Journal for the Study of Antisemitism

2009] CATHOLICISM & THE TEACHINGS OF BISHOP WILLIAMSON 235
Popes, the Saints, and classic Catholic authors, he directed us toward the
ocean of politically subversive literature common among radicalized political
conservatives. Against the backdrop of the “International Jewish Banking
Conspiracy Theory” paraded anti-government paranoia, doomsday
propaganda, and an unending plethora of anti-establishment diatribes, all
designed to discredit the “official story” of every major historical event and
every noteworthy figure of the past five centuries.
First Day, First Class
The first class I attended as a seminarian was “Acts of the Magisterium,”
a class taught by Bishop Williamson himself. This class was originally
designed by Father Lefloch, the head of the French Seminary at Santa
Chiara, the seminary attended by Archbishop Lefebvre, in Rome, in the
early 1920s. The purpose of the class was to provide future priests with an
understanding of the major writings of the Popes of the last two centuries.
The class focused particularly on those Encyclicals containing explanations
of the philosophical trends popular since the Enlightenment. Bishop Williamson
used this class to introduce the new seminarians to his radicalized
worldview.
On this, our first day of class, Bishop Williamson walked into the
classroom in a semi-theatrical manner. He reminded me of Mr. Headstone,
the schoolmaster in Charles Dickens’ Our Mutual Friend. The Bishop
scrutinized each seminarian, occasionally raising his eyebrows, as if to
express disbelief at the array of imbeciles sitting before him.
He tersely ordered, “Put away your pens and paper. I want you to
think!” Then he asked us to raise our hands if we had ever seen the movie
The Sound of Music. He made his question more specific: “How many of
you have seen it twice? Five times? More than ten times? Fifteen?”
With each question, his tone became more condescending. It was
obvious from his demeanor that the degree of our exposure to Julie
Andrews singing in the Alps was some sort of litmus test, a test I was going
to fail miserably. I remember being baffled by the importance he placed
upon this movie. To me, The Sound of Music was a relatively well-filmed,
simple story with decent music. As the Bishop continued with his inquisition,
I dejectedly calculated the number of times I had watched The Sound
of Music. NBC aired The Sound of Music once a year. I was nineteen, so I
must have seen it at least fifteen times that I could recall. With no small
trepidation, I wincingly left my hand in the air until the Bishop had completed
his foray into psychological profiling via Hollywood classics. How
would I fare if he began questioning us on The Wizard of Oz? Not until
years later did it dawn on me that the reason the Bishop detested The Sound