There is a FACT here that CAUSES all crises in the Church, including the crisis within the SSPX.
The FACT is one of apathy, complicity, and or silence from baptized souls, priests, and BISHOPS [throughout] in the face of a need within a situation of the Church that God is providing for our attention. Anyone of these by themselves or together are disastrous.
• Baptized souls, priests, and Bishops do have an outright obligation to defend Holy Mother Church.
• Baptized souls, priests, and Bishops do have the moral duty to defend another in need of the True Faith.
• Baptized souls, priests, and Bishops do have a responsibility to stand up to serve the Church within their capacity.
In this thread of Eleison Comments regarding Bishop Williamson, it is true he is a Bishop of the Catholic Church. He knows that he has left his “personality” of the “old man” to receive the “new man” when he took a step forward in the seminary to receive the sub diaconate, the Sacrament of Holy Orders, and also for the August responsibility to be an Apostle of our Lord –a Bishop.
Bishop Williamson has indeed stood up in his obligation and responsibility over the many years. He has also written many great works in his Seminary Letters, Eleison Comments, conferences, Sermons, and such, of which took care of the situations that Holy Mother Church needed to address during those times.
There is another need that just surfaced within the overall crisis in the SSPX and within the Church that God is asking for his attention. Namely, in his function as a Bishop, not only is he dealing with his unjust expulsion from the last 8-months, he also has the outright obligations and responsibilities to the Church to “feed my sheep”.
In this new crisis, Bishop Williamson has certainly stood up for the Faith. No doubt about it.
There is however an item of real concern that the Catholic world is calling out for the Shepherd, Bishop Williamson, to address in this crisis -of which he is not standing up for- to lead as a Catholic Bishop to call in his [Traditional] flock entrusted to him. Not to go around doing what he wants to do –to be a
“father, adviser, and a friend.” He has stated this passivity, in lien of being a “Shepherd”, in his unbelievable Eleison Comments called: “Authority Crippled”.
http://www.cathinfo.com/catholic.php?a=topic&t=24929&min=0&num=5Many priests and faithful have described this in their own words throughout many articles and posts over the medium of the internet. In all, everyone encourages Bishop Williamson in his weaknesses to take stock in his new position that God is calling for his attention.
Bishop Williamson does need our support amongst this large wall of apostation in the secular world. We can only imagine what Archbishop Lefebvre went through; none the less, as ABL being “retired”, he prayed to know if God was asking him to go back into the active apostolate.
Bishop Williamson is not retired. He never was. He still has an active obligation and responsibility to God’s vineyard.
Yes, Bishop Williamson was unjustly “kick out” of his religious order. Being unjust, and therefore illegal, he is still an SSPX Bishop (until God repairs that damage sometime in history). Until then, he and we, must carry on the torch of our Baptism and teach the Faith.
Today, the essential problem, and a grave problem I might add, is that catechetically as Bishop Williamson is still an active Bishop and a standing member of the “real” SSPX, he has the responsibility of a Shepherd to rally his SSPX priests, along with other Catholic priests, and his faithful throughout the Catholic world who are standing up in the same crisis of the Faith –he needs to lead as a Catholic Bishop. He has NO choice in the matter. It is NOT a “personal” wish, or a desire, for him to collect the flock. It is a moral obligation and a responsibility as a Catholic Bishop to do –like it or not.
He CANNOT act in the passivity of a
“father, adviser, and friend”. That is for the secular world to take care of. He has a role as a Catholic Bishop that the secular world cannot do. He needs to find his identity and lead. Like it or not!
And lastly, for Bishop Williamson to end his recent Eleison Comments (ASIAN JOURNEY”), to say:
“Do I have any candidates offering themselves for consecration as bishops?” be it one of sarcasm or not, to put it out there as a “joke”, is another expression of Bishop Williamson with a type of apathy in NOT taking it seriously in his duty as a Shepherd that God is placing in front of him.
Can he really see what he needs to do as an active Catholic Bishop in this new time of crisis of the Catholic Church?
He needs encouragement from everyone to see his duty.
Priests and faithful are dead without a Bishop actively leading them…Bishop Williamson is not retired. He must lead like an Apostle of Jesus Christ, a Shepherd in the Vineyard!