I am giving you an opportunity to prove to me that I am mistaken. So far, I remain unconvinced. 


My reply concerning Valtorta to follow shortly.

Concerning Valtorta, John,


No. That is not what I say and that is not a fair or accurate representation of things.

Firstly, I do not just say that that Bishop Williamson is "a bad Bishop." I say that he is harming the Faith of potentially many thousands of people due to several reasons of which this is only one. Furthermore, I am fairly certain that, since he admits that he is aware of the Holy Office's condemnation of Valtorta and dismisses it lightly, he falls under the condemnation of St. Pius X in Lamentabili Sane (Condemned Proposition #8. "They are free from all blame who treat lightly the condemnations passed by the Sacred Congregation of the Index or by the Roman Congregations.") 

Secondly, this is not because "he is in favour of Maria Valtorta." If he were privately in favour of it, I would tell him privately that he is wrong and leave it at that. He is more than just "in favour" of it. He actively promotes it in full public view and encourages everyone to read it, including families with children. 

Here is why I object:

-  Maria Valtorta's Poem of the Man-God was condemned by the Holy Office as early as 1949 and was placed on the Index of forbidden books. It was never permissible for a Catholic to read a book on the Index: do you think it is permissible for a bishop to tell Catholics to read a book on the Index?

-  The Holy Office said that Valtorta's Poem contained heresy. That means that when Bishop Williamson promotes it, he is promoting heresy. How is promoting somebody else's heresy better than promoting one's own?

- Worse, Bishop Williamson says that he is fully aware of the Holy Office condemnation and that the Poem was put on the Index and never taken off. He says that he doesn't care because, "I get so much out of it".


In answer to which, all you can say is that Father Barielle apparently liked Valtorta's heretical work. I have heard this before, though I have never seen any actual evidence for it. The original source always appears to be Bishop Williamson. Never mind, let us take his word for it and assume that it is true. Well, so? Does that magically make Valtorta OK? Does that overturn the Index of Forbidden Books, the judgement of Cardinal Ottavi and the Holy Office in 1949 which is, in fact, the judgement of the Church? Or does that mean that Fr. Barielle might have been wrong?

That Archbishop Lefebvre did not discipline Fr. Barielle (again, do we know that for sure? Could not the punishment have been hidden from sight? Never mind...) might have been for any number of reasons and is, in the end, a prudential judgement on the part of the Archbishop which he will have answered for when he died. It is not something you or I can really use as an excuse. If this is true and Fr. Barielle was wrong, then Fr. Barielle was wrong. But even then, it is not quite as bad as is the case with Bishop Williamson. Fr. Barielle was a priest not a bishop. And he was not acting as a parish priest or in a pastoral role, but giving lectures in a seminary. Did Fr. Barielle promote Valtorta's heretical condemned work at every opportunity, or is this an more in the way of an opinion which somehow he let slip? Are there recordings available, are there newsletters where we can hear or read him recommending that the faithful should all read Valtorta? Was he aware of its condemnation? One would presume so, but is it not possible that there perhaps might be some other mitigating factor of which we are not now aware? Can we know for sure? And if we can, does it really matter? In the end, one priest doing something wrong doesn't mean that it becomes OK for a bishop to do the same wrong (arguably an even greater wrong) years later.

Bishop Williamson, on the other hand, is a bishop. He still has some moral authority, plenty of people to this day (amazingly) are still quite happy to go along unquestioningly with whatever he says simply because he is the one saying it. And he goes out of his way to recommend and promote Valtorta in public, he tells family fathers to read it to their children every evening. I do not see how that is defensible. 

Do you accept the judgement of the Holy Office in 1949 as the judgement of the Church, John? Do you accept the Index of Forbidden books as an organ of the Church? Do you accept that Valtorta's Poem is heretical and condemned by the Church? Yes or no answer, please.

I have noted your argument about Fr. Barielle. Two wrongs don't make a right. Do you wish to say anything else in defence of Bishop Williamson's promotion of Valtorta? I am listening.

I think there is a serious error made in these comments, well several errors, but one of the most glaring is this subtle attempt to promote the sacrament of Confirmation in three out of four quotes (with no source linked)  - which as we all know can only be administered by a bishop - as if it was the most important of the seven sacraments. This seems to be done as a platform to support John's erroneous premise that "the necessity of bishops for the survival of the Catholic Faith, the teaching of the Church is very clear : bishops are indispensable for the visibility of the Church."

In other words, in order to promote his statement about the necessity of bishops for the survival of the Faith, he does some quote mining to show the utter importance of the sacrament of Confirmation - which again, we all know can only be administered by a bishop.

But let us go back to our children's catechism.

The very simplified catechism of Pope St. Pius X states the following (pp. 49-50 - I am even including the pdf of the catechism for the following to be easily confirmed [no pun intended]): catechism_st_pp_pius_x.pdf (571.93 KB)


Notice that the two sacraments which confer sanctifying grace are Baptism and Penance. All the others increase grace in those who possess it. And of course, the most important sacrament is the Holy Eucharist.

How many among the Church Triumphant have never had more than the sacrament of Baptism before they died? Think too of those who were baptized in their own blood and never had the other sacraments!

Notice as well that any ordinary priest can administer these three most important sacraments. A bishop is not required. Indeed, as we all know, Baptism can be administered even by a layperson, under emergent circumstances. How good is Our Lord to us in making these most important sacraments so readily available through the priesthood rather through the lesser numbers of the episcopal ranks.

Thus, these quotes from John appear to be taken very much out of context about the importance of confirmation. Appears disingenuous at best.

No one would ever deny the importance of the sacrament of confirmation. It was instituted by Our Lord Jesus Christ himself. But to try to make it appear as the most important is playing with words.

Regarding the “good elements” in Bishop Williamson’s teachings that are mixed with his errors, here is what Fr. Gaudron says in The Catechism of the Crisis in the Church.


Q: Despite all that, surely these religions contain some good elements?

Even in the material order, the judgment of whether a cake is good or bad depends not only on its ingredients, but on the cake as a whole. Good ingredients, excellent in themselves, mixed in the wrong proportions can spoil it; the introduction of one rancid ingredient can make it inedible, and the addition of a few drops of poison would have a greater effect upon the final result than a lot of good butter, flour, and chocolate. In the spiritual order, this reality applies all the more. A religion is not merely a material agglomeration of "elements"; it forms a whole (just as a scientific or philosophical system or a demonstration, etc.). This whole is good or bad, true or false, as a whole. And if it is bad as a whole, then the good elements matter little.


Q: Despite that, can one not underscore the parcels of truth these religions contain?

Every erroneous system contains parcels of truth; an obvious folly would have no adherents. But these parcels of truth are captured by the false system that makes use of them (and that utilizes their verisimilitude and attractiveness to its advantage). Moreover, these elements of truth are themselves falsified because they are linked to errors that distort them.


Q: Can it not be argued, however, that there are degrees of error, and that a religion that, while being false, recognizes the existence of one God and imposes on its adherents a certain moral code is better than doctrinaire atheism and absolute amorality?

There are degrees of error, but, paradoxically, it could be argued that a system that incorporates many truths is more dangerous than one containing fewer. A chair with just three legs is more dangerous than a two-legged chair no one would think of sitting on. A very good counterfeit bill is more dangerous than a less skillfully executed fake.