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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