1984 Attracts
Eleison Comments XXIX

When in a small publication of the Society of St. Pius X in England -- circulation about 500 -- an article recently appeared describing the police-state fast closing in on Great Britain, the British authorities complained to SSPX headquarters in Switzerland ! It gives one to reflect....
As people have today less and less religion, so they have less and less reason to control themselves. If I believe neither in God nor in any moral law, nor in any afterlife eternally rewarding or punishing my observance or non-observance of that law, why should I put any brake upon satisfying my selfish desires in this life? But a society of such egoists must turn into a jungle of human beasts devouring one another.
Therefore where the people have neither faith nor internal self-discipline, they must welcome any external discipline enabling their society to survive, e.g. (or i.e.) a police-state. As seminaries close, so prisons must open. Today, prisons can hardly be built fast enough.
Now in any such dissociety of course there will be villains fabricating reasons to impose and extend the police-state for their own nefarious purposes. 9/11 is a classic example. However, even in the case of 9/11 there might have been amongst the authorities some honest men who said, "Lies and fabrications are nasty, but how else can one govern a modern population ?" Alas, they would have had a point !
So the police-state may be a bad substitute for godliness, but where the people are godless, such a State may appear to be the only way to hold a society together, and whoever opposes it will then appear to be anti-social. In this respect the defenders of modern police-states may mean well, and not deserve blame. However, let them have no part in tomorrow's persecution of Christians towards which today's police-states are being steered! The Catholic Faith upheld by the SSPX is not in fact their problem, but it is of their real problem the true solution.

Bishop Richard Williamson
Paris, France