Green S. ,of course, thought she’d come up with a “gotcha,” as one poster mentioned. It didn’t work. She’s been around before, and, as I recall, she was not a real pleasant sort of person then. So if she is a “lackey” of Bp. Fellay, it makes sense. And, if she lives in St. Mary’s, that makes sense too, in that St. Mary’s seems to be a collection point for a lot of fifth chromosome SSPX types.
But the point she is trying to make is ludicrous on its face. Bp. Williamson, as well as the rest of the SSPX leadership in 2004, including Bp. Fellay, did not express a willingness to give up the ‘company store’ in exchange for canonical recognition. All that has changed since, of course.
Bp. Williamson did not say to Cardinal Gagnon: “Hey, Your Lordship (or whatever they call cardinals), tell His Holiness that in exchange for “juridical standing and status (for) the Society,” we’ll swear slavish obedience to you, to the bishops and No.25 of the dogmatic constitution Lumen Gentium of the Second Vatican Council. We’ll go with the 1983 Code of Canon Law, and we’ll say that the New Mass is pretty cool too. We’ll cut the Jєωs some slack, as well as members of other non-Catholic religions. We’ll ask only for one bishop, and we won’t be terribly argumentative if you choose one for us who isn’t particularly sympathetic to tradition. We’d like to have a Roman commission for oversight within the Society, most of them selected from among our ranks, of course. But hey again, Cardinal Gagnon, if that’s not agreeable to His Holiness, we’ll just go along with whomever you serve up. Yes, we’d like the president of this commission to be one of our own. But we’re flexible. Your Lordship (or whatever they call cardinals), we’ve already stepped out on behalf of V2, haven’t we? Haven’t we told the world that the Council was not what many people think it was? Have we not declared to the Catholic press that this bugbear of “religious liberty” was merely a footnote during the Council’s proceedings, So you see, Cardinal Garnon, we’re easy! We want to do business with you all, and are willing to make enormous concessions in order to do so.
Bp. Williamson said nothing like this in 2004. He made no concessions to Rome whatsoever. He only expressed a hope and a prayer that the Pope might get his head on straight and do the right thing. Neither he nor the Society at that time sent Cardinal Gagnon back to Rome with even a box of cookies, much les multiple assurances that the Society promised to buy at least three quarters of the New Church agenda