By Bishop Williamson:

Another good friend will not mind if I quote recent correspondence of ours, because he asked a question which a number of souls may be asking: "What to do now?"

He quoted back to me from a letter of mine to him two years ago: "As for the ability of Catholic Tradition and naturally sensible people to respond adequately to this unprecedented crisis of human nature, I think that if these days are not shortened, everybody will go under. Of course the Catholic Church will survive, but maybe in a rather smaller remnant, by a severe purge of what today goes under the name of 'Tradition' ". And I went on to wonder how many good souls in 2007 had a sufficient grasp on the big picture (not just on the mechanics of Tradition) to prevent their being in effect left high and dry, not to say positively undermined, "by the corruption sweeping on, around and beneath them".

After this quote of mine, my friend then asked, "Where do we go from here ? With the horrible effects of the economic implosion reaching down to Main Street and the political upheaval naturally following in its wake, where are we in history and what do men like myself now do ? I have not spent my life fighting for the Faith to finish up defending an American Indian-style reservation for Catholics!"

As to the economic disaster, I replied to him a week ago that it is now only starting, and that it means that family fathers like him must look to ensuring the basics of survival for their families. I said it will surely come to hunger and starvation, and I could have added, to blood in the suburbs. The Western peoples and therefore their politicians are so far out of touch with reality that only an appalling Third World War can begin to bring them back to it. War will present itself to such politicians as the only possible way out of the insoluble economic problems. Another 9/11 risks being fabricated to start it.

As for the disaster in the Church and our situation in history, I replied that it means we must pray quietly, steadily and seriously, as though the Lord God is important. With the 313 AD victory of the Roman Emperor Constantine at the Battle of the Milvian Bridge, Catholics switched from fighting lions to fighting heresies, but with Vatican II rotting out both Faith and minds, the official Church gave up fighting heresy, so for Catholics it is back to fighting mindless beasts in the arena. Another Age of Martyrs is upon us. "Today's Catholic Church", I concluded, "desperately needs friends of God as serious as are his enemies", because such seriousness is alone capable of conquering them for Our Lord. Moreover such seriousness "can no longer be proved with mere words, which are shot, but only with" - we come back to - "blood".

Dear friend, pray the family Rosary, plant potatoes in the garden and teach your children about the martyrs of the Early Church, whose testimony reaches way beyond any reservations. Kyrie eleison.

+Williamson
London, England