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By request I have compiled a small list of passages culled from the letters of Bishop Williamson found in the Angelus. I have selected the passages according to no other rule but my own amusement. Keep in mind that I very much respect the Bishop for speaking so plainly, and very often I agree with him. In many of these cases, however, either his ideas or his arguments are just a little bit silly.
Taken from Girls at University:
“From which, one must question what kind of queenship can be exercised by Novus Ordo theologians, even conservative. Normally, “conservative” Catholics who have left Tradition are in bad faith, so will be bad teachers, while those who have never known Tradition will be ignorant, and so bad teachers. Both will make a point of “rescuing” a damsel in”schismatic” or “excommunicated” distress. Therefore a Traditional girl putting herself under “conservative” teachers will, to keep her Faith, require a special effort to resist the menfolk whom God designed (and her parents paid) her to follow. She will then be voluntarily so setting her true Catholic Faith against her true feminine nature that one or the other is almost bound to suffer.”
Taken from Girls at University:
“That girls should not be in universities flows from the nature of universities and from the nature of girls: true universities are for ideas, ideas are not for true girls, so true universities are not for true girls.”
Taken from The Suburban Way of Life goes against Nature:
“The suburbs undo the father by taking the virility out of bread-winning. No longer is his manhood at a premium by his muscles handling the horses to plough the fields, which mother’s muscles could never do. Instead it is at a discount by his working-week being spent in an overheated office pushing papers at underdressed secretaries. As for mother, the suburbs take the integrity out of her home-making. Washing for the family yesteryear at the village-well, she could talk with other real wives about real husbands and children, but now the isolation of her luxurious home and the leisure provided by her washing-machine drive her, if she stays in her man-less home, to fulfill her need for family interest by watching the notoriously popular and improper soap-operas on television. As for suburban associations, reality has been emptied out of them by industry and electronics. The chemical food and synthetic clothing arrive by the ton at the local shopping-mall in massive motorized trucks, while the entertainment is disgorged trouble-free in the home on a series of magic lanterns, each more unclean than the last. If no real need associates men together, how can their associations still be real? Needs cannot be artificially fabricated to be real.”
Taken from Ideas on a “concentration camp” to attack problems of modern youth:
“However, there is a major difficulty. Where do we find a master for the camp? As a colleague said, he must be a combination of Socrates, General Patton and Michael Jackson! Socrates for the ancient wisdom, General Patton for the camp discipline and leadership, Michael Jackson for the ability to get through to young men of today, who can be something of a breed apart. Does anybody know of such a man? In my imagination he is a Catholic widower, ex-military, presently side-lined, withering from frustration at being unable to do any real teaching, who would love to have access to a mini-dozen red-blooded Americans to teach them for the love of Christ a dose of reality, regardless of what he or they would do the year after. To heaven with career, resumes or, since I have Scottish blood, salary!”
Taken from Three Years to the Millennium:
“Q: But what about souls on their way out of the Novus Ordo? May they not attend the Indult Mass?
A: You are right. What neo-modernist Rome designed as half-way houses into the Novus Ordo can serve as half-way houses out of it. Thus for someone in the mud at the bottom of a well, a niche in the wall half-way up is half-way to the sunlight, but for somebody out in the sunlight that same niche is half-way down to the mud. Anybody in the sunlight of the Tridentine Mass untrammelled by neo-modernist Rome needs his head examined if he climbs down to the niche of the Indult Mass, half-way down to the mud of the Novus Ordo.”
Taken from The derailing of Buchanan’s presidential campaign
“If only it was not so! If only I could be on good terms both with God and with the mainstream! How much easier life would be! What a nice picture! A huge speaker on each corner of my party-raft drifting downstream blasts out that the hills are alive with the sound of music — my friends and I smell an increasingly unpleasant stench of sewage in the water, and ahead of us, is that the thunder we hear of a great waterfall? My friends, turn up the speakers! Sprinkle more smell-killer! The party is to go on for ever!
Dear Catholics! The one thing we must not do is let anyone around hear from us, or see from our example, that religion can be pushed into a nice sweet little compartment from where it pours forth its sentimental perfume upon a way of life damned by God and doomed to destruction! To stand up to that way of life may cost us more than blood, sweat, toil, and tears, but such may be the cost of getting to Heaven.”
Taken from The need to shun religious fellowship even with ‘conservative’ Catholics:
“Then where is there a problem? Answer: seminarians being taught and learning to believe the fullness of Catholic doctrine are coming into possession of a treasure beyond price, that Faith without which it is impossible to please God and so to get to heaven. Now it is true that anybody taking part in a public Rosary March must have some Catholic Faith at least, and that all such people should benefit from contact with seminarians being armed with the fullness of Faith. However, the risk is that few such people may grasp the importance of the fullness of integral Catholic doctrine, and so the seminarians could be exposed to a kind of temptation of “TRADECUMENISM”: let all of us who believe in the Rosary just get together, and all will be well; let all of us who love the Mother of God concentrate on the things that unite us and not dwell on the things that divide us, after all we are all Catholics, are we not?”
Taken from Women’s trousers are an assault upon woman’s womanhood:
“Clothing divided for the legs obviously liberates the mobile lower half of the body for a number of activities for which clothing undivided like a skirt is relatively cumbersome.”
Taken from Private revelation and the message of Garabandal:
“There are various objections to the authenticity of the apparitions of Our Lady at Garabandal which I will not go into now, although I am sure they can all be answered without great difficulty. The official Church has made no final pronunciation upon Garabandal, as it has made upon Fatima to approve or upon Medjugorje to disapprove. The Society of St. Pius X has no official position either. For myself, I believe in it. All I have tried to do above is to make the case that if anyone has difficulty in fitting together in his head the insane facts of the modern world and the sane truth of his Catholic Faith, the lady of Garabandal provides an admirable solution. And if one day she were proved beyond doubt not to have been Our Lady, our Faith in public Revelation would not be shaken one bit, we should merely have to renounce one set of stepping-stones towards it. Meanwhile may Our Lady accept as homage offered to her this presentation of the triple prophecy of Garabandal. Our only intention has been to serve her and help her save souls. For more information, write to P.O. Box 606, Lindenhurst, NY 11757, U.S.A.”
Taken from Can Society Catholics withstand Catholicism without the Cross?:
“Let me take one case of this chaos, featured in many a Confirmation sermon this year, to try to help Catholics to grasp what a gigantic drama is playing out around them, because even most Catholics seem to think (or wish) themselves to be still living in the world of “The Sound of Music”! That world is gone, gone forever, as it deserved!
The case was apparently all over the media here in the U.S.A. several months ago. My knowledge of it is essentially confined to one long newspaper article sent to me by a friend, but the main outlines are clear. A 34-year-old schoolmistress from Washington State, married with four children between the ages of 4 and 13, entered into a relationship with a boy in her sixth grade class (age 11 or 12?), by whom she then had a baby girl. Tried and convicted for the offence against a minor, she was sentenced to jail for eight years, but the sentence was suspended because her “sweet and bubbly” personality must have seemed to everybody to be out of place in the “slammer”. However, no sooner was she out than she made herself pregnant by the same boy for the second time, whereupon her judge threw her back into jail to serve the rest of her sentence!
The article prints an attractive colour picture of her in court at the moment of her original sentencing: her pretty little chin perched on her folded hands, looking no older than a teenager herself, she looks wistfully across the courtroom, as though to say, “Why cannot these people understand true love?” For indeed, one of the quotations attributed to her by the article runs, “I have found true love at last.” Can anyone doubt she has watched “The Sound of Music” 20 or 50 times? Not I.
“Oh, come on your Excellency! Get off movies, and leave that movie alone!” Dear friends, gladly, if only movies would get off Catholics and Catholics would leave that movie alone! But I have here under my hand a glossy “1998 Catholic Family and School Videos” catalogue, from a reputable conservative Catholic organization out of Colorado, which advertises one smiling, glamorous, sentimental, “uplifting” movie after another, page after page. Where is the blood? Where is the Cross? Where is the sacrifice?
Movies are unreal. Catholicism is for real. Catholic movies, unless they are strict documentaries, are virtually a contradiction in terms. Yet movies occupy the front, center, and back of most Catholics’ hearts and minds, at least here in the U.S.A.! This is the drama of our poor schoolmistress who - you guessed - is one of seven children from a strongly conservative Catholic home! She was born in 1962. What did her home lack in those supposedly wonderful days, that she is now completely detached from reality? Catholics must ask themselves!”
And, finally, taken from the Final Letter of the good Bishop before his departure from the United States is his farewell poem :
So, dear friends, after one and twenty years
I leave the United States, with many tears
At sixty-three, I’ve given what I can,
It’s time to yield my place to a younger man.
When I came here, I came with heavy heart,
And now with equal sadness I depart.
For when I came, I did not want to leave
Where I had been before. So now I grieve.
To quit the scene of one third of my life,
Laden with priestly toil and happy strife.
Yet clearly I remember, when I came,
To three companions on the aeroplane
I said “I shall in the U.S.A. have fun!”
And that proved true. So now my time is done,
I might expect the same fun where I go,
Except - America’s unique, and so
The fun-ny third of my career must end,
As to a serious land my way I wend.
My friends may shed a tear, but not my foes
Who think my leaving terminates their woes.
But let them not exult! “I SHALL RETURN”
As Bishop, to ordain and to confirm!
So if the liberals dare to rise again
I’ll thunder, growl, and strike with might and main!
No let me hear of women growing S-L-A-C-K,
Or instantaneously I will be back!!
And if they’re S-L-A-C-K-I-N-G off when I am dead,
My ghost will come to haunt them, fierce and dread!
Meanwhile, dear U.S. ladies, girls, God bless
Your being so docile with your feminine dress!
Never have men so need women true!
In Europe they could learn a thing or two
From Yankee gals, in gracious dresses dressed!
Well done! - by your own children you’ll be blessed
Who learn what is a mother - NOT A MAN!
Alas, it’s difficult to make a plan
For future Newsletters. They hardly fit
In countries lacking ripe old Yankee…wit!
But trust that I support you from afar.
Men, be good fathers. In the house you are
By God’s design the head. Do not wimp out!
Not only women are meant to be devout!
Be full of God, and lead against the world -
By Catholic men the Devil must be hurled
Back into hell! Pray hard! Pain’s on the way
With shrieks and howls of grief, nor is that day
Far off. Then gird your loins, be strong, stand tall -
Tomorrow has no room for spirits small.
Flee electronics. Stay with real life.
Give time, love and attention to your wife.
Forget “The Sound of Music”, silly stuff
Of which the world has had more than enough.
So ends the last Newsletter I shall write.
Soon I must fly far south into the night.
Ah, my dear friends! - I feel like I could cry!
SO LONG! FAREWELL! AUF WIEDERSEHEN! GOOD-BYE!
St. Louis-Marie de Montfort,
Pope St. Pius X,
St. Joseph,
St. Ambrose of Milan,
St. Thomas Aquinas,
St. Francis (and St. Clare),
St. Catherine of Siena,
St. Alphonsus Ligouri,
St. John Chrysostom,
“Real” husbands and “real” children? His statements are so stupid, so inane, I could not even finish reading them all. I thought that Droleskey had gotten shrill. I honestly think that he brings the episcopate into contempt with such drivel — apparently Novus Ordo bishops have no monopoly on that front.
Can anyone doubt she has watched “The Sound of Music” 20 or 50 times? Not I.
I love it!
Ago gratias Iacobo!
Yeah, didn’t you know? The Sound of Music causes child abuse.
The thing is, I know exactly what he’s talking about. He just goes at it, though, without building a careful case or without, perhaps, veiling his true feelings/conclusions for the time, so that he might make a limited conquest in the short term.
If I may make a private recommendation to our readers, Girls at University is to die for; it’s a must read. You’re going to think I’m joking, but I actually learned a ton reading it, just by reading the passages he cited from the Summa. Very interesting - not so much about the girls at university bit, on which in any case, I agree with him entirely - but about the natures of man and woman, and the relation of our rationality to our sexuality.
I added something to the post that I think y’all will enjoy.
Okay, I must agree, too, that I share alot of his sentiments, even the ones here. But he takes them to the nth degree, as in his attack on washing machines. I agree that mechanization has alterred life and liberated women, and I don’t like suburban culture either. But he makes it sounds like we should all turn into Tridentine Amish, and operate horse-drawn plows. Actually, he’d probably have something in common with the hippies down at Ithaca’s farmer’s market. Maybe Bishop Williamson could mention how “decadent” and “modernistic” it is for women to shave their armpits and legs!
And his thing with “The Sound of Music” — for whatever good his critique does, he only lowers himself in order to do it. He’s entirely too chatty and eccentric — did the saints write like this?
But thanks for posting these, Iacobe. So where’s the Jewish stuff from His Excellency?
fellas,
starting to sound a bit like cranks.
Bishop Williamson has gone bad crazy, I’m afeared. You agree with his “sentiments”? That’s like defending the novus ordo pastor who talks only about God’s Love and never discusses damnation for having “good sentiments.”
It’s pernicious of his excellency to discuss such matters without argument, as they suceed only in alienating most, confusing some, and delighting a very select few.
I for one wholly disapprove — not of writing unpopular things, mind, but of doing so in such a manner!
“It’s pernicious of his excellency to discuss such matters without argument, as they suceed only in alienating most, confusing some, and delighting a very select few.
I for one wholly disapprove — not of writing unpopular things, mind, but of doing so in such a manner!”
Well, as you see from my first post, yes, I think he’s clearly wrong-headed and kooky. My caveat concerns stuff like the criticism of suburbs. I’ve read lots of conservative, Catholic critiques of how the suburban lifestyle innately tends toward a consumeristic, materialistic, anti-community outlook. So I can grant Williamson something for his sentiments — it’s not like he’s the first Catholic to advocate “back to the land.” But he does so in a way so unbecoming a bishop. Since I’ve never read much of his stuff, I was never fully aware of some of the nutjob ideas that conservative Catholics ascribed to traditionalists.
My caveat was not so much to defend Williamson — from his eccentric, hyperbolic, clownish writings, who would know if his heart were in the right place? It was more to defend myself lest it seem I reject everything he says. I really have to agree with the statement “give peace a chance,” even if I reject the goofy peacenik priests’ definitions of “peace” and reasonable “chance.”
Correction: “give peace a chance” is a command, not a statement.
No wonder Cardinal Ratzinger rejected that original list of candidates for Bishop from Archbishop Lefebvre.
To pick up the idea of “state-within-a-state” much-bantied about recently, one of the problems of running a “church-within(?)-a-church” is that you get to preach to the choir all the time. Most of the people at the SSPX chapels are already much-embittered, fastidious people, so this basic personality trait gets misdirected from conservation of ecclesiastical traditions to a rejection of even technology. Flee electronics? What are there no lights in SSPX chapels? Do they heat their Winona seminary with a wood-burning stove, the wood cut by axe, drawn by draft horses down roads that no internal combustion engine has ever driven? Sheesh, now *I’m* lowering myself for the sake of parody . . .
Oh, you big whiner, Ambrosius! You know what I mean. Of course I disapprove of his style and think it stupid and harmful.
Perhaps I ought to find a better word than “sentiments” and a better qualifier than “all of them”. ;)
What I mean is that on some occasion or another I have felt like ranting about many of the things he does. Not in the same way, or with even anything near the same conclusions, but, to give an example, I’ve pined for the Amish lifestyle too. Maybe the right phrasing is: “that our sentiments often agree”.
Further, to defend Williamson for a moment, since I’m the one who put him in such a bad light to begin with, the Bishop is playing a part that the readers of the Angelus clearly enjoy. He will often describe himself as a crank, as “bonkers”, as a crazy old man, with peculiar likes and dislikes. I’m not sure its appropriate for a Bishop to stoop to character acting, but I don’t think we should consider these letters the Bishop’s best efforts at arguing his case. And I’d hesitate to call them all pernicious hot air - plenty of people listen to the man.
However, if admitting Williamson to be anything other than crazy offends our august President, I am content to let it lie.
Ambrosius:
I wonder sir, if you’d at least agree with this one.
“Clothing divided for the legs obviously liberates the mobile lower half of the body for a number of activities for which clothing undivided like a skirt is relatively cumbersome.”
;)
My august and revered lord,
Iacobus, in his humility, wished to qualify his agreement with the Bishop, but we all knew perfectly well what he meant, Tobias and I, and we felt the same way, perhaps I more than Tobias.
Since there is, at least between you and me, sir, a complete disagreement about an issue so central to the Faith as the licitness of women wearing men’s dress, it is not unlikely that we would have some disagreement about peripheral matters such as fleeing to the land and jettisoning our electronics.
I hereby renew my statement of support for the sentiments of the silly episcopal scribbler under discussion.
Given the choice between the ambiguous and smarmy lawyer speak of modern bishops or the frank, yet sometimes cranky, style of traditional bishops, I’ll take the latter.
The Novus Ordo Cardinal Archbishop of Washington D.C. can publicly violate the 1st Commandment by praying in the Holy Name of Allah and not a peep from the conservative Novus Ordonarians, never mind Rome. It’s not like the Archbishopric of Washington DC is some Podunk See under the radar scope of Rome. Yet nothing was done.
However, let a traditionalist bishop make a prudential judgment about a silly movie, and he’s treated like a fool of a man and not worthy for the episcopacy.
I’ll take a little nuttiness if it means orthodoxy will accompany.
Well, I think that some of my statements were intemperate. Obviously these are not all of the bishop’s writing, and Iacobus notes that the bishop acknowledges when it’s a situation of “not the Lord, but I say.” So rather than try to delete any of my comments, let’s just say I’d be in a cooler frame of mind if I were writing today. But I’d still be a stern critic of the goofy stuff.
For the record, I hardly ever shave my armpits or legs, but I most definitly wear pants. And I’d wash my clothes by hand before I gave up wearing pants.
And we want to reconcile the likes of Williamson? He is bizarre. The only one of those bishops worth reconciling is B.Fellay.Williamson visited a independent chapel near my last parish for confirmation and delivered a wierd sermon like he wrote in his letters.His strange words were matched by the way he delivered them-banging the wood floor with his crosier.His harangue prompted more than a few people to walk outand one couple to reconcile to the church through my parish.People like him give the classical roman rite and the priests who celebrate it a bad name. Give us the Roman Mass but keep Williamson.