Description

This third volume of four in the Letters from the Rector series includes 52 of Bishop Williamson’s letters, numbers 131 to 182, dating from September 1, 1994, to December 1, 1998, while he was leading the Winona seminary. Among other things, the letters in this volume offer an infrequent but consistent commentary on Rome-SSPX relations, which provides, if nothing else, highly useful historical context for those relations today. The volume also includes Bishop Williamson’s ten-year retrospective on Archbishop Lefebvre’s episcopal consecrations, broadsides against “fiftiesism,” and musings on film (The Wall, The Sound of Music, Nixon, and others), Americanism, universities, co-education, and more. Includes a detailed index to the volume’s contents.

The author is widely known, and both loved and hated (as the case may be) for his controversial and “radical” (i.e., going to the “root” of the issue) opinions on matters both secular and religious, from 9-11 to World War II to modern film to suburban living to feminine dress and more. The bulk and essence of his opinions are captured in the letters “to friends and benefactors” ‒ including those featured in this volume ‒ that he wrote during his two decades of service at the helm of the Ridgefield and Winona seminaries, and which were succeeded in 2007 by his still-running weekly commentary entitled “Eleison Comments,” currently curated by the St. Marcel Initiative (and available here) with the collaboration of the Bishop’s long-time friend, confidant, and now biographer, Dr. David Allen White.