First part of our Interview Week.
From the October edition of The Angelus, an excerpt of Stephen Heiner's astonishing interview with Richard Williamson, one of the four bishops consecrated by Archbishop Marcel Lefebvre and co-consecrated by Bishop Antonio de Castro Mayer in 1988 for the Priestly Fraternity of Saint Pius X (FSSPX/SSPX), exactly one year after the visit of the Superior General of the FSSPX (Bishop Bernard Fellay) to the Holy Father at Castelgandolfo.
From the October edition of The Angelus, an excerpt of Stephen Heiner's astonishing interview with Richard Williamson, one of the four bishops consecrated by Archbishop Marcel Lefebvre and co-consecrated by Bishop Antonio de Castro Mayer in 1988 for the Priestly Fraternity of Saint Pius X (FSSPX/SSPX), exactly one year after the visit of the Superior General of the FSSPX (Bishop Bernard Fellay) to the Holy Father at Castelgandolfo.
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... Your Excellency, going back to the interview I did with Bishop [Bernard] Tissier [de Mallerais, one of the other three bishops consecrated in 1988] for the Remnant in April, Fr. Anthony Cekada [a Sedevacantist cleric somewhat well-known in America] wrote an article in response that said that for Bishop Tissier, there are no consequences for professing heresy. Is that a fair assessment?
Bishop Tissier would certainly say that what he calls the heresy of Benedict XVI has the very gravest consequences, namely the destruction of the Catholic Church!
Then what do you think Fr. Cekada had in mind?
From today´s destruction of the Church, Fr. Cekada concludes that Benedict XVI cannot possibly be a true Pope. Fr. Cekada surely wishes that Bishop Tissier would draw the same conclusion.
Is Fr. Cekada right or is Bishop Tissier right?
Myself, I believe that Benedict XVI is the true Pope, so I think Bishop Tissier is right.
But what about Benedict XVI´s heresy?
To be such a heretic as to so put oneself out of the Catholic Church that one cannot possibly any longer be its head, i.e. Pope, one must know that one is denying what one knows to be a defined dogma of the Catholic Faith, because such a denial amounts to deliberate apostasy. To become, or to continue being, a Catholic, is a choice. If I know what a Catholic must believe in order to be Catholic, and if I refuse to believe it, then I am choosing to be a heretic instead of a Catholic, and I put myself outside the Church.
So Fr. Cekada would believe that this is the case of Benedict XVI, and you believe it is not?
Correct.
Why?
Because modern minds are very sick, as minds, and Benedict XVI has a modern mind, like millions and millions of modern people, including churchmen, around him.
Firstly, in what does the sickness consist, and secondly, how can Benedict XVI not be aware of it?
The sickness consists in believing that there is no fixed, objective truth which absolutely excludes error. For example, I may believe that 2 and 2 are 4, but I will believe that they can also be 5 or 6 or 600,000 or whatever. The “truth” is what my mind makes it. But the mind is made for objective truth like lungs are made for oxygen, so just as lungs without external oxygen are sick to death, so a mind with no external truth is sick to death.
And how do we see this in someone like Benedict XVI?
Benedict XVI believes that Catholic “truth” can evolve. For instance, very serious statements of Catholic truth that cannot change, like the Syllabus or Pascendi, he calls merely “substantial anchorages” in Church doctrine, meaning that the Church could anchor there, and usefully anchored there for a while, but in modern times the Church needs new “substantial anchorages” in doctrine. He cannot see that this anti-modern Catholic doctrine of his predecessors is of such a nature that it cannot change, and not even as Pope can he change it. His poor mind, however gifted, is sick with that modern – especially German – philosophy which unhooks the mind from its object, like cutting off lungs from oxygen.
But – and that was my follow-up question – how can Benedict XVI not be aware of his condition? He is an educated man, a high churchman, learned in philosophy and theology!
Yes, but like so many high churchmen, even before Vatican II, he is learned in the wrong philosophy! And since in our sick age the wrong philosophy (2 and 2 are 4 but can be, or become, 5) has become “normal”, then he cannot imagine he may be wrong. When John Paul II promoted “conservative” conciliarism, 2000 bishops praised him for being “conservative” and the other 2000 blasted him for being so. Only two bishops dared to protest to his face that he was not truly conservative at all, because he was conciliar. Humanly speaking, repeat, humanly speaking, how could he believe that the two were normal and the four thousand were abnormal? How could he not think he was being “normal”?
Well, how could he?
In the good old days, a Catholic Pope put very intelligent and orthodox theologians in the Holy Office, formerly known as the Inquisition, and these would interrogate a neo-modernist thus: “You have written that Pascendi is only a ´substantial anchorage´. This amounts to heresy. Either you retract, or the Pope has authority to excommunicate you. Kindly choose.” And the neo-modernist would have had to choose, having been made aware, by Church authority, of his heresy.
In other words, a heretic might have blinded himself, but Mother Church used to use her God-given authority to force him to be aware of his heresy.
Correct. But this last resort is unavailable to today´s churchmen, because they are the authority! As Archbishop Lefebvre said in the 70s to the Conciliar Holy Office when they interrogated him on his anti-Conciliarism, “I should be sitting in your place, and you should be sitting in mine”. God bless him, the Archbishop never lost his grip on objective Catholic truth!
Then churchmen such as Benedict XVI are completely innocent of what they are doing?
I did not say that. If they are the authorities of God’s Church, then logically the Lord God is offering them all the graces they need to lead the Church rightly. If then they are misleading the Church, they are refusing those graces, which means that they cannot, inside themselves, be innocent. But we are entering into inner depths upon which God alone can judge.
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Stephen Heiner is the editor of TrueRestoration.com and conducted the interview in person in Argentina. The full interview will be available in the October issue of The Angelus.
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