Bishop Williamson's Letters
June 6, 1996,
Feast of Corpus Christi.
Dear Friends and Benefactors,
A fascinating document was published recently in the United States in two easily available books written about the case of a serial killer - the famous or notorious "Unabomber", hunted by the US police over the last 16 years for his killing by postal bomb of three men and injuring of several others, and perhaps at last tracked down this April in the State of Montana.
The document is his Manifesto, nearly 100 closely printed paper back pages, laying out in 232 numbered paragraphs and 16 notes a closely argued attack upon our industrial-technological society. It was, he says in paragraph #96, to get this message before the public "with some chance of making a lasting impression" that he resorted to bombs and killing.
Now Catholics know that the end can never justify the means. However important the Unabomber's message, nothing gave him the right to maim and kill innocent victims in order to get it before the public. So this letter may discredit itself by apparently crowning his terrorist means with success if it considers seriously his message, totally mocked and discounted on the contrary throughout the rest of one, probably both, of the paperbacks.
But I reply, firstly - again - principles are more important than personalities, and the message is, strictly, for good or ill, independent of the messenger. The author of the Unabornber's Manifesto might have since become a Saint without its contents being changed by one word. Secondly, if one stops and listens to some of the delinquents, real or supposed, protesting against modern society, like the Unabomber, film-director Oliver Stone, or many rock musicians, e.g. Pink Floyd, then without accepting that their ends justify all their means, one cannot help having a measure of understanding for their resorting to such desperate means. Modern man is in the more deadly trouble for having his ears blocked by a seemingly impenetrable complacency!
"Yes, but Catholic bishops have no business to be rummaging in such gutters!" Dear Madam, do you wish to save your rebellious teenagers' souls? I am sure you are well aware that if you talk to them of St. Ignatius of Loyola or St. Theresa of Lisieux, you do not even get to first base. But just breathe the name of Pink Floyd, and see how their ears prick up! This is our world, and there is no other in which we have to save our souls! If only the honorable professors and respectable bishops were tackling the questions tackled by the Unabombers and the Oliver Stones, then your children might look up instead of down, but since nobody "decent" seeems to address their concerns, who can be surprised if they feed from the gutter? Rock music is one long, unheard, scream for help!
Then let us firstly consider the problem raised by the Unabomber which paperbackers and all similar technophiliacs would rather.run a mile than face, because they have no solution (Pink Floyd has no solution either, but at least he faces the problem). And secondly let us indicate the Catholic solution, because if a problem is human and serious, the true Church of the true God cannot not have the solution. W e begin with the Unabomber's argument, here cruelly condensed from the 232 paragraphs which he says are already too brief for the subject (my own section numbering):
1) Modern society is destroying human dignity and freedom by its industrial technology. A symptom of this destruction is the modern left-winger, or "Leftist", a type of man recurring in numerous protest movements today. Often himself belonging to no minority group, yet in the name of a variety of such groups he attacks Western civilization with a hostility betraying his lack of real compassion for the supposed victims. Nor can his revolt be so real against society when he wishes to integrate them into it!
2) In truth, the industrial-technological system, I.-T. or IT for short, makes it so easy for men to satisfy their basic needs of food, clothing and shelter that man's equally natural need to attain some goal by serious effort on his own part remains widely frustrated. Also family, or any such small-scale loyalty natural to man, is necessarily disrupted by the large-scale commitment required for IT to function. So IT destroys family values. Similarly the host of rules and regulations imposed by IT's functioning stifle man's acting on his own part to attain real goals, which is his real freedom.
3) Nor can any minor adjustment or compromise reconcile IT with freedom, both because IT has to regulate human behavior closely in order to function at all, and because all parts of IT are interdependent Moreover men's desire for IT and IT's benefits has for a long time been proving stronger than their desire for freedom, for a variety of reasons, so that the advance of IT seems to many people to be irreversible. For instance, the use of a motor car was originally optional, but it so changed the lay-out of cities that now it is obligatory. Therefore IT will be stopped by no small-scale reform but only by wholesale revolution.
4) The clash between IT and human freedom is highlighted by IT's present pursuit of ways to tame "wild" behavior: control of schooling, control of parenting, drugs, psychotherapy, neurology, genetics, eventually brain-engineering, etc., are all forms of manipulation by which IT will (if it can) re-engineer the very nature of man to fit IT. Presently more and more humans are rising up in revolt against IT, but if IT prevails, not even IT's rulers will have much freedom to move, whereas if IT is smashed, there maybe chaos, but at least humanity has another chance, and the chaos may cause less suffering than IT's continuance will.
5) For if IT survives, then the future looks grim: either, for the sake of efficiency, machines will be in total control and no man will be free. Or an elite will run the master machines, either so as to eliminate the masses so that a few are in control while the rest are dead, or so as to domesticate the masses so that the few are chained to the machine while the rest have no freedom or meaning in their lives. If IT survives, whichever way, man will have had to be re-engineered beyond all recognition!
6) However, IT is not unstoppable. The positive alternative we need is WILD NATURE, free of men, or with wild men. Wild nature is non-technological, it is beautiful, it takes care of itself, it permits survival living (One may have tooth-aches, but rather tooth-aches than IT!). The means of IT's overthrow are a revolution not merely political, but economic, technological and world-wide, for IT cannot be overthrown piecemeal. Above all, let our revolutionaries have the one clear goal: IT must go! All means to achieve that goal can then be pragmatically adjusted.
7) Finally, let our revolutionaries not mix with leftists who are as anti-individualist as IT is, and so will only oppose IT in order then to use it against everybody else. Also, leftists habitually collaborate in revolutions with non-leftists only to double-cross them later. Leftism is totalitarian by nature, in fact it is a substitute religion, the need to believe in which will make even decent follower's condone the most indecent crimes from their leaders.
I hope the brevity of this summary does not prevent readers from discerning a sharp mind tackling a real problem. Say what one will about the advantages of the present industrial-technological system of living, it is doomed as long as it rides roughshod over the deepest needs of human nature. This the Unabomber senses very clearly (sec. 2), as he sees very clearly the falsity of the solution by leftism (secs.1 and 7), which is why the leftist media have no love for him as they would have if he were one of theirs.
On the other hand as a child of the IT society and a product no doubt of an IT education (or rather, non-education), the Unabomber has an inadequate grasp of human nature, which prevents him from getting its crushing by IT correctly in focus, in two ways. Firstly, he centers the problem on man's loss of freedom (secs. 2 to 5), which is why the only positive solution he can come up with is a return to wild nature with no, or wild, men (sec. 6)! Shades of baby-seals, hug-a-tree and ozone! He is falling back into leftism's pathetic conclusion that the only pollution is men ("I can keep the kitchen wonderfully clean - just let nobody have any more meals"). Archbishop Lefebvre said to go back to the country, not to the wilds. (The man picked up in Montana had gone back to the wilds. That is not a solution.)
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This nonsense goes on and on; just do a Google with "Williamson and Unabomber" and you can find this white boy's rantings.
Pink Floyd? Williamson has a Jones for Pink Floyd?
What a nutburger!
Bishop Williamson's Letters
April 2, 1998
Dear Friends and Benefactors,
This letter does sometimes shock. I think it is necessary. Let me explain why with a story from German literature which I studied in school 40 years ago, but whose full meaning only came home to me several decades later: "Peter Schlernihl" by Adalbert Chamisso (1781-1838).
Peter Schlemihl is a bright young man who wants to get on in the world. So when a stranger in a grey frockcoat offers him all the gold he wants in exchange for his shadow, Peter accepts. After all, what use is his shadow? However, he then discovers that all the gold in the world cannot make up for the scorn he meets from everyone around him because he has no shadow. He is in despair when the man in the grey frock-coat sidles up to him again to offer him a second deal - for Peter to get his shadow back all he need do is sign away his soul. The story ends with some compromise I have forgotten: Peter does not lose his soul, but there is still some price to pay for his original foolishness.
The story is charming, as I recall, and beautifully written. The stranger in the grey frock-coat is of course the Devil. Peter is Western man who has mutilated himself and placed his soul in peril for the sake of material prosperity and well-being. But what interests us first is the Devil's technique, as grasped by Chamisso. It is simple enough when one thinks about it, but it has enormous applications to the world around us.
The Devil traps Peter Schlemihl by stages. Firstly, gold in exchange for his shadow. Secondly, his shadow in exchange for his soul. Obviously the Devil could not care less about Peter's shadow except as a snare to catch Peter's soul. As it looks to Peter, having gotten into a serious mess by trading his shadow for gold, how strong the second temptation must be to get back his shadow and keep the gold by trading away his soul! The gold may have turned to dust, but he knows by now how valuable his shadow is. What does he know about the value of his soul?
Thus the devil has got Peter into the frying-pan, and from the frying-pan tempts him into the fire. Peter has fallen for the first temptation which is relatively minor, but the consequences are still grave enough to make him want to put them right by falling for an absolutely major temptation. He has got a minor but obvious thing wrong, his shadow. How tempting to put it right by getting a not obvious but major thing wrong, his soul.
Now "Peter Schlemihl" may be only a fairy-tale, but fairy-tales can tell a lot more truth than newspapers or television. "Peter Schlemihl" may help to explain why this letter has seemed to approve horrors like the Unabomber or films of Oliver Stone, while it certainly disapproves of sweet dreams of Catholicism and supposedly lovely films like "The Sound of Music". Things are not what they appear.
Western man is like Peter Schlemihl. By the end of the Middle Ages he was getting a lot of little things wrong. So the Devil proposed a deal to Christians to put the little things right if only it would get the big things wrong. Christians split. Those who refused the deal stayed Catholic and kept the Faith. Those who accepted the deal became Protestants. They were rewarded by the Devil with prosperity and the repair of outward correctness, but they lost the Faith and lost their soul.
Thus the hallmark of the Protestant culture that emerged in England, Northern Germany where Chamisso wrote, and the United States, is prosperity and outward correctness, but inward wrongness. Outwardly everything looks fine and attractive, but inwardly there are deep and insoluble problems, insoluble because they are not recognized, because they are hidden from view by the attractive surface. To deal with these problems, Protestantism mutated into Liberalism, or the adoration of Liberty, which is in turn mutating into global tyranny, but while the surface is more brilliant than ever ("overcoming" of disease, hunger, distance), the deep-down problems are in fact worse than ever (intellectual, moral and spiritual chaos - just think of modern art). For centuries now we have been buying from the Devil minor solutions in exchange for major problems, a prettier surface in exchange for uglier depths.
As for the Catholic countries that refused the Protestantism, alas, they then let themselves be infected by the liberalism until they were swept away by neo-modernism, which was the disaster of Vatican II. When at this point the Catholic churchmen themselves lost their grip on the solution, the puzzling of men's wills by the intangible loss of soul beneath an abundance of tangible gold and worldly goods became a worldwide problem.
This is my diagnosis of the Unabomber. You may say what you like about him as a criminal terrorist, etc., etc., and much of it is true. But the man, as is clear from his Manifesto (which is well worth reading), was at least trying to tackle, and publicize, serious and deep problems of man in a machine society. He has a Polish name. I wager his grandparents had the Catholic Faith, which he himself either never had, or has lost. But he still has a remotely Catholic sense of how technology brutalizes man. How Catholic on the contrary do all those technophiles deserve to be called who have - gladly - given up all such sense in order to wallow at ease in their computers? Give me the Unabomber's seriousness over their shallowness, any day of the week.
Similarly with Oliver Stone. I do not care for anything I know of the man, on the surface he is horrible, as are his films, but I can name five of them (including "Nixon", "JFK") which each from a different angle tackle one serious problem: what happened to the United States in the 60's? Outwardly, these films have nothing to do with the Faith, they are totally unsuitable for "family viewing", even for viewing by many adults (as I said at the time), but inwardly I again wager that the Catholic ancestry of Stone's French mother has much to do with his deep unease and preoccupation with the 1960's. Give me, again, any day of the week, the ogre who is serious about serious problems over the sweetie-pies who willfully deceive themselves, or are deceived, for instance, that the American Way has nothing deep-down wrong with it. The Constitution of 1787 is, for anybody who thinks it is a significant part of the solution, a significant part of the problem, and woe to any Catholic who thinks otherwise!
But even if we grant that, for instance, the horrible film "Natural Born Killers" has something serious to say about modern society beneath its ugly surface, was Oliver Stone bound to make the surface so ugly?
Unfortunately, one may say, yes, because if he made the surface nice, most of his audience would look no deeper. Their minds would happily click back into their normal Hollywood or "Sound of Music" mode. The world is sweet, all men are nice (except Nazis), life is a game, nobody goes to Hell. Serious Western artists have for the last 200 years been making their work uglier and uglier, partly to reflect Western reality, partly to shock Westerners into realizing what that reality is - the soul is more and more lost.
We are reminded of St. Augustine's famous prayer: "...Lord, if you prepare to strike, we make all kinds of promises, but if you hang back, we do not keep them... If then you strike, we cry for mercy, but if you show mercy, by again sinning we force you to strike...". As God cannot win with His sinful people, so the man with any serious message cannot win with a modern audience. If he broadcasts on their wavelength, there is no way he can say what they need to hear. If he broadcasts on his own wavelength, they tune him out. Heads they win, tails he loses. Ours is a situation in which the Lord God soon tells Mr. and Mrs. Lot to walk away, and woe betide them if they look back.
Thus if the Seminary letter uses nice language to say nice things, readers feel really good about themselves and pay no attention. If it says nasty things but in a nice way, readers can escape from the nastiness by taking refuge in the niceness of the way, and still they are not disturbed as they should be. So there is why the letter must sometimes say nasty things in a nasty way, because even if a majority of readers were to turn away in disgust, still if a minority of readers were provoked into thinking seriously about real problems, it might be worth it. There is no hope for the "American Way", now being followed world-wide, from Catholics who believe in it. Its only hope is Catholics who will tackle its deep and serious problems, going back to Protestantism.
Peter Schlemihl may get back his shadow, but what use is it if he loses his soul? The modern world may get a lot of little things right, but what use is it if, almost in proportion, it gets the big things wrong? The Unabomber, Oliver Stone and apparent nastiness may get a lot of little things wrong, but how much does that matter compared with their trying to get some of the big things right?
Dear readers, pray the Rosary. Do not believe in Wall street. Do not believe in Washington, D.C., nor in the Houses of Parliament in London. Do not believe in the dollar. Do not believe in pension funds. Do not believe in democracy, nor in the Constitution, nor in the British Monarchy. Do not believe in any of the works of modern man. He is a poor and accursed creature, by his own choice. He has built on sand, and his sand-castles are on the brink of collapsing.
Believe in God, the Father Almighty, Creator of Heaven and earth, and in Jesus Christ, His only-begotten Son, who promised us that whosoever builds on His Gospel is building on rock. The winds and rain of the next few years are going to beat on that building, but it will not fall down. And if suffering comes our way, let us even be thankful, because it is the hall-mark of real Catholicism, the surest sign that we are following in the footsteps of Jesus Christ on the way to Heaven.
Happy Eastertide. May God have mercy upon us all.
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So, there you go. Nasty-as-he-wanna-be, Bishop Williamson.
Oh, and narses: Williamson does not approve of your computer time here on Free Republic.
Go out and be nasty!