Catholic Info
Traditional Catholic Faith => SSPX Resistance News => Topic started by: Ladislaus on April 24, 2025, 08:15:02 PM
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So, based on this ...
https://sspx.org/en/news/dillwyn-ordinations-minor-orders-and-subdiaconate-2025-51927
22 early Minor Orders
12 mid Minor Orders
6 Subdiaconate (only 4 Americans, 1 from Ireland, and 1 Benedictine)
These numbers are almost identical to what they were in my time. Low 20s to start, about 10 by 3/4 of the way through, and 4-5 make it through to Ordination to the Priesthood.
So why did they need this $50 million seminary again ... when Winona was perfectly adequate for similar numbers back in my day (late 1980s - early 1990s)?
Winona is a beautiful property with much land, and if some extra space really were needed, they could have added another building or a wing into the existing building for maybe 1-2 million dollars depending on how many more you wanted to accommodate.
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SSPX paid $420,000 for Winona.
https://sspx.org/en/news/winona-has-been-bought-7450
(https://sspx.org/sites/default/files/styles/content_image_16_9_desktop/public/drupal-7/winona.webp?itok=ISrv7_Td)
They had to borrow another $90K for repairs on top of the $420K, but still (and the cite then-Father Williamson's newsletter from 1987 ...
More good news: The seminary in Minnesota has been bought, and it now belongs to the Society of St. Pius X. In just under two months you have contributed to our Building Fund a sum of $402,008, enabling us to purchase Winona without a mortgage. That is a remarkable achievement.
Even more precious in God’s eyes will be the sacrifice many of you must have made. After all, the Lord of Lords might have inspired one or two souls well endowed with this world’s goods to put up the entire sum. Instead He sent St. Joseph to knock on many doors. After all, He wants many souls to store their treasure in Heaven. To all of you, many thanks.
... and also cite a visitor's impressions
Words fail me in trying to tell you my impression of the magnificence of the place, the holy atmosphere, and how perfect this will be for the Society ... What a place! What a view! What an opportunity for the Society! There are just not enough words in my poor vocabulary to describe my enthusiasm
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(https://scontent-iad3-2.xx.fbcdn.net/v/t1.6435-9/58809830_2229187747158204_721238855696515072_n.jpg?_nc_cat=111&ccb=1-7&_nc_sid=127cfc&_nc_ohc=N6T252iJPh4Q7kNvwFeSBJL&_nc_oc=AdkPrIlkXd61uVAsQayAYfS8v2OYX5oB6YPFlk1hPrR6WeJFVvu7zFflPuljbIE1cb8&_nc_zt=23&_nc_ht=scontent-iad3-2.xx&_nc_gid=njrV1Nl2ryOYzlcV-o414g&oh=00_AfF8yhwX3jZuIHohjzJ0eTRpCzmSzlK2vPl9TbwzOYOWvQ&oe=68324990)
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(https://i.redd.it/ki9q0f1f5ga51.jpg)
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(https://s3-media0.fl.yelpcdn.com/bphoto/iumX8X0daOFLH5oaZcn29w/o.jpg)
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If I remember correctly, it was Mr. Novak (Frs. Kenneth and Lawrence's father) who found the Winona property. I remember reading the article in the old STAS newspaper that gave Mr. Novak credit.
Was the old newspaper called Verbum? They don't have it anymore. They used to link to the archives but that was before 2012 when everything changed.
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If I remember correctly, it was Mr. Novak (Frs. Kenneth and Lawrence's father) who found the Winona property. I remember reading the article in the old STAS newspaper that gave Mr. Novak credit.
Was the old newspaper called Verbum? They don't have it anymore. They used to link to the archives but that was before 2012 when everything changed.
Yes, Dr. Novak. I was at Loyola University in Chicago when I found Tradition, and Dr. Novak was my sponsor for conditional confirmation ... before I entered SSPX seminary in Winona in the Fall of 1989. He and Mrs. Novak came up to see me receive clerical tonsure. Yes, the seminary / seminarians issued the Verbum.
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$50 Million...Trying to grasp what that sort of money could have been spent on instead. Perhaps improving and expanding numerous chapels (mission and otherwise). Our mission chapel attendance has tripled in the past few years meaning some Masses are extremely overcrowded, and the parish hall is unable to seat more than 50-60 people. Many young families are in desperate need of a high quality home school program and some are moving away to locations with SSPX schools (a blessing for those able to move, but a huge loss of good people locally).
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$50 Million...Trying to grasp what that sort of money could have been spent on instead. Perhaps improving and expanding numerous chapels (mission and otherwise). Our mission chapel attendance has tripled in the past few years meaning some Masses are extremely overcrowded, and the parish hall is unable to seat more than 50-60 people. Many young families are in desperate need of a high quality home school program and some are moving away to locations with SSPX schools (a blessing for those able to move, but a huge loss of good people locally).
Yes, that's how it was at St. Joseph's in San Antonio.
1. It was a mission chapel, not a Priory.
2. A lot of military in this area, but specifically *training bases* which is by its very nature temporary. So those families wouldn't be here long.
3. No school, so every family had to either A) homeschool, B) move to another SSPX chapel with a school, or C) send their kids to public school.
All the good families we became friends with chose B). There was one family that was homeschooled, but they were extremely liberal and ended up at a Motu Mass. They left after a few parishioners raised issues about their daughter wearing scandalously short skirts. Who knows where they go now. They have some real issues in that family, which stems from the husband being a real beta male, and his wife being way too dominant and choleric. I looked them up on Facebook recently. Let's just say their whole family need lots of prayers. The husband is a long-time SSPX-er too, going back several decades. The wife is a convert.
I was surprised, scandalized really, at the number of families who chose C). And this wasn't in the 90's.
In my personal opinion it's a mortal sin to send your kids to public school in current year. You want them to be woke, transgender, degenerate, morally corrupted, get perverted sex ed, receive countless anti-Faith, anti-family, and anti-natalist propaganda, have peers show them porn on their phones, if they're not bullying them at the time? You think that's morally licit?
Our Lord says, in St. Matthew 18:6:
"But he that shall scandalize one of these little ones that believe in me, it were better for him that a millstone should be hanged about his neck, and that he should be drowned in the depth of the sea."
Seriously, if my wife couldn't homeschool, and there was no SSPX school or private school option, I would just keep the kids home and "do my best". Better to live life with a 6th grade education and work a trade/minimum wage/manual labor, and end up going into heaven, than to be cast into hell with a PhD and a million dollars in the bank. Seriously, it isn't rocket science. Our Lord was very clear about this kind of choice too!
There are worse fates than having a poor or inadequate secular education -- such as, I don't know, going to Hell.
Ask Jonathon Van Maren at LifeSiteNews. The average age kids are exposed to porn -- usually at school and via a smartphone -- is like age 9. It's insane. And refer to Our Lady about what kinds of sins claim the largest number of victims, casting the most souls into hell. It's sins of the flesh.
And this isn't your father's or grandfather's porn either. I will refrain from going into details, but I will say it's most degenerate, perverted, and twisted stuff. It has gone FAR BEYOND "girlie magazines" or "nudes" that were kept hidden in a box under the bed.
It would appear that if you can get "sins of the flesh" under control, your chance of salvation goes up DRASTICALLY. All the other sins are easily overcome by comparison. I remember one story about a man who was prepared to part with all his sins -- except his mistress. The priest at his deathbed was BEGGING him to be reasonable, and give her up. He refused; he died embracing his mistress, in a state of mortal sin. If it weren't for that irregular marriage (adultery), he might very well have saved his soul. That book ("The Sinner's Return to God"; the chapter on impurity) made an impression on me. That, and Our Lady's words at Fatima.
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Apart from the misuse of funds, it's not uncommon to see Priories with a half dozen priests stationed there while chapels with many families and large attendance overall go without a resident priest, getting Mass only on weekends, sometimes just on Sundays ... whereas the priory chapels (sometimes not that much larger) have 4-5 Masses the faithful can attend.
Whoever's making these decisions and these assignments will have to answer to God for the graces those faithful at these chapels are missing out on due to lack of weekday Mass, or faithful who die without Last Sacraments because they don't make it until the weekend, etc.
Father John Fullerton ... I'm talking about you.
Do these priests have any love for souls whatsoever? If I were in charge, I wouldn't be able to sleep at night if I were not getting the Sacraments to as many of the faithful as I possibly could, and I could never spent 50 million on a seminary or 25 million on a church when the money could be better spent elsewhere at chapels throughout the country ... for the good of souls and the glory of God, not the glory of +Fellay and the SSPX.
Here's the other thing about those expenditures. When I was at Loyola University in Chicago, I used to spend some Saturday mornings just walking around the city in the vicinity of the campus there, and within a couple hours I could visit 10 magnificently beautiful churches there, maybe one every other block, none of which could be duplicated today for any price. I would imagine the Tridentine Mass being offered again in those churches.
There are also magnificent seminarians all over the country. Now, the Traditional attitude USED TO BE that these would all return to Catholic use when the crisis had passed. So why would you build a 50-million-dollar seminary when there are dozens of seminaries that you couldn't build for even double that today that will return to Catholic use eventually? Well, it's because the neo-SSPX have accepted this notion that the Conciliar Church is the "New Normal", i.e. that Vatican II is here to stay, with a few tweaks, since, as +Fellay said, it's 95% Catholic [that's the line of Athanasius Schneider to which +Vigano object in one of his first moves to Traditional Catholicism]. SSPX are right there with all the conservative Conciliar Novus Ordites who believe that V2 is Catholic, but just badly implemented, with a few things here or there that need to be corrected, but it's here to stay and mostly Catholic, and we just need the right conservative "Pope" to right the ship, and SSPX will be just a part of that progression in the Church. Traditional Catholics used to believe almost to a person that V2 needs to be declared completely null and the Church restored entirely to the pre-Vatican II condition.
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Do these priests have any love for souls whatsoever? If I were in charge, I wouldn't be able to sleep at night if I were not getting the Sacraments to as many of the faithful as I possibly could, and I could never spent 50 million on a seminary or 25 million on a church when the money could be better spent elsewhere at chapels throughout the country ... for the good of souls and the glory of God, not the glory of +Fellay and the SSPX.
I sometimes think about Fr. Slupski who was my priest from age 3 to about 23. I took my Faith seriously because he took it so seriously. He did tons of travelling to bring Mass to as many people as he physically could. It definitely made me value the Mass more. Just seeing how fervent, earnest, and NOT hypocritical he was. The whole "Catholic religion" thing seemed so serious, so important, like there was an epic battle for souls in progress.
It's probably one of the causes of my own "temporary" vocation to spend a few years at a seminary. Which incidentally did me IMMENSE good that affects my life to the present day -- it formed who I am. Not an hour of my life goes by that wouldn't be drastically different if I hadn't spent those years at S.T.A.S.
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I sometimes think about Fr. Slupski who was my priest from age 3 to about 23. I took my Faith seriously because he took it so seriously. He did tons of travelling to bring Mass to as many people as he physically could. It definitely made me value the Mass more. Just seeing how fervent, earnest, and NOT hypocritical he was. The whole "Catholic religion" thing seemed so serious, so important, like there was an epic battle for souls in progress.
It's probably one of the causes of my own "temporary" vocation to spend a few years at a seminary. Which incidentally did me IMMENSE good that affects my life to the present day -- it formed who I am. Not an hour of my life goes by that wouldn't be drastically different if I hadn't spent those years at S.T.A.S.
Father Leo Carley in Akron ... at the age of 90 still offers daily Mass, Confessions, 2 Masses on Holy Days, did the Holy Week Liturgies ... and drives to West Virginia still (has refused offers from several people to drive him) on Sundays, so that he offers 2 Masses every Sunday, and he's been BY HIMSELF since the mid-1970s.
Mass at 9:00 AM every day, and he's in the Confessional by 8:30 on weekdays, and 8:00 on Sundays. Then on Sundays, about 10:15, he makes the one-hour-45-minute drive to West Virginia to offer Mass there at 12:30 (getting in the Confessional as soon as he gets there ... it's a much smaller chapel), and gets back in as needed afterwards, getting him back to Akron close to 4PM on Sunday.
In the early days of the United States, priests often would get on horseback and travel for weeks by themselves into the wilderness in search of souls who needed the Sacraments.
Modern SSPX like to have a half dozen priests sitting around eating expensive food and drinking expensive wine all week ... while the faithful at many chapels go without the Sacraments except on Sundays.
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US$420,000 in Spring 1988 when the Winona property was purchased would be US$1,103,700 in Spring 2025 when adjusted for inflation.
What was the final cost again to build the Virginia seminary?
The Dominican noviate building in Winona was a beautiful structure with an amazing landscape surrounding it. Although not as "homey" as Ridgefield, the Winona seminary felt warm, comfortable, and "Catholic", especially since it had been built in the heyday of academic gothic architecture in US Catholic Church.
The Virginia seminary looks like a Central European prison. I have never visited there, but suspect it feels "institutional" like a prison or public high school (Is that redundant?).
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The amount of materialistic Catholics, trad or not, are at an all time high.
Gotta be loved by the world too, ya know...
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US$420,000 in Spring 1988 when the Winona property was purchased would be US$1,103,700 in Spring 2025 when adjusted for inflation.
What was the final cost again to build the Virginia seminary?
Yes, I wasn't sure of the inflation, but last I heard Virginia seminary cost $50 million and there's a lot left undone (like an actual chapel).
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The Dominican noviate building in Winona was a beautiful structure with an amazing landscape surrounding it. Although not as "homey" as Ridgefield, the Winona seminary felt warm, comfortable, and "Catholic", especially since it had been built in the heyday of academic gothic architecture in US Catholic Church.
The Virginia seminary looks like a Central European prison. I have never visited there, but suspect it feels "institutional" like a prison or public high school (Is that redundant?).
While I've not actually visited Virginia, from the pictures, yes, it does look very sterile. I loved it at Winona. Perhaps the one thing I would have changed was that (what I considered to be) extremely tacky St. Dominic before the crucifix behind / above the main altar.
What I found interesting there is that in the article it mentions the Dominicans who were buried in the seminary ... and that the seminary vacated in 1969. I used to visit there, especially on All Souls Day and during the week ... and I noticed LOT of Dominicans who were deceased in the late 1960s, and many of them were VERY YOUNG. I kept wondering whether God was sparing them from what was about to come with the NOM or if the revolution upset them so much that it wrecked their health.
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On the bright side, the SSPX now has a dedicated brothers novitiate and overflow for Humanities/pre seminary year, and no sharing rooms in the new seminary. 1000 acres is also valuable if properly managed, especially in this day and age when many are happy to sell the farm to over bidding developers who want to drive up housing prices and only let people rent apartments with no yard.
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https://www.gralon.net/mairies-france/maine-et-loire/association-seminaire-st-louis-marie-grignion-de-montfort-morannes_W491015256.htm
Just posting the "Mission Statement " of +Faure's Seminary in France. Unofficial.
Date of création : 21/01/2017
Date de publication : 04/02/2017
Date of recent modification : 14/02/2023
RNA : W491015256
Type : Leisure and social life
Objet of the Association :
The objective is to ensure the worship of the Roman Catholic Church in the traditional rite, called St. Pius V. This involves the maintenance and training of ministers of worship as well as other people involved in the exercise of worship, support for other associations engaged in this activity, the public and exclusive exercise of this worship in France or abroad, the acquisition, rental, construction or development and maintenance of buildings such as seminaries, places of worship, premises intended for ministers of worship, as well as all other activities directly related to the exercise of worship, but of a strictly accessory nature.
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Google translation
Good description below of the Agenda / curriculum for seminarians.
https://apotresdejesusetdemarie.fr/le-seminaire/
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The great errors of our time: Modernism, liberalism, etc. This spiritual formation will continue throughout the seminary with spiritual lectures given on certain weekday evenings.
Philosophy, "ancilla theologiae" (servant of theology), is then studied for two years by the seminarians.
"All philosophy sings the glory of Our Lord Jesus Christ, who created the things of this world. Philosophy is nothing other than the discovery of the wonders that God has wrought in this world, in the material world, in the spiritual world, and in the heavenly world, for the summit of philosophy is theodicy, the study of God, of all the marvelous attributes of God." Archbishop Lefebvre
In accordance with canon law, the seminarians then begin the study of theology, the study of God and revealed supernatural truths. This study is done at the school of the “Angelic Doctor”, Saint Thomas Aquinas,...
Sorry, I have no idea what they paid for the building... the point is that they have an ancient institution, not many bells and whistles...it was used as a hospital waaay back!
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On the bright side, the SSPX now has a dedicated brothers novitiate and overflow for Humanities/pre seminary year ...
There is no bright side. That could have been accomplished for under 2 million dollars ... an extra building or wing for the few extra "Humanities Year" students (IMO unnecessary to begin with), and the Brothers' Notiviate could have either also remained on the same grounds or gone to Ridgefield (where they could also help out with the occasional retreat that happens there).
You don't spend $50 million that could have been much better spent elsewhere to accommodate a handful of Humanities Year seminarians (10% of whom at best make it through to Ordination).
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Let us thank God for His blessings, not how men make waste of them. Our faith is not in the SSPX, but in God who can bring good out of them.
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I found it of interest when Ladislaus posted the young age of the deceased Dominicans. My great great Uncle Fr. Rudolph Stoltz died age 67 in 1944. I think of him how rough it must have been for him through war, after war, after war, and depression time, what he must have gone through. He knew the True Church was under destruction. He did educate the family through letters and meals together when he could. My grandmother his nephews wife, was known to have said at Vatican II, "there goes the Church"! He heard the Fr. Coughlin on the radio. Being and German, Fr. Stoltz was desired very much being German and of course Priest. But once the war came on, I can venture he had spit on him!
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Also, in the 60's was Cuban Crisis. My parents were so concerned and worried where our family of 7 kids would hid from fall out. We had no basement. They came to a decision to make the largest bedroom and sand bags for the window, etc. Afraid for our bodies. But I don't need to go into it. Also, we had seminaries that were with ɧoɱosɛҳųαƖity. Good Bye Good Men book. My husbands' cousin, went to St. Menarid (sp) Indiana. He went in and came out B'rth B'ani. He came out like a boomerang.
How old is young?
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There is no bright side. That could have been accomplished for under 2 million dollars ... an extra building or wing for the few extra "Humanities Year" students (IMO unnecessary to begin with), and the Brothers' Notiviate could have either also remained on the same grounds or gone to Ridgefield (where they could also help out with the occasional retreat that happens there).
Why do you think the humanities year is unnecessary? I think it's a step in the right direction. I've even thought the sspx vocations( in the US at any rate) could do with more Humanities. I've found the younger generation of priests quite ignorant. It's not a good look.
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Why do you think the humanities year is unnecessary? I think it's a step in the right direction. I've even thought the sspx vocations( in the US at any rate) could do with more Humanities. I've found the younger generation of priests quite ignorant. It's not a good look.
100% unnecessary. Somehow the best and brightest priests the SSPX have did just fine without it for all those years they didn't have that. Not a few seminarians come through St. Mary's where presumably the High School preparation should be adequate. Others (like myself) already had college degrees (I double-majored in Latin and Greek, with minors in philosophy, theology, and history). Prospective seminarians could be given entrance/aptitude exam in case there might be a perceived academic gap, and there could be a Summer session or tow offered to make up for it, or else they could be sent over to St. Mary's for a year to accomplish effectively the same thing. What I saw was that there may have been a few seminarians who struggled a bit to start, but if by halfway through the first year they weren't starting to get it, then those were likely the ones who would never make it academically anyway. Whatever perceived "gap" this Humanities Year was supposed to fill could easily and probably much more appropriately filled in other ways. Finally, there's something to be said for the culture at the seminary not being "watered down" in a sense by young men who may be there because they had not figured out yet what they wanted to do with their lives and were just there largely "discerning" vs. before when by the time you got there, you were already pretty seriously inclined toward the vocation.
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I found it of interest when Ladislaus posted the young age of the deceased Dominicans. My great great Uncle Fr. Rudolph Stoltz died age 67 in 1944. I think of him how rough it must have been for him through war, after war, after war, and depression time, what he must have gone through. He knew the True Church was under destruction. He did educate the family through letters and meals together when he could. My grandmother his nephews wife, was known to have said at Vatican II, "there goes the Church"! He heard the Fr. Coughlin on the radio. Being and German, Fr. Stoltz was desired very much being German and of course Priest. But once the war came on, I can venture he had spit on him!
Yes, I just caught this casually because, well, I tend to think very left-brain, so to speak, as I ended up ultimately being a good fit for computer programming. So I honestly was not going down there with any prior intention, but was just going from tombstone to tombstone, offering some prayers for the deceased ... and my brain, which has a tendency to think in numbers (and in logic) just started automatically doing the math. I probably should have written down the findings. But WAY too many had died young there ... I'm talking about anywhere from their mid-20s to late 40s. ONE AFTER THE OTHER ... so that I couldn't help but notice it, AND I also noticed that most of the young ones died in the second half of th 1960s ... 1967, 1968, 1969. What are the odds that such a cluster of young men had died within the same 5-year period? Next to nothing ... unless there had been some minor outbreak of bubonic plague or something I had not heard of before. I came to the conclusion that God was sparing many of them from the horrors that were to follow or else that some of them died of depression / despair / heartbreak ... which can easily lead to a depressed immune system (I believed that led to my own brother's death) ... or both. Perhaps God saw that this or that young man would lose the faith or end up celebrating clown masses ... and so mercifully took them out before that could happen.
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Let us thank God for His blessings, not how men make waste of them. Our faith is not in the SSPX, but in God who can bring good out of them.
Maybe ... only because it's too late to do anything about it. But this type of passivity contributes to the problem, and the faithful who just go along with this attitude are the enables of the SSPX. Had more lay faithful spoken up against this, perhaps it could have been thwarted, since after all they were in need of lay contributions ... although some of them were "contributing" without their consent or knowledfge as SSPX were siphoning away chapel contributions.
But the thread was about the simple observation that the pretext for the seminary was that there wasn't enough room. Based on even their latest numbers, that's entirely untrue, as they're almost identical to what we had when I was there ... minus the Humanities Year. Apart from that, which I hold to be entirely unnecessary, there were other wasy to deal with that need that would not have cost $50,000,000 ... and perhaps not cost anything at all, where that money could have done extraordinarily more good for souls, or, heck, even could have been given to the poor. For that money you could start a long term care facility or even Catholic hospital where Traditional Catholics who now perhaps end up languishing away in nursing homes in their final years could have lived in an assisted living environment with access to the Sacraments in their critical final years. Or you could have started some major homeless shelter where you could have encouraged conversion, or build some things in Africa or Asia (for cheap compared to here). MUCH GOOD could have come from $50,000,000. Instead, it was spent because Winona was SLIGHTLY LOW ON SPACE? You couldn't just have built a new building or wing for $2-$3 million TOPS? Of course they could have.
So, then, what was that about since it obviously was not for pragmatic reasons?
Well, for one, I believe that they were banking on the impending "regularization" with Rome until +Williamson scuttled that, where they expected to be flooded with throngs of seminarians (as if those waiting for regularization did not already have the FFSP option).
Secondly, it's a sign that SSPX considered this state of the Church to be a "new normal" rather than an aberration, where once it had passed, those many thousands of churches and dozens of seminarians that make what SSPX have pale by comparison ... would return to Catholic. SSPX have given up on the notion that this state is an aberration.
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Of course, if there's an influx of seminarians after the regularization, what does that do to your theological position when a significant percentage of those there required some regularization with the Conciliar Church to go there? That's by design IMO.
Of course, if you spent even a ridiculuous 5 million dollars to add a new building at Winona and then either adapt or purchase a place for the Brothers' novitiate, or sent them to Ridgefield, then bought a new retreat center, the $45 million dollars in savings could have purchased NINETY very-well-appointed Priory biuldings (averaging half a million dollars each for maybe 3 priests on average). Since you wouldn't need or couldn't staff that many priories, let's say you built 20 priories. That would still leave you with $35,000,000 to maybe upgrade some of the dinky little chapels that are perhaps throttled in growth potential just due to not having a big enough or nice enough church building to at least initially draw people in. So you could build 35 one-million-dollars chapels, 10 half-million-dollar priorities, and still have the $5 million for seminary expansion. People don't realize how much money that is what what else they blew. Another option, as I said, would be a not-for-profit assisted living facility. You could open/start/fund schools. There would be an untold amount of genuine good that could be done for souls with that kind of money.
Hmmm. If you had priests there all week at many of these chapels with many families and good attendance, maybe the presence of that priest (vs. flying in for an hour on weekends) could lead to MORE VOCATIONS. But I'm sure there are many potential vocations falling through the cracks due to their hourly exposure to a priest, to the Mass, to the Sacraments on a weekly basis.
Then as those numbers increase, you could take the next step toward expanding the seminary (still tons of room at Winona) ... but then you'd also have greater numbers at your chapels ot help finance it, etc.
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Secondly, it's a sign that SSPX considered this state of the Church to be a "new normal" rather than an aberration, where once it had passed, those many thousands of churches and dozens of seminarians that make what SSPX have pale by comparison ... would return to Catholic. SSPX have given up on the notion that this state is an aberration.
This point hasn't been brought up before, but needs to.
Anything on the topic of "what the SSPX stood for" and how it's changed now. It's hard to put into words all the things the SSPX was, what it stood for, it's attitudes and outlook on the world, etc.
But this is a KEY piece of the puzzle. They never considered the post-Vatican II takeover to be something we'd have to "deal with" moving forward. No, we always considered that the Church eventually would convert (the Restoration), Vatican 2 would be thrown out, and there would be a return to Tradition. Many corollaries flow from that, including "we don't need to build all the churches/seminaries to hold that flood of new Trads post-Restoration" because yes, there will be PLENTY of seminary buildings and churches to hold all the Trads -- but only once the Crisis is REALLY over. That's the key point.
But you see, if the war in fact continues, if the Crisis is NOT in fact ending, then
A) the neo-SSPX "peace deal" (whether a signed deal, or a de-facto change. We have seen the latter) is more like a SURRENDER. When you lay down your arms while the war continues, that is literally the definition of surrender.
B) The SSPX would have to build its own buildings to accommodate a "bump" of people after the surrender, because it's not like they're magically going to get access to Novus Ordo parish churches, seminaries, etc. -- because the Crisis hasn't ended yet, hello!
This is a very important point.
The SSPX *could* rightfully expect to get access to previously Novus Ordo real estate to help rebuild Tradition -- after the Restoration. But they can't expect such generosity BEFORE said Restoration. They are living in fantasy land now, where the Crisis is over in their hearts, but it's not really over. So if they want to be able to welcome the bump or "flood" of new people, they're going to have to build their own buildings. And, of course, those "new people" are just going to be Indulters who were scared (read: cowards) of the labels the SSPX always endured by being faithful over the past decades. NOT the same kind of people who will return to Tradition after the great Restoration.
Related:
https://www.cathinfo.com/crisis-in-the-church/tell-me-why-indulters-aren't-cowards-and-or-ignorant/
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But this is a KEY piece of the puzzle. They never considered the post-Vatican II takeover to be something we'd have to "deal with" moving forward. No, we always considered that the Church eventually would convert (the Restoration), Vatican 2 would be thrown out, and there would be a return to Tradition. Many corollaries flow from that, including "we don't need to build all the churches/seminaries to hold that flood of new Trads post-Restoration" because yes, there will be PLENTY of seminary buildings and churches to hold all the Trads -- but only once the Crisis is REALLY over. That's the key point.
But you see, if the war in fact continues, if the Crisis is NOT in fact ending, then
A) the neo-SSPX "peace deal" (whether a signed deal, or a de-facto change. We have seen the latter) is more like a SURRENDER. When you lay down your arms while the war continues, that is literally the definition of surrender.
B) The SSPX would have to build its own buildings to accommodate a "bump" of people after the surrender, because it's not like they're magically going to get access to Novus Ordo parish churches, seminaries, etc. -- because the Crisis hasn't ended yet, hello!
This is a very important point.
Absolutely ... and these absurdly imprudent building projects are yet another piece of evidence for this indicator. One of these days I'll post some pictures of the 10-12 churches in the city of Chicago near where I went to school (most not wreckovated yet due to being landmarks), and pictures of some of the biggest seminaries in the US (built before Vatcan II), churches that cannot be built today at any price just due to lack of skill, but if people had the skill, it would probably cost well over $100 million each, and some of the seminaries, like Mundelein in Chicago, Mount Saint Mary's in Maryland, etc. ... if these were to return to Catholic (vs. Conciliar use), it would make the new SSPX seminary building look like a complete joke.
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100% unnecessary. Somehow the best and brightest priests the SSPX have did just fine without it for all those years they didn't have that. Not a few seminarians come through St. Mary's where presumably the High School preparation should be adequate. Others (like myself) already had college degrees (I double-majored in Latin and Greek, with minors in philosophy, theology, and history). Prospective seminarians could be given entrance/aptitude exam in case there might be a perceived academic gap, and there could be a Summer session or tow offered to make up for it, or else they could be sent over to St. Mary's for a year to accomplish effectively the same thing. What I saw was that there may have been a few seminarians who struggled a bit to start, but if by halfway through the first year they weren't starting to get it, then those were likely the ones who would never make it academically anyway. Whatever perceived "gap" this Humanities Year was supposed to fill could easily and probably much more appropriately filled in other ways. Finally, there's something to be said for the culture at the seminary not being "watered down" in a sense by young men who may be there because they had not figured out yet what they wanted to do with their lives and were just there largely "discerning" vs. before when by the time you got there, you were already pretty seriously inclined toward the vocation.
I think you've slightly missed my point. The best and brightest of the SSPX priests have done well because, well... They are bright. Highly intelligent people operate at a higher level by themselves, they are autodidacts usually. So we don't need to thank the SSPX for these individuals. I think, rather, to assess the quality of SSPX seminaries one should look at a more common denominator- the average priest.
Funnily enough, there is actually another active thread on this forum right now discussing the Christmas sermon by a young, SSPX priest in which numerous heresies were stated. Seven years of formation at a 50 million dollar seminary wasn't enough apparently.
But I'll leave that one alone because I think where you actually missed my point was the question of knowledge versus intelligence. I have no problem with the intelligence of SSPX priests. Priests are not meant to be geniuses. It is completely fine for them to be as intelligent as ordinary white-collar professionals. What I do find strange, however, is that the younger priests just don't seem to be that knowledgeable. One couldn't really have a normal adult conversation with them. One would have to refrain from bringing up anything too grown-up like the "Roman Question" or the "Encyclopedists." It's disappointing.
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I think you've slightly missed my point. The best and brightest of the SSPX priests have done well because, well... They are bright. ...
But I'll leave that one alone because I think where you actually missed my point was the question of knowledge versus intelligence. I have no problem with the intelligence of SSPX priests. Priests are not meant to be geniuses. It is completely fine for them to be as intelligent as ordinary white-collar professionals. What I do find strange, however, is that the younger priests just don't seem to be that knowledgeable. One couldn't really have a normal adult conversation with them. One would have to refrain from bringing up anything too grown-up like the "Roman Question" or the "Encyclopedists." It's disappointing.
Just wondering if this applies: are these rules only for persons wishing to live in a priory?
SSPX STATUTES:
VIII - DE SODALIUM SANCTIFICATIONIS MEDIIS PECULIARIBUS
1. Before becoming members of the Fraternity, aspirants must complete a year of spiritual study, during which they will strive to restore Our Lord to His rightful place in their souls and in their entire being.
To this end, they will fill their minds with His light through meditative reading of the Gospel, the Fathers, and spiritual authors. The liturgy, Gregorian chant, music, and Latin will also be the subject of their studies.
However, this year must have as its primary goal a true conversion, a restoration of order through the rejection of bad habits and the acquisition of natural and supernatural virtues through vigilance and prayer.
The mystical and theological knowledge of the Holy Mass will increase their devotion to these Holy Mysteries, to the Virgin Mary, Co-Redemptrix and Mediatrix.
****
The Statutes are not too easily reformed. Somewhere else it says 6 years Seminary training ..
So what did +Williamson do in Winona? '89? He invented "YEAR 0"
Brilliant!
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I think you've slightly missed my point. The best and brightest of the SSPX priests have done well because, well... They are bright. Highly intelligent people operate at a higher level by themselves, they are autodidacts usually. So we don't need to thank the SSPX for these individuals. I think, rather, to assess the quality of SSPX seminaries one should look at a more common denominator- the average priest.
I was there, though, before Humanities Year, and the average ones that had sufficient intellectual aptitude in general to become priests made it through just fine without the Humanities Year, even if it maybe took them a few months to catch up. Those who didn't make it undoubtedly would not have made it even with the addition of the Humanities Year. Now, if there were some cases that needed to be attended to, they could easily have come up with a solution that didn't coset $50 million dollars ... to add a Humanities Year. You could have sent them to St. Mary's, given entrance/aptitude exams to prospective seminarians and then referred some who weren't ready to St. Mary's, or even host a Summer program to get them up to speed, and in the most challenging cases, have them do 2 Summer sessions, which would only set them back one academic year ... just as Humanities Year would have. Finally, for 2 million dollars TOPS, they could have added a new wing or building to the complex ... all problems solved for a fraction of the cost.
IMO, they used the Humanities Year to artificially create the alleged "overcrowding problem" to justify something they wanted to build for ulterior motives, and then speculating about what those motives may have been, since by itself even the engineered problem could have been solved very easily without the absurd expenditure. Problem -> Reaction -> Solution. Create a problem by adding Humanities Year (instead of solving for it before you added it by adding a wing or building). Elicit a Reaction ... where the lay faithful are sympathetic to pictures of two seminarians sharing one of those tiny rooms. Solution ... propose the building project and get the lay faithful to send money.
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Just wondering if this applies: are these rules only for persons wishing to live in a priory?
SSPX STATUTES:
VIII - DE SODALIUM SANCTIFICATIONIS MEDIIS PECULIARIBUS
1. Before becoming members of the Fraternity, aspirants must complete a year of spiritual study, during which they will strive to restore Our Lord to His rightful place in their souls and in their entire being.
To this end, they will fill their minds with His light through meditative reading of the Gospel, the Fathers, and spiritual authors. The liturgy, Gregorian chant, music, and Latin will also be the subject of their studies.
However, this year must have as its primary goal a true conversion, a restoration of order through the rejection of bad habits and the acquisition of natural and supernatural virtues through vigilance and prayer.
The mystical and theological knowledge of the Holy Mass will increase their devotion to these Holy Mysteries, to the Virgin Mary, Co-Redemptrix and Mediatrix.
****
The Statutes are not too easily reformed. Somewhere else it says 6 years Seminary training ..
So what did +Williamson do in Winona? '89? He invented "YEAR 0"
Brilliant!
See, that "Year of Spirituality" had always been intended as that "Year 0". Really the toughest part was the Latin, and most were starting from scratch and no prior knowledge was assumed, or required ... beyond the general aptitude to learn it. Not everyone has that, but then they can't become priests. Rest of the coursework was Bishop Williamson's Act of the Magisterium class, which he's taught even to laymen at retreats, and then some basic Sacred Scripture. Apart from that, the only other thing that was a bit challenging was "Logic", as an intro to Philosophy, but again this required very little prior knowledge. I took Logic classes at University without any prerequisite.
It really wasn't extremely challenging, academically ... and if it was, a Humanities Year would not have made it that much better, but could have been supplied outside a full year at seminary. Really the greater challenge was the spiritual life, the discipline, the order, the schedule, the obedience, etc. And that's precisely what the traditional "Year of Spirituality" was for.
So, really, I think the intent was to create more "well-rounded" students who had some knowledge of secular subjects like history and literature, etc. That kind of concern could easily have been addressed with a couple of Summer sessions or even assigned reading lists ... and would not have required $50 million dollars and an extra year of formation.
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So, really, I think the intent was to create more "well-rounded" students who had some knowledge of secular subjects like history and literature, etc. That kind of concern could easily have been addressed with a couple of Summer sessions or even assigned reading lists ... and would not have required $50 million dollars and an extra year of formation.
I think you are correct, Lad. Diocesan seminarians have to obtain a Bachelor's degree (any major) before even applying to seminary.
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I think you are correct, Lad. Diocesan seminarians have to obtain a Bachelor's degree (any major) before even applying to seminary.
Hmmm. I think the one around here issues you a Bachelor's Degree if you make it through the first part of seminary at least, so you didn't have to have one going in.
As for the excuse of "well-rounded", in terms of secular education, most Universities, it's a complete scam ... as my High School curriculum did more along those lines that University did ... but they have to keep all those Leftist sociology, psychology and other Humanities' professors employed by forcing students to take 2/3 to 4/5 of their coursework in "core curriculum".
In any case, the need, whatever it was, could have been addressed for well under the $50 million price tag. Worst case, you add a new building onto the property for an exorbitant $5 million, then have the Brothers' Novitate at Ridgefield, and then purchase an alternate Retreat facility for $1 million dollars. When I was at STAS, however, several Brothers did their novitiate there, among the seminarians, and it doubled also to occasionally get the Brothers some course work if they so desired ... and, God knows, perhaps some of them over many years could even have been qualified for ordination. In a very real sense, their formation was little different from that of seminarians, in terms of spiritual formation ... the only adjustment needed was for them to focus more on manual labor (of which there was plenty there) and less on studies. But I digress. There's no way anything more than $10 million would have been required. For the remaining $40 million, you could have built 20 2-million-dollar chapels around the country.
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Solution ... propose the building project and get the lay faithful to send money.
CORRECTED: Solution ... propose the building project and FORCE THE CHAPEL PRIESTS TO SEND THE LAY FAITHFULS' MONEY.
;)
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If you don't believe me about Chicago ... have a look at this. Just one after another practically within walking distance of Loyola Chicago (where I went to school), where any ONE of them could simply not be recreated today at any price, and they put the $25-million-dollar St. Mary's church to shame. There are a small number of "new" churches there, which cannot be salvaged but will have to be razed to the ground and turned into parking lots, and a few that would have to have some reversible wreck-o-vations undone, but I was just astonished as I walked around. Every few blocks an absolute masterpiece that our modern society simply could not reproduce.
https://maps.app.goo.gl/n66PcmH6SQNdCVi7A
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CORRECTED: Solution ... propose the building project and FORCE THE CHAPEL PRIESTS TO SEND THE LAY FAITHFULS' MONEY.
;)
Indeed, though there are some they persuade to donate directly too. :laugh1:
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I was there, though, before Humanities Year, and the average ones that had sufficient intellectual aptitude in general to become priests made it through just fine without the Humanities Year, even if it maybe took them a few months to catch up. Those who didn't make it undoubtedly would not have made it even with the addition of the Humanities Year. Now, if there were some cases that needed to be attended to, they could easily have come up with a solution that didn't coset $50 million dollars ... to add a Humanities Year. You could have sent them to St. Mary's, given entrance/aptitude exams to prospective seminarians and then referred some who weren't ready to St. Mary's, or even host a Summer program to get them up to speed, and in the most challenging cases, have them do 2 Summer sessions, which would only set them back one academic year ... just as Humanities Year would have. Finally, for 2 million dollars TOPS, they could have added a new wing or building to the complex ... all problems solved for a fraction of the cost.
IMO, they used the Humanities Year to artificially create the alleged "overcrowding problem" to justify something they wanted to build for ulterior motives, and then speculating about what those motives may have been, since by itself even the engineered problem could have been solved very easily without the absurd expenditure. Problem -> Reaction -> Solution. Create a problem by adding Humanities Year (instead of solving for it before you added it by adding a wing or building). Elicit a Reaction ... where the lay faithful are sympathetic to pictures of two seminarians sharing one of those tiny rooms. Solution ... propose the building project and get the lay faithful to send money.
I agree with the whole money thing. Clearly the SSPX handles the money the way any massive, invincible corporation does. They waste and waste without a care in the world. Honestly the recent expenditures of the SSPX remind me of the woke direction taken by several large companies. Bud Light, the NBA, and Jaguar all lost billions supporting the tranny agenda. Whatever. It doesn't matter. Just business as usual. Lol. It boggles the mind. And so I see it similarly with the SSPX which spent 50 million on a seminary with only about 30 more rooms than the previous one. And they forgot to build a church or even chapel for goodness' sake! It's shameful that with all of that money spent, the seminary holds its liturgy in a conference room. What a disgrace.
Anyway, I'm still going to die on the hill of SSPX priests requiring a better formation. And while I usually enjoy and agree with most of what you write, no, the answer is not to send seminarians to the college at St. Mary's. The supposed catholics there smoke weed and regularly have children out of wedlock. That's the best way to annihilate vocations.
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There are almost 100 seminarians today, if you count carefully https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gAObimklB60
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I don't think they even have 120 rooms, so the new building is a undersized to begin with. There should be 120 seminarian rooms, enough resident priest rooms, guest priest rooms, and rooms for other visitors.
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IMO, they used the Humanities Year to artificially create the alleged "overcrowding problem" to justify something they wanted to build for ulterior motives, and then speculating about what those motives may have been, since by itself even the engineered problem could have been solved very easily without the absurd expenditure. Problem -> Reaction -> Solution. Create a problem by adding Humanities Year (instead of solving for it before you added it by adding a wing or building). Elicit a Reaction ... where the lay faithful are sympathetic to pictures of two seminarians sharing one of those tiny rooms. Solution ... propose the building project and get the lay faithful to send money.
You're off base here, and I disagree with you. I hesitate to say, "Earth to Ladislaus, come back down please." but I'm tempted to. The main thing holding me back is my lack of belief in "outer space". ;) But pop culture, old habits, and common speech still rattle around in my brain...
Bishop Williamson is not enclosed in (((parentheses))), and he wasn't part of any "problem-reaction-solution" cօռspιʀαcιҽs. He was one of the good guys, remember? His last name was WilliamSON not WilliamSTEIN.
This really should go without saying. I can't believe what I'm reading, or that I have to write this response. I mean, "hello, McFly?" You do remember +W got kicked out of the SSPX and died in exile, right?
Bishop Williamson, and no one else, started the Humanities year. He had NOTHING to do with the eventual neo-SSPX embracing of branding agencies, compromise, change, and contradictions. Including the purchase of the Disneyland seminary near the corridors of power (close to Washington DC).
The institution of the Humanities year, and the neo-SSPX aberrations, have NOTHING to do with each other. There is ZERO cause-effect relationship between them.
Some people make associations that shouldn't be made -- those people are called schizo, if I'm not mistaken. At least if this meme is to be believed. (I'm not calling Ladislaus a schizo or trying to pick a fight with him; hopefully he can take some disagreement here and there)
How about instead of schizo, we say it's a "post hoc ergo propter hoc" fallacy.
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So you're saying that +Williamson established Humanities Year unilaterally, Matthew, and not under SSPX direction? Unless you have other information, I'm not buying it, since at the time Bishop Williamson was still under obedience to SSPX superiors and wouldn't have done something like that unilaterally.
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There are almost 100 seminarians today, if you count carefully https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gAObimklB60
OK, so? Take out the Humanities Year ... and the numbers entering are in the low 20s, and the numbers being ordained every year 4-5 on average ... are almost identical to the what was going on in the late 1980s and early 1990s and for which Winona was more than adequate.
Even if the "almost 100" (boosted artificially by Humanities Year), but otherwise not that much more than we had that's absolutely nothing 2 million dollars at Winona could not have easily remedied, leaving you 48 million to do something much more important with.
There were clearly other agendas at work there.
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For some reason the full body size and beautifully framed (by Br. Marcellus) authentic photographic copies of the Shroud of Turin were left behind when the seminary moved to Virginia. They were in the basement hallway and classroom the last time I visited about 2018.
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For some reason the full body size and beautifully framed (by Br. Marcellus) authentic photographic copies of the Shroud of Turin were left behind when the seminary moved to Virginia. They were in the basement hallway and classroom the last time I visited about 2018.
Yeah, who knows? Maybe they just didn't think to include them in the packing list or figured it could serve the Brothers just as well or retreatants who go there or were lazy and/or didn't want to incur the (small) expense of moving it. Or maybe they felt it wouldn't fit in with their vision of the new "aesthetic" ... which I don't care for personally. I don't know that they would object to it in principle.
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So you're saying that +Williamson established Humanities Year unilaterally, Matthew, and not under SSPX direction? Unless you have other information, I'm not buying it, since at the time Bishop Williamson was still under obedience to SSPX superiors and wouldn't have done something like that unilaterally.
Yes, I believed (and for good reason) that +W used his authority as rector of the US seminary, he used his very real power placed in his hands to form priests for the English-speaking world, to fill the voids left by American education, etc.
It was all within bounds.
Yes, obviously the superiors (and let's face it -- who was that exactly? Just +Fellay and maybe a couple others.) had to approve it. They visited the seminary on more than one occasion.
But here's the proof: no other seminary in the whole SSPX has a humanities year. Even to the present day. The Humanities Year was 100% +Williamson's baby. And anyone who knows +Williamson won't be shocked by this. His big picture, philosophical self, looking at the educational wasteland of America, trying his best to form good priests but finding obstacles in the formation of the young men showing up to his seminary, and himself loving the humanities as he did, being a man of letters with a classical education...
Yeah. No surprise at all. I would be more surprised if he *hadn't* done such a thing.
The first Humanities year was 1999-2000. I was in the second Humanities class, which started in 2000. I probably got a lot more information about this than you, because I was in Humanities, and it was still pretty new when I got there. So yeah -- I'd chalk it up to "I was heavily involved" and heard many things from the horse's mouth. So it's not anything against you -- you simply weren't there, you couldn't have known, at least not the way humanities seminarians could have known, having access to +Williamson and all the other professors *at that time*, etc.
You had access to many of the same clerics years earlier, but *before* Humanities had been thought of or implemented.
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But to put this to rest, let me ask you one more question --
Are you REALLY shocked, Ladislaus, that +Williamson would start such a program? What part of his doctrine, life, personality, would go against starting such a year for his seminary?
Ask yourself some appropriate questions: did His Excellency not value the Humanities in an above-average way? Did he consider that modern English-speakers have a great formation coming out of public/private/homeschools? Was he a follower that only did things if suggested or forced upon him from above?
I recall him installing a backup propane generator -- I'm sure that was his idea as well. As was having the farm (which cost $50K a year for $50K of food, just to pick a random figure. My point: it was a wash. He gained, and lost, nothing by having the farm) And guess what? As soon as +W was sent away, the farm was shut down. What do you know!
But my point: he was very much a leader. He led as he saw best, and wasn't just a figurehead. He might have to ask forgiveness for some things, but if he saw it as within his prerogative, he wouldn't scruple about every single decision. What other seminary rectors or bishops had a regular newsletter? Nothing equivalent to the fixture that was "Letters from the Rector" and later "Eleison Comments". Again, that was pure +W.