Pope Lifts Excommunication of Holocaust-Denying Bishop

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There’s a sect of the Catholic Church known as the Society of Saint Pius X founded in the 1960’s for the purpose of rebelling against the modernizing reforms of the Church. Its hierarchy consecrated the men in unsanctioned ceremonies. As a result, Pope John Paul II excommunicated its membership of four in 1988. What may well have prompted the attention of John Paul II, was the society’s adherence to the theological beliefs of its namesake – rejection of a modern Church suited to the changing world and society.

One of the four current members of the Society of Pius X is Bishop Richard Williamson. Bishop Williamson denies that the Nazi regime used gas chambers to murder 6,000,000 Jews. This is not interpretation or innuendo. The good Bishop makes the following assertions:

"I believe that the historical evidence is strongly against -- is hugely against -- 6 million Jews having been deliberately gassed in gas chambers as a deliberate policy of Adolf Hitler."

"I believe there were no gas chambers," he added.

He added: "I think that 200,000 to 300,000 Jews perished in Nazi concentration camps, but none of them by gas chambers."

Bishop Bernard Fellay, who heads the 4 bishop society, distanced himself from Williamson’s comments, claiming Williamson was responsible for his own opinions.

Ironically, the interviews with Bishop Williamson took place in Regensburg, Germany, where Pope Benedict XVI once taught. Prosecutors are looking into Williamson’s comments denying the holocaust for criminal prosecution. Holocaust denial is a crime in Germany.

In today’s Catholic Church there are 2 factions battling it out for control: progressives seeking to modernize the Church to keep it relevant in today’s society, and, traditionalists not in favor of moving the Church into the modern area.

OK folks, with that background here’s what Pope Benedict XVI did on Saturday, January 24, 2009. The Pope lifted Pope John Paul II’s excommunication of members of the Saint Pius X Society, welcoming its 4 members, one of whom is a potential criminal as a holocaust denier, back into the Church’s fold with open arms. This move, carried out on a weekend, nonetheless did not escape CNN’s world news net:

http://www.cnn.com/2009/WORLD/europe/01/26/pope.holocaust.denial/index.html

The reaction within the Vatican hierarchy itself questioned the wisdom of repairing a rift with 4 Bishops dedicated to reversing the Church’s move toward the future at the expense of creating an even greater rift with those “more liberal groups that have fully embraced the changes and reforms.”

Rabbi David Rosen of the American Jewish Committee called the move by the Roman Catholic Church "shameful." By "welcoming an open holocaust denier into the Catholic Church without any recantation on his part, the Vatican has made a mockery of John Paul II's moving and impressive repudiation and condemnation of anti-Semitism," he said.

Pope John Paul II called anti-Semitism in the Catholic Church "a sin against God and man". Pope Benedict ignored his predecessor’s long overdue condemnation of millennia-old anti-Semitism in the Church, choosing to accept anti-Semitic, history-denying, potential criminal, Holocaust-denying Bishop Williamson back to the Catholic Church by lifting excommunication of a regressive Society and its four members.

Was it not possible to lift excommunication individually to the three other members of this Society rather than the Society as a whole? Wouldn’t that have helped mend fences with the conservatives without trashing John Paul II’s condemnation of anti-Semitism as a sin against God and man? Wouldn’t that have accomplished the Pope’s purpose without welcoming back to the fold one whose beliefs fly in the face of accepted Church doctrine, not to mention reality?

Is Pope Sebastian XVI carrying on the enlightened ecumenical style of John Paul II’s papacy? Said Vatican analyst Marco Politi to The Times of London, “the new era has begun with a lie. The pope has made an openly declared and unshakeable anti-Semite a legitimate bishop."

The pope has twice visited synagogues, in the U.S. and his home country Germany, but recently stated, according to The Times of London, that dialogue between Christians, Jews and Muslims "in the strict sense of the word" was "not possible."

Pope Benedict XVI who, in his formative years as an adolescent was compelled to join the Hitler Youth and then the Wehrmacht, has stricken a blow for ecumenical discord and anti-Semitism along his road to a more conservative and regressive Catholic Church.

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Abbott & Costello Meet the Economic Stimulus

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Abbott & Costello Meet the Economic Stimulus

by Peter Kirsanow

Maybe it's just me, but when discussing the proposed "economic stimulus," the guests on the political talk shows — both Republican and Democrat— sound more and more like they're doing an Abbott & Costello routine:

Abbott: The economy's a wreck. People have a lot less money now then they did three months ago.

Costello: No problem. The federal government's going to spend $1 trillion to put more money in our pockets.

Abbott: But the government doesn't have any money either. The federal deficit's already around $1 trillion. And the federal debt's around $11 trillion.

Costello: No problem. The government will use tax money.

Abbott: But that's our money in the first place. And we don't have any more money.

Costello: No problem. Then the government will just borrow the money.

Abbott: But the people who usually loan the money don't have any more money either.

Costello: No problem. The government will just print all the money we need.

Abbott: But that will make the money worthless.

Costello: Yeah, but at least people will have money in their pockets.

Abbott: But they won't be able to buy anything with it.

Costello: No problem. We'll just blame it on Bush.

Abbott: Sounds like a plan.

The more complex the economic-stimulus discussion, the more ridiculous it sounds.

(Handy rule of the thumb: Whenever a talking head says that the impact of a proposed economic stimulus is "complicated," you're probably listening to a snow job.)

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Streak Ends in NCAA Division I Men’s Basketball

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With a 61-51 win over fellow Division I opponent Bryant University, the New Jersey Institute of Technology Highlanders ended the longest losing streak in men’s college basketball’s top division at 51 straight losses. Led by sophomore guard Jheryl Wilson’s career best 26 points, NJIT took the lead for good at 12-10 with 13:02 remaining in the first half, besting the Bryant Bulldogs for their first win since February 19, 2007.

NJIT's Jheryl Wilson taking it to Bryant

Ironically, the end of the Highlanders’ losing streak also marked the school’s 800th victory since beginning play in 1922-23 as the Newark College of Engineering. The NJIT Highlanders are 800-701 since then and riding a one game winning streak.

Go Highlanders!

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20th of January 2009

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Starting today, we must pick ourselves up, dust ourselves off, and begin again the work of remaking America.

Barack Obama, Inaugural Address, 20th of January 2009

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44 Presidents

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Mark Your Records

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January 20, 2009, 12 noon EST

The next “Where were you when …” moment.

January 20, 2009, the day after the observation of Martin Luther King Jr.’s 80th birthday, 23 days before the observation of Abraham Lincoln’s 200th birthday.

January 20, 2009, Barack H. Obama takes the oath of office, hand on Lincoln’s bible, making history becoming this nation’s 44th president.

January 20, 2009, the greatest orator of our time, Barack Obama will deliver an historical inaugural address asking all Americans to come together and take part in fixing our country.

January 20, 2009, begins a new era of hope and optimism for a battered United States of America.

January 20, 2009, all of us are witnesses to world history.

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Muslims on a Plane

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Who hasn’t at one time or another discussed airport security while waiting to take off? How about the size of one of those jet engines? How about the safest place to sit on a plane? Pre-9/11 I discussed all three. I’d never been thrown off a plane for discussing them. Are such discussions prohibitively suspicious post-9/11?

Well, apparently it depends on who you are. On January 1, nine American citizens of the Muslim faith were removed from an AirTran flight after fellow passengers overheard “suspicious remarks”, i.e., the subjects in the previous paragraph. Kashif Irfan, 34, is an anesthesiologist. His brother Atif Irfan, 29, is a lawyer. Both were born in Detroit and live in Alexandria, VA with their families. They were traveling with their wives, Kashif Irfan's sister-in-law, a friend and Kashif Irfan's three sons, ages 7, 4 and 2. All six adults were in traditional Muslim garb – the men wearing beards and the women in headscarves. Beards and headscarves and Muslims, oh my!

The pilot ultimately decided not to fly relying heavily on the 2 on-board air marshals who reported the suspicious discussions by these American Muslims to airport security. The 104 passengers were ordered off the plane, their persons and baggage re-screened – minus, of course, the 9 American Muslims with beards and headscarves.

AirTran’s side of the story:

AirTran spokesman Tad Hutcheson agreed that the incident amounted to a misunderstanding. But he defended AirTran's handling of the incident, which he said strictly followed federal rules. And he denied any wrongdoing on the airline's part. “At the end of the day, people got on and made comments they shouldn't have made on the airplane, and other people heard them," Hutcheson said. "Other people heard them, misconstrued them. It just so happened these people were of Muslim faith and appearance. It escalated, it got out of hand and everyone took precautions."

“It just so happened these people were of Muslim faith and appearance.” Oh really! So that did make the difference between these 9 Americans and, let’s say, 9 Americans in the common garb of the Orthodox Jewish Hasidic, Hindu, Buddhist or Eastern Orthodox faiths. How about Sikh’s and their turbans? Were Mr. Irfan and party subjected to blatant religious and ethnic discrimination? I think so, but it doesn’t matter. As legislation and paranoia continue to work for the Feds and at least some airlines, huge chunks of the Constitution are crumbling into the abyss of executive prerogative. [Federal agencies are under the executive branch.]

AirTran apologized, refunded the cost of the 9 tickets and today agreed to compensate them for their tickets on US Airways and fly them no charge to Washington, DC. After the completion of the security investigation, AirTran told Mr. Irfan and party that they were now welcome to fly AirTran. So, AirTran screens American Muslims on a case-by-case basis. Not surprisingly, Mr. Irfan and party found a future flight on TransAir to be unlikely. What may well be likely is a trip to a lawyer chomping on the bit for juicy lawsuit against AirTran.

The post-9/11 shredding of the Constitution harkens back to 1942 when the US government incarcerated more than 120,000 of its own citizens, mostly Americans of Japanese descent. The 1942 incarceration was based on the dual criteria of being of Japanese heritage and having homes and businesses on the US West Coast. Even today’s most security-minded of politicians and pundits agree that incarceration of Americans in concentration camps based solely on race/ethnicity was among the great travesties of American justice despite post-Pearl Harbor security concerns. As an added footnote to ethnic religious criteria, white Americans of German heritage on the US East Coast were not incarcerated.

We have stood by mute as Constitutional rights were unilaterally adjusted, pared down and/or shredded by the executive branch in the name of national security since 9/11. [See any recent, objective article on or interview with Dick “Darth Vader” Cheney.]

I have faith that the Obama administration will work to reverse the desecration of the Constitution by the outgoing administration. Let us all not forget what we are protecting by being security conscious – our freedom to live under the basic guarantees of rights in the United States Constitution. Speak up with security concerns. Also speak up when your and others’ constitutionally protected rights are trampled in the name of those same security concerns for it is those very rights sought to be kept secure.

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