Behind the Interview of Bishop Williamson to the Swedish Television (2009)

Facts and DatesOn November 1st, 2008, Bishop Richard Williamson, who had gone to perform ordinations to the diaconate at the seminary of Zaitzkofen, in Germany, accepted to answer the questions of journalists of the Swedish television channel SVT, who were there for Rev. Mr Sten Sandmark, a former Swedish Lutheran pastor converted to Catholicism (see DICI n° 140). During the interview, the journalists happened to ask Bishop Williamson some clarification about revisionist statements he had made in Canada several years ago. The English prelate explicitly warned that his statements would make him liable to be imprisoned in Germany.

As early as Monday, January 19, the German weekly Der Spiegel devoted an article against the rapprochement which the pope was rumored soon make towards the Society of Saint Pius X. The German journalist warned that that there was a revisionist among the bishops of the Society, and announced the broadcasting of the Swedish program “Uppdrag gransning” (investigative mission) on Wednesday, January 21, which was later displayed on the Internet.
The decree by Cardinal Re was signed on Wednesday, January 21,; it was to be published on Saturday, January 24. Was this a mere coincidence of dates?

A Report Sent to the Vatican

Vatican observer Paolo Rodari, in Il Reformista of February 3, wrote about a report handed to the pope and denouncing a put-up job: “Behind the choice of the broadcast by a the State television channel SVT lies hidden an attempt at discrediting Pope Benedict XVI. Persons have worked on this from the outside, but with the help of an insider. This dossier intends to demonstrate that the Swedish television had been influenced to broadcast the story three days before the release of the document lifting the excommunication. The dossier puts forward the hypothesis that the French journalist Fiammetta Venner, may have suggested that they  ask a question on the issue (of the holocaust, Ed.).”
“Fiammetta Venner, who intervenes in person during the broadcast of the Swedish television, is an active militant of the French homosexual movement, a pro-abortionist and a advocate of secularism.” According to Rodari, “she often lectures on the issue of secularism at the Grand Orient of France. Last September, on the occasion of Benedict XVI’s visit to France, she sent to the press a book co-authored by her companion, Caroline Fourest, and bearing the very explicit title: The Pope’s New Soldiers. The Legionaries of Christ, the Opus Dei, and the Traditionalists, (Panama Publishing House).” — In the February 5 edition of the French daily Le Monde, Fiammetta Venner denied having had any knowledge of the Vatican’s agenda. And this  journalist, who writes for the leftist weekly Charlie Hebdo, adds concerning the withdrawal of the decree of excommunication: “The problem is to know whether the ‘unity of the Church’ will be achieved to the detriment of those who remain attached to Vatican II and its ecumenism.”
The declarations against Bishop Williamson have only increased and have turned into attacks against the pope and the Society of Saint Pius X. In Germany, this week, the weekly Der Spiegel and the daily Bild denounced the Vatican’s and the Society’s opposition to all the “benefits” of modernity in intellectual and moral matters. On Monday, February 2, the progressivist theologian, Hermann Häring, did not hesitate to recommend that the pope hand over his resignation: “If this pope wants to do some good to the Church, he must resign his charge. This would not be a scandal: a bishop must offer to resign at 75 years of age, a cardinal loses all his rights when he turns 80. We cannot precisely see why the pope (who is now 81, Ed.) could not abide by these wise rules,” he declared to the leftist newspaper Tageszeitung.

Golias

In this respect, it is reasonable to recall the presentation of the New Soldiers of the Pope, in September 2008, given on the Internet website http://nouveauxsoldatsdupape.wordpress.com/ : “Catholicism sometimes gives the impression of having successfully achieved its aggiornamento. Yet, the election of Benedict XVI ratified the triumph of the diehards to the detriment of modernist Catholics. Where will this reactionary about-face of the Catholic church (sic) end? Will it make of Vatican II a mere parenthesis, quickly closed? Will it go all the way to Vatican minus II?” – We may note in passing that the expression “Vatican – 2” is found again today under the pen of Christian Terras from Golias: “Fifty years after the Council — 22 janvier 2009. From Vatican II to Vatican minus II”. Golias, which Fiammetta Venner defended in the Communist daily L’Humanité in its September 11, 2008 edition: “As soon as Témoignage chrétien or Golias publish an overly militant dossier, bishops take the upper hand again, and set aside and defame democratic Catholics.”
In September 2008, the website presenting Fiammetta Venner and Caroline Fourest’s book already expressed their obsessive fear of the lifting of the excommunications: “The traditionalists excommunicated by John Paul II will gradually come back into the ranks, not by making penance, but as ‘winner take all’. They will be able to say Mass as they please, and most of their ideas will be officially backer-adopted by the Church!”

Against the Decree of January 21, but for Collective Absolution

Hence, it is not by chance that the opponents to the decree of January 21 express their disapproval by, in the same breath, explicitly refusing recent decisions imposed by Rome… On January 29, the Swiss League of Catholic Women (LSFC/SKF) in Lucerne said it was confused by the re-integration of the traditionalist bishops, as well as by the decree from the Swiss bishops abolishing the practice of collective absolution during penitential ceremonies (Cf. under the header “The Church in the World”). It deplored the “benevolent” comment given by the Swiss Bishops’ Conference. In this, the League saw one element “among extremely disquieting developments.” The women united in the progressivist movement consider it a basic concern of theirs to “support the forces which, in the Church, and in the society, are committed to humanity and peace, in the sense of the Catholic tradition of the Second Vatican Council (sic); and to emphasize the Judeo-Christian, ecumenical, interreligious, and feminine (re-sic) perspectives.”
Concerning the prohibition of the practice of collective absolution during the penitential ceremony, the LSFC observed that the Swiss bishops’ decree had aroused criticisms and incomprehension on the part of many women within the organization of Catholic women. The Committee of the League considers that this piece of news will not prompt many people to return to confession or to go more often. If this prohibition is enforced, the League warned, “sacraments will become still more remote from the life and the daily concerns of numerous Catholics.”
In the parish bulletin Berner Pfarrblatt, one of these avant-garde feminists, German philosopher Carola Meier-Seethaler, age 81, made known her decision to cease paying the Church tax enforced in Switzerland, where she resides. She is leaving the Catholic Church, and from now on she will give her alms to charitable institutions of the city of Bern, as well as to the future “House of religions.” She justified her gesture of protest with “humano-ethical” reasons, being no longer in agreement with the direction the Church is taking under the present pope. (Sources: Apic/Reformista/Spiegel/Golias)