Death is the great equalizer.  Doesn't matter if you were Pope, Bishop, President, or bag boy at the grocery store.  Everyone appears before God "naked" as it were, and he'll just be "Richard".  We know that those in authority and influence (even if he didn't have strict authority) have more room for mistakes, and that is why we pray more for priests, bishops, and popes, since they're more in need.  Bishop Williamson had received many talents, and he'll be asked to show a greater return.

I recall when Wojtyla died and all the Novus Ordites were declaring his immediate entry into heaven, saying things like (Groeschel of EWTN), "I'm praying for him but not too hard." ... meaning he felt Wojtyla had passed straight into Heaven.  We don't pray for Popes, Bishops, etc. because we like them, or think they were "nithe".  Nor do we NOT pray for them (as Groeschel) because we've DECIDED that they were holy.  At the end of the day, we do not know what goes on in any one's internal forum.  So let's not be complacent for that reason either.  People might consider the Popes and Bishops lucky to have SO MANY praying for them, but that's only right since they had the opportunity to influence (and harm) THAT MANY MORE people, and they'll be judged for anything downstream that they were accountable for.  So, for instance, Bishop Williamson, to some extent, will be reponsible for any priest that he ordained and anything he did, such as, say, etc.  Thus the higher up you are, the more in need of prayers you are.  So we should pray fervently for Bishop Williamson, for Richard.

But is not a priest, a fortiori a bishop, judged more severely than a layman?  That's what I've always heard.

I wouldn't agree with Bishop Williamson every jot and tittle, but I do pray for his recovery, or if that is not in God's plan, for his soul.

+Williamson is a pillar of Tradition.  “Jesus, Son of David, have mercy on him!”

But is not a priest, a fortiori a bishop, judged more severely than a layman?  That's what I've always heard.

To the extent that they had more responsibility and influence.  While there was a lot more opportunity for them to do harm, there was also more opportunity to do good, so the good and the bad are weighed, but in the end they also have a lot more people praying for them than those of us with lesser reach and influence, so in the end God offsets everything.  But essentially the judgment he's receiving will be like that of anyone else.  "You received 100 talens, what did you do with them?  How about you who received 1000?"  It's a difference in degree, but essentially the same process.

Imagine all the prayers of Bp Williamson during his life, imagine him asking God to take him out of the world before the Chastisement/WW3 -- I could easily see that.

There have been quite a few of the "Old Guard" passing away, as would naturally be expected given their age, but I do sense there may be some acceleration here before the impending chastisement, well, the physical chastisement, as the spiritual has been underway for well over 60 years now.  I did have the feeling Bishop Williamson fully expected to be around in order to be subjected to the "thumb screws" that he liked referring to.

In any case, I do wonder how SSPX will react.  Undoubtedly he will not receive a place of honor at Econe next to Archbishop Lefebvre ... an honor that was usurped from him by "Bishop" Huonder.  So, while +Williamson labored in the vineyard for decades, Huonder spent a couple years basically on retreat, likely serving as an agent of Bergoglio, perhaps preparing to "ordain" some dubious priests ... and +Williamson could very well end up in a pauper's grave while Huonder rests at Econe near +Lefebvre, where +Williamson should have been.  What an absolute disgrace for SSPX.

I often wondered about Bishop Williamson in England, since I know that there are many Catholic prophecies about England being submerged, and then Putin recently made threats with his "tsunami bomb" against England.  I've had a few "apocalyptic" type dreams that featured Bishop Williamson, where for some reason I was looking for him.

News of the death has just been announced.

Bishop Williamson understood the root theological / philosophical causes of Vatican II better than any prominent Traditional Catholic leader out there, better than even Archbishop Lefebvre.

He traced the root causes much farther back than anyone else from among the mainstream Trad clergy, most of whom imagined that things were great through the 1950s, after which there happened some inexplicable, sudden, dramatic collapse that "came out of nowhere".

He recognized that the root cause of all the errors in Vatican II was subjectivism.  No one else picked up on this, focusing instead on the individual errors than on the root cause.  It's like doctors who treat the symptoms vs. the very few who try to identify and treat the root cause of the symptoms.  He recognized how this started in the "Renaissance" and "Enlightenment" (which he correctly identified as really a re-death and a darkening of minds), tracing this trend through the philosophers, and ultimately the phenomenologists.

So that is THE most powerful teaching I received from him ... to the point that I take it much farther now than even Bishop Williamson, recognizing that the subjectivism in terms of entering Catholic theology started with the undermining of EENS in the early 16th century.  I see the nexus between the philosophical trends and the theological trends at EENS dogma, the touchpoint between the rise of subjectivism and its infection of Catholic theology.  But I won't digress too much.

That is by far the most powerful thing I was taught by Bishop Williamson in terms of philosophy and theology, and it has completely changed the way I think.

See, by identifying the root cause of these errors, Bishop Williamson helped protect us from other manifestations of error from this same root caause in the future, rather than many others who just played whack-a-mole with this particular error or that other error, treating this symptom or that symptom, unable to get a handle on it due to not understanding the root cause, and even often succuмbing themselves to some errors, since, again, they were not equipped intellectually to recognize the error for what it is.

Bishop Williamson didn't just hand us fish, but he taught us HOW to fish.  He taught us HOW to think and reason, rather than merely regurgitate why this or that specific error is wrong.

Bishop Williamson also hammered into my brain that "ideas matter", that they matter more than anything else.  So, the modern world has gotten to a point where as long as we "get along" and are "nithe", it's OK if we have different core principles, and we can just hold hands and sing "kumbaya" together, and then go sit around on our own to think thinks without any consequence, that ideas, i.e. philosophy, was merely an abstract exercise done for entertainment purposes.

And he was also right about certain historical issues that have corrupted politics for going on a century now.

God bless Bishop Williamson.

In a way, it's fitting that Bishop Williamson who had been blessed with one of the greatest intellects in the Catholic world today would pass away due to brain hemorrhage, almost as if all the years of his deep thinking ultimately wore out his brain, not unlike how Our Lord died when His Sacred Heart gave out and likely burst due to His love.