Hmm... doesn't sound like he wants people to break into sects and "follow" him! It doesn't sound like he's boiling mad and outraged... How about that? A bishop that thinks like one!
I suspected from the first that the good Bishop had this kind of view towards what had happened. It's still more wonderful that he is humble enough to say it. Everybody knows what he thinks on the topic (the topic of this historical point). I'm sure he will not have changed his mind. I'm sure he wishes everyone else had read the things by the experts he had. I'm very sure many people agree with the conclusions of those experts. But I could never imagine, at any point in this little 'outrage' that His Excellency was so proud a man that he would wish the fact and his belief in it, to trump the work of saving souls. That would denote a man who had more care for his public honor than for saving souls... something I could never once persuade myself could possibly be the case.
I was waiting eagerly for someone or other from the SSPX to clarify that there's no "split", no animosity, no grave division, no fuming Bishop Williamson wanting his own way come hell or high water... I was overjoyed to see that piece of information come from His Excellency's own hand as proof of it's very authenticity. (For who can claim it was force and not holy and genuine humility that prompted it?).
What I love about these holy Bishops is precisely this. They DO practice what they preach. They are a living example of the application of those Catholic virtues down the median line of sanity, temperance and true holiness. (Which err neither to the one side or the other by excess.) A bishop (as his crosier implies) is a shepherd, and should be able to be followed and trusted by his sheep. And it's refreshing that with these four men, you CAN follow them, because they follow sanity, reason, temperance and true virtue, rather than erring to one side or the other out of the pride so rank in this increasingly ungodly world.
The example of these men, even in sticky situations like this one, is just edifying and heartening, and I sincerely thank God for them! +