Report: Argentina seminary ousts Bishop who denied Holocaust – Haaretz – Israel News
Previously I blogged how the Vatican had said the Bishop must recant and before that on the Pope reinstating the Holocaust denying Bishop. https://marcl1969.wordpress.com/2009/02/03/
Now it seems the Church meant business when it told him to recant. Since Bishop Williamson has refused to recant, so he has lost his job heading the seminary in Argentina.
Report: Argentina seminary ousts Bishop who denied Holocaust – Haaretz – Israel News.
So, I wa squick tpo condemn the Church- let me be just a squick to say “Well Done”. It os gratifying to see that they took swift action on a serious matter.
Vatican: Holocaust denier must recant – Israel Jewish Scene, Ynetnews
Vatican: Holocaust denier must recant – Israel Jewish Scene, Ynetnews.
So the Vatican moves to try and correct the error it made when “rehabilitating” Bishop Richard Williamson. It seems they now claim the Pope was unaware of the Bishop’s views on the Shoah and that they will not recognise the Bishop for any canonical duty within the Chuuch.
I have a couple of issues with this:
1) Why didn’t the Pope know? If it is true that he didn’t know- then surely somebody should be scrambling to keep their job. Surely before taking such an action as removing an excommunication from someone there should be some research into the people you are “rehabillitating”!
2) Does anyone actually think that Bishop Williamson cares about what the Vatican says? He became a Bshop in a schismatic Church because he was choosing to reject the Vatican! Nope, I would say that he does not care about what the Vatican says!
If the Vatican really does want to make this right, then they need to make it clear that Bishop Williamson will have no role in any Catholic Church- be it aligned to the Vatican or the movement led by Lefebvre. Lets see the rehabillation of Lefebvre linked to his disciplining to the Bishop he consecrated- amking any association with the Church conditional on his recanting his statements. Anything less will just be seen as the window dressing it is!
The Pope and the Jews
The past history of oppression of the Jews at the hands of the Catholic Church is not going to come as a shock to anyone. Forced conversions, massacres, expulsions and more can be laid at the door of the church, resulting in the loss of millions of Jewish lives in the over millenia of persecution. In the last century, under the guidance of Pope John Paul II Vatican and Jewish relations seemed to draw closer. A lot of animosity was released with the vatican finally recognising Israel, prayers offensive to Jews were amended and several ecclesiastical stances were taken to remove some of the hatred of Jews that had been promulgated in the past.
Sadly, under the new pope, Pope Benedict XVI, it seems that this detente is not going to continue. He has not been in office long, but already has damaged relations with his reinstatement of the call for Jews to be converted in the Catholic liturgy, and now in his latest move, the removal of an excommunication from Bishop Richard Williamson who denies the gas chambers ever existed and states that 9/11 was not committed by Muslims but by the American government (a conspiracy theory that frequently then goes on to allege that it was Jews/Israel in collusion with the USA government. Since he hasn’t publicly stated that bit, we can give him the benefit of the doubt for now…) So yet another blow to relations between the Vatican and the Jews, along with the moves to canonise Pope Pius the XII, the Pope during World War II that many see as being in quiet collusion with the Nazis or, at best, to turning a blind eye when he could have helped ny speaking out- considering that Germany is largely a catholic country.
Of course, adding fuel to this fire is the Pope Benedict’s (formally Cardinal Ratzinger’s) past. It is well known, and admitted to by him, that as a child in Germany he was a member of the Hitler youth. We are told that he never believed in their philosophy but did it because he had to, but one has to wonder. Considering the latest actions emanating from the Pope in office, is his denial of any idealogical connection to his childhood membership of the Hitler youth really believable? Yes- maybe I’m too willing to believe the worst of a Catholic Pope based on the past history of the Catholic Church; but as many say- actions speak louder than words, and his current actions seem rather questionable in the light of his own personal past. After all, all this does is bring to mind the thesis postulated by Daniel Goldenhagen in “Hitler’s willing Executioners” that the bulk of Germany either knew of, or deliberately turned a blind eye towards, Hitler’s genocidal agenda against the Jews.
Musings of an Orthodox Jew 