Sean Johnson has re-published this, with his intro commentary. It really highlights the gulf in class, education, and holiness between +Williamson and +Fellay.
Long had Bishop Fellay sought to rid himself of Bishop Williamson, rightly seeing in this Englishman an insurmountable obstacle to any kind of practical accord with modernist Rome.
Only a couple years after becoming the compromise candidate-elect in 1994 (i.e., to keep Fr. Schmidberger from being elected to another term as Superior General), +Fellay would be seduced by dreams of bringing the SSPX and Tradition into Rome by the false visions of Madame Cornaz (aka Mme. Rosiniere).
Perhaps seeing +Fellay was amenable to the general idea of an accord, by 1997 Gilbert Perol would organize the GREC (Group for Reflection Between Catholics), organizing “discreet but not secret” meetings between SSPX and conciliar representatives to hammer out an acceptable pathway toward a practical accord.
By the time these meetings concluded in 1999, +Fellay would already be making practical preparations, and attempted to move +Williamson out of the US seminary in Winona, but His Lordship would resist until 2003.
Meanwhile, +Fellay would signal his general approval at the conclusion of the GREC meetings by organizing a pilgrimage to Rome, in which he telegraphed the reorientation he would be gradually implementing throughout the SSPX apostolate.
By the time 2009 rolled around, +Williamson would give the famous “h0Ɩ0cαųst interview” on German soil, providing +Fellay a specious pretext from removing him from public ministry, and sequestering him in a Wimbledon attic for the better part of four years. Many suspect the interview was a setup, including +Williamson (in hindsight).
With +Williamson out of the picture, the sellout was easier for +Fellay, except that the Eleison Comments (i.e., +Williamson’s weekly commentary on various topics, including SSPX-Roman relations) were a fly in the ointment.
Demonizing +Williamson in the Mass media, sabotaging his legal defense, and marginalizing his activity was not enough. +Fellay needed to kill his name before he killed the man, so he gave an ultimatum he knew +Williamson must refuse: Shut down the Eleison Comments, of be banned from participating in the November/2011 meeting of major superiors in Albano, Italy convened to consider a Roman proposal for regularization. +Williamson refused to close one of the only contrarian sources of information available to consider the other side of the story, and +Fellay responded by hanging the “disobedience” label on him. Shortly thereafter, +Williamson would be banned from participation in the General Chapter in July, 2012.
The Letter of the Three Bishops against the sellout had already been going viral for months, causing BXVI to back away from an accord. Bu the disagreement was out in the open, and priest and faithful were choosing sides, thanks to +Fellay’s treachery.
Finally, when he had succeeded in sufficiently wounding +Williamson’s reputation in the media and in the pews, the expulsion came.
What follows is +Williamson’s response to it.