Taken from this conference we just aired on the Radio Station today:
"A lot of people complain today and say, why can't all traditional Catholics get together? Answer for a very simple reason, because there's only one person who can pull Catholics together who has the authority to pull Catholics together, and that's the Pope.
And he can only do it in the truth.
And if he departs from the truth, nobody can hold Catholics together, period. And the idea of getting together, of some sort of substitute unity, it's just impossible.
The society has unitatem quemdam, or quamdam. The society has a certain unity, but it's a fragile unity, necessarily a fragile unity.
Nothing you can do about it. I mean, it's nothing we can do about it.
Even Archbishop Lefebvre, who had great moral authority, over his priests, it was basically a moral authority, rather than a jurisdictional authority, because he didn't have the man in white behind him.
He ought to have had, he had the right to have the man in white, the Pope, the Holy Father behind him, but he didn't.
To all appearances, he didn't have the Holy Father behind him.
You know, regularly the Holy Father would sort of abjure him, so you know, it was difficult to make out that the Holy Father was really behind him.
And it continues to be difficult to make out that the Holy Father is really with the society. Some people say so, but you know, you have a difficulty making out the case. And as long as the Holy Father appears to be against the society, you're bound to have difficulties. It's just, you can't avoid them."
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"And then I remember Frank Novak, who was the coordinator in Chicago. He sent a telegram back to Father Keddie, but within a few days, he realized that something was up. And then he got me on the phone and said, what about this? I said, well, look, you know, there's another side of this story and da-da-da-da-da-da-da. And he said, yeah, and then he said, well, can you come out and look off Chicago? So we began going out to Chicago and we set up another center and, oh, why, why, why, why, why? But that's the whole question of lack of authority. It's all lack of authority. There is not, nothing can take the place, nothing and nobody can take the place of it folks.
And it's no use pretending that we can. I mean, when the Archbishop was around, while he was still alive, of course, he had a considerable moral authority, but it wasn't really a jurisdictional authority, of the, of every four priests that the Archbishop ordained, one walked out."
Topic: B. Williamson on authority among Trads (Read 62 times)