Pope admits mistakes regarding Holocaust-denier, maps path forward

Pope Benedict XVI in a letter to be released Thursday admits mistakes in handling lifting of excommunication from four Society of St Pius X bishops, among them holocaust-denier Richard Williamson.

The Vatican’s path forward includes paying more attention to how news spreads over the internet. After all, there had long been ample information on the Web documenting Williamson’s incendiary holocaust-denying stands.

From a full translation of the letter by Chris Gillibrand at Cathcon we read:

Several groups, however, accused the pope of wanting to return to the time before the Council and an avalanche of protests began to move, which made bitter injuries visible and this could be seen immediately. So I am under an obligation to you, dear brethren, to provide a clarifying word, which should help to understand the intentions, which I and the competent organs of the Holy See have been following with this step. I hope in this way to promote peace in the church.

One for me unpredictable mishap was that the lifting of the excommunication was overtaken by the Williamson case. The quiet gesture of mercy to four validly but not legally consecrated bishops appeared suddenly as something quite different: as a rejection of Christian-Jewish reconciliation and the withdrawal of what the Council in this matter has declared as the way of the Church.

An invitation to reconciliation with a separated Church grouping became the reverse: an apparent return from all the steps forward in the reconciliation of Christians and Jews, which had gone on since the Council and whose achievement had been from the start a goal of my theological work.

Thursday, when the full text of the Pope’s letter is issued, he is to resume a Jewish/Catholic dialogue suspended by the Israeli side because of Williamson. He is receiving a delegation of Israeli rabbis.

In some regards, timing is everything, even for the Pope.

Re-Excommunicate Holocaust-denying Bishop Williamson?

When Cardinal Roger M. Mahony of Los Angeles banned the Holocaust-denying Bishop Richard Williamson from Archdiocese of Los Angeles churches, he went a step beyond the Vatican. A long step. He said:

Holocaust deniers like Williamson will find no sympathetic ear or place of refuge in the Catholic Church, of which he is not — and may never become — a member.

Mark Silk at SpiritualPolitics observes:

Without criticizing the pope, [Mahony has] seized on Williamson’s Holocaust foot-dragging to take the next step and send him back into outer darkness. It will be interesting to see if any of his peers follow his lead.

Most importantly, what plans does the Pope Benedict XVI have now?

Bishop Williamson warned against further Holocaust denial

Society of St. Pius X (SSPX) head Bishop Bernard Fellay has declared that Bishop Richard Williamson would be excluded from the order if he reiterated his holocaust-denial.

While Bishop Williamson’s recent apology for his Holocaust denial (which he failed to recant) is an “important step,” Bishop Fellay said, Bishop Williamson should probably stay quiet and “in a corner somewhere.”

Williamson is the only Holocaust-denier among four Catholic bishops whose excommunication was lifted by the Vatican on Jan. 21 as a first step toward healing a division between the church and SSPX. All four are members of the Lefebvre movement, whose long, troubled relationship with Judiasm was documented by the National Catholic Reporter.

Bishop Fellay’s declaration suggests that SSPX strongly wishes to proceed with restoration, and will cast out Bishop Williamson to do so if it must.

SSPX is not rushing to the reconciliation offered by Pope Benedict XVI

Debate over church statistics and assignment of theological blame, is not unique to the Southern Baptist Convention, as we may see from the Vatican statistical yearbook delivered to the Pope last week. It says, reports BBC, “that the number of priests has increased by several hundred each year since 2000, after two decades of decline.” And the “percentage of Catholics worldwide remains stable, at about 17.3% of the global population.”

Turnaround accomplished, it seems.

Today Bishop Bernard Fellay of the rightist Society of Saint Pius X employed undocumented statistics to explain why SSPX, which he heads, is not ready to meet the Feb. 4 Vatican requirement that “a full recognition of the Second Vatican Council and the Magisterium of Popes John XXIII, Paul VI, John Paul I, John Paul II and Benedict XVI himself is an indispensable condition for any future recognition of the Society of Saint Pius X.”

In an interview with a Swiss newspaper he said:

The aftermath of the [Second Vatican] Council has been to empty seminaries, nunneries and churches. Thousands of priests have left their orders and millions of faithful have stopped being practicing Catholics and have joined sects. If these are the fruits of the Council, they’re strange indeed.

You may recall that Pope Benedict XVI lifted the excommunications of Bishop Fellay and three other bishops, who were ordained against papal orders in 1988, as a step toward dialogue and reconciliation. One of the four is Holocaust-denying Bishop Richard Williamson, whose disingenuous apology and failure to recant was well-rejected by the Vatican last week.

Williamson wants more time to consider whether the Holocaust occurred and Fellay says that if the Vatican requirement is met, it will be the after “doctrinal discussions” with his society. As if the Holocaust were really in doubt and rollback of Vatican II were actually on the block.

We wonder if there is a decidedly unhopeful SSPX pattern here?

Bishop Williamson the unrepetant radical rightist

Holocaust-denying Bishop Richard Williamson’s disingenuous apology was well-rejected by the Vatican. It is unclear whether the Society of St Pius X can withstand careful scrutiny today, but Williamson is a creature of the radical, racist right. The London Times’ Damian Thompson writes:

Trawling through Williamson’s sermons is a sad experience. There’s an intense piety there, powerful faith, but it’s poisoned by anger, hatred and an all-consuming paranoia. This troubled man has links to the political Far Right, and has written about Hitler “liberating” Germany from the control of Jewish money.

Even more bizarre than his frequently expressed view that the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks were not carried out by terrorists, all of those assertions were in public view well before his excommunication was lifted.

We need not play that reprehensible game, “Kick the Pope,” to wonder where this is going and exactly why Pope Benedict XVI put matters on this path, making the radical right more bold and the Catholic Church’s position of moral authority less powerful.

Williamson apologizes [fails to recant]

Williamson

Holocaust-denying Bishop Richard Williamson apologized today, after being booted out of Argentina, where on Feb. 9 he was dismissed as director of the Society of St. Pius X (SSPX) seminary in La Reja.

“I can truthfully say that I regret having made such remarks, and that if I had known beforehand the full harm and hurt to which they would give rise, especially to the Church, but also to survivors and relatives of victims of injustice under the Third Reich, I would not have made them,” Williamson said, according to the website of Zenit, a Catholic news agency. . . .
“To all souls that took honest scandal from what I said, before God I apologise,” he said. . . .
He did not say in his apology whether he had changed his views.

His failure to recant earned him the immediate rejection of some Jewish groups. This is a case in which half a measure should not be good enough for anyone.

Lest anyone be confused about where we stand: “Never again.”

Holocaust-denying bishop ordered out of Argentina

Williamson

Unrepentant Holocaust-denying Bishop Richard Williamson is being booted out of Argentina, where on Feb. 9 he was dismissed as director of the Society of St. Pius X (SSPX) seminary in La Reja. He has 10 days to leave.

Legally, Williamson failed to declare his true job as director of a seminary on immigration forms interior ministry, but Argentine officials make it clear that his Holocaust-denials “profoundly insulted Argentine society, the Jewish community and all of humanity by denying the historic truth.”

Argentina’s Jewish population, one of the world’s largest, praised the decision.

Ordered by Pope Benedict XVI to recant, Williamson has not done so, claiming he needed time to research the issue so that he can act with sincerity. The head of Williamson’s Swiss-based society, Monsignor Bernard Fellay, said in an interview published Monday that Williamson should be given time to reconsider his denials.

There is pressure on the pope to further repudiate Williamson’s views, and time appears to be running out, now in more than one regard.

Re-excommunicate Williamson, German bishops demand

Williamson satirized in the German tabloid press.

Holocaust-denying Bishop Richard Williamson balked at immediately meeting the pope’s requirement that he recant.

“Since I see that there are many honest and intelligent people who think differently, I must look again at the historical evidence,” the British bishop was quoted as saying.

Germany’s Catholic bishops responded by calling for his re-excommunication.

“Mr. Williamson is impossible and irresponsible,” said Archbishop Robert Zollitsch, chairman of the German Bishops’ Conference in an article published Saturday. “I now see no room for him in the Catholic Church.”

The German tabloid press was even less oblique in its statements and characterized Williamson as dishonest in a variety of ways.

Williamson is “holed up in the seminary he runs in Argentina,” and isn’t talking to reporters.

Vatican’s action may have inflamed anti-Semitism

Anti-Semitism’s ugly flames were already flaring when Pope Benedict XVI extended his olive branch to a Holocaust-denier and three other right-wing bishops.

The Christian Science Monitor reports:

Since Dec. 27 some 60 cases of anti-Semitism – graffiti, four synagogues desecrated, and an attack on a Jewish youth – took place, according to Richard Prasquier of the Council of French Jewish Institutions in France (CRIF). Two Muslim youth were attacked by Jewish gangs.

In Germany Stephan J. Kramer, a leader of Germany’s Central Council of Jews, reported in Der Tagesspiegel:

The council, which represents Germany’s more than 100,000- member Jewish community, received about 40 percent more hate e- mail a week than usual during the recent conflict in Gaza . . . . A tenth of the 300 weekly messages were explicit death threats directed at council members, he was cited as saying.

In Turkey, according to Reuters:

Turkey’s centuries-old Jewish community says it is alarmed by anti-Semitism that emerged during protests at Israel’s Gaza assault, and is questioning how this reflects its status in the predominantly Muslim republic.

In Argentina, according to Anti-Defamation League National Director Abraham H. Foxman:

An outburst of hateful rhetoric against Israel and in-your-face anti-Semitism has not been seen like this in Argentina for decades.

And on it goes, as David Rothkopf further documents in his blog at Foreign Policy magazine, citing both events abroad and personal experience.

These events involve various forms of harm to ordinary people, not high-level negotiations among variously outraged or apologetic faith leaders. People who should, we feel, have been more carefuly considered as “an internal affair” with such dramatic external effects was attended to by the Vatican.

Pope expresses ‘full and indisputable solidarity’ with the Jews

Responding to revulsion at the anti-Semitism of four traditionalist bishops whose excommunications were lifted Saturday, Pope Benedict XVI reaffirmed his “full and unquestionable solidarity with Jews.”

JTA reported:

The pope said in his angelus prayer at his public audience Wednesday: “While I renew with affection the expression of my full and unquestionable solidarity with our (Jewish) brothers, I hope the memory of the Shoah will induce humanity to reflect on the unpredictable power of hate when it conquers the heart of man.”

Vatican Radio reported that speaking of the Holocaust (haShoa), the Pope “firmly said:”

While I renew my affection for and complete solidarity with our Brothers of the First Alliance, I urge that the memory of the Shoah lead humanity to reflect on the unforeseeable power of evil when it conquers the Human Heart. May the Shoah be a warning to all against oblivion, against denial or revisionism, because violence committed against any one single human being is violence against all humanity. No man is an island, a well known poet once wrote. The Shoah teaches both the new and older generations, that only the demanding journey of listening and dialogue, of love and forgiveness can lead the world’s peoples, cultures and religions towards the desired goal of brotherhood and peace in truth. Never again may violence humiliate the dignity of man!

In an unusual front-page editorial the Vatican’s daily newspaper, L’Osservatore Romano, attempted to push back the appearanc of anti-Semitism apparent in restoration of the four bishops, said the gesture does not yet mean a return to “full communion” with the Church and moreover is a call to the “full acceptance of the Magisterium, obviously including the Second Vatican Council.” The editorial clearly addresses anti-Semitism in general and the Holocaust denial of Bishop Richard Williamson:

After noting that the declaration “Nostra aetate” deplores “the hatred, persecution and all manifestations of anti-Semitism directed against the Jews of any time and by any person” and that this is “a teaching for Catholics that is not open to opinion,” L’Osservatore Romano said that the recent statements of denial by the British bishop “contradict this teaching and are therefore seriously grave and lamentable. Made know before the document lifting the excommunication, they are thus—as we have written—unacceptable.”

Gently understating matters, E.Evans at GetReligion says:

Judging by the extensive coverage given here to church officials distancing themselves from William’s views, it appears that Catholic leaders do not now believe this to be solely an internal church matter, but one that has consequences for external relationships.

Indeed. The positions taken are clear, forceful. With both additional action to restore damage ties and absent further missteps, they may should heal the old but reopened wounds.