In his wisdom, I think H.E. Bishop Williamson clearly understands that we are past the time for establishing another Society like the SSPX of 1970. All of the Devil's advocates are free to zero in on any attempt to duplicate the Society and would infiltrate the organization before the ink had dried. People want to re-create 1970 but those days are gone forever. We are in the very late stages of the game and a loose federation is the best we can hope for.
This is indeed what Bishop Williamson would have you believe, however, with respect to His Excellency (whom I esteem), I think his fatalism is getting the better of his doctrine:
1) A loose confederation (ie., egalitarianism) is manifestly contrary to the hierarchical constitution of the Catholic Church;
2) Without hierarchy, Bishop Williamson will end up creating the very chaos he diagnoses as the reason to forego authority;
3) It also seems that those who advocate against the Catholic model for the apostolate on the basis that “circuмstances have changed and we can’t be 1970’ers anymore” are making exactly the same rationale and argument they reject in Fr. Simoulin’s “we can’t be ‘88ers anymore:”
The traditional apostolate is no longer viable; we must change.
4) They are therefore every bit as guilty for killing off the work of Archbishop Lefebvre as the neo-SSPX, even if the method of execution is different (one slides into conciliar modernism, while the other fractures and dissolved into ever greater factions, until both guzzle out completely).
5) And it seems not to occur to advocates of ecclesiastical democracy (same as the collegiality they oppose in the conciliar church) that the alleged “wisdom” of this novel “organization” of the apostolate, and the rationale for it (no longer feasible; authority shot; modern man too damaged; etc) is daily contradicted by the example of Avrille, Santa Cruz, the SAJM, the MCSPX, tge Carmelites of Ireland, the sisters of France, etc, etc.
6) The implicit suggestion is that were Archbishop Lefebvre alive, he would need to disband the SSPX!
7) As for the analogy to the schema prophecied by Fr. Calmel and Monsignor Robert Hugh Benson in “Lord of the World,” I can only say that with regard to the latter, there was still strict hierarchy and authority even in the Church of the end times, reduced to a half dozen priests and Pope.
And as regards Fr. Calmel, it is one thing to take the loose confederation posture when forced into it by bloody persecution (ie, unwillingly and reluctantly), but quite another to voluntarily reorganize upon such a patently uncatholic model!
Topic: Fr. Brendan King on Sr. Mary-Elizabeth's Departure from the SSPX Oblates (Read 4335 times)