Papal Disgrace

Disgrace.

No other word does justice to Pope Benedict XVI’s inexplicable decision to lift the excommunication against Holocaust-denying Roman Catholic Bishop Richard Williamson. Among the more disgusting comments made by Williamson is that historical evidence is “hugely against six million having been deliberately gassed in gas chambers as a deliberate policy of Adolf Hitler. I believe there were no gas chambers. I think that 200,000 to 300,000 Jews perished in Nazi concentration camps, but none of them by gas chambers.”(http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/comment/faith/article5585738.ece) Williamson has also said that “the Vatican is controlled by Satan and that the Jews are bent on world domination”.

Williamson was welcomed back into the fold along with three other bishops from the Society of St. Pius X–a schismatic group led by former French Archbishop Marcel Lefebvre that rejects the changes installed by Vatican II. In 1988 Pope John Paul II excommunicated the society. An Associated Press article reports that the Vatican refers to Williamson as “a recently rehabilitated bishop.” (http://www.google.com/hostednews/ap/article/ALeqM5gpbkisgs-EZ40shoCodJd4rfBNwAD95V35RO0) There is nothing rehabilitated about this man. According to the Times of London, the comments cited above were made just one week ago on a Swedish television station.

Word is that Pope Benedict XVI lifted the banishment as a way to heal the separation in the Church. But no desire to heal rifts within the Church can justify accepting a member of the clergy who espouses these antisemitic views. This is a man who claims to have devoted his life to the Lord Jesus Christ? If his views weren’t so evil, the irony of him recognizing a Jew as God-incarnate while believing this filth would be laughable.

You would think this Pope more than any other would understand the implication of accepting Williamson back into the clergy. As a German who knows first-hand the atrocities committed by the Nazis, it is inexcusable for him to ignore the hurt his actions have caused. Pope Benedict XVI’s actions are an insult not only to Jews everywhere today, but also to the memory of Holocaust victims and even to those who liberated the concentration camps and personally witnessed the inhumanity inflicted on much of European Jewry.

The Church has been accused of antisemitism for centuries. How can it deny this charge when actions like these are taken? Pope Benedict XVI could have easily lifted the excommunication against the Society of St. Pius X while leaving Williamson exiled. It would have sent the dual message that the Church wants to reconcile with its own but will not accept those who are unrepentant.

Shame on you, Pope Benedict XVI..


Donald Tremblay