Pope Benedict XVI seems to be on a one-man mission to wreck the credibility of the Catholic Church. On 21st January, the Vatican announced that it had lifted the excommunication of four bishops belonging to the traditionalist sect, the Society of St Pius X (SSPX). One of these bishops, Richard Williamson has views which are best described as rancid.
SSPX follows the far-right views of its founder, Archbishop Marcel Lefebvre, who was a supporter of Jean-Marie Le Pen, and a sympathiser of Latin American military dictatorships such as those of Jorge Videla in Argentina and Augusto Pinochet in Chile. Lefebvre was also an apologist for Vichy France (despite the fact that his father died in a Nazi concentration camp), and subscribed to conspiracy theories blaming the French revolution of 1789 on Freemasonry. In July 1988 Pope John Paul II excommunicated Lefebvre and the four bishops he consecrated. Lefebvre died in 1991, but his four acolytes have been readmitted to the Catholic Church. This cannot be described as anything but a major blunder.
Williamson was recently interviewed on Swedish television. His views make Lefebvre look like a proponent of Liberation Theology. Williamson reasserted his belief that “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 … There was not one Jew killed by the gas chambers. It was all lies, lies, lies!”
Mr Williamson, 68, who is the rector of the Seminary of Our Lady Co-Redemptrix in La Reja, Argentina, is no stranger to controversy. He has endorsed The Protocols of the Elders of Zion, a notorious anti-Semitic forgery, and he has claimed that Jews are bent on world domination. He supports conspiracy theories about the assassination of President Kennedy and the attacks on the Twin Towers in New York, and has accused the Vatican of being under the power of Satan.
I ceased to be a practising Christian years ago, but even I recall statements in the Bible about loving your neighbour and not bearing false witness. Still, it’s worth noting that Bishop Williamson has joined that select group of twisted cranks who are prepared to spread falsehoods about the Shoah and 9/11.
Still, Catholicism has no monopoly on lunacy and deceit, as this missive from clerics aligned with the Muslim Brotherhood and Jamaat e-Islami shows. This “open letter” to President Barack Obama contains the usual radical Islamist tosh about “pressures of lobbies of Zionism and the secret organizations”, but also the following:
We would like to remind you of the point of view reached at by many of the distinguished academic scholars in America and Europe that assures that the events of the 11th of September 2001 were nothing but fabricated drama by some influential forces in Americain (sic) coordination with Israeli Mossad. They have done all that in order to find a reason to trigger the third world war that they have already planned for and decided its goals and targeted fields.
The first flaw that springs to mind is that even the “distinguished academic scholars” (i.e., Steven Jones and David Ray Griffin - and that’s all, folks) that the 9/11 truth movement has spawned have shied away from conspiracy theories claiming that Israel was responsible (although anti-Semites and Holocaust deniers have, as I have commented previously, latched themselves onto the truth movement). In fact, some of the calumnies about Israeli foreknowledge actually emerged from the Middle East: Hezbollah’s TV station Al Manar was the source for the claim (completely unfounded, as it happens) that 4,000 Jews failed to turn up to work at the WTC on the 11th September 2001.
The second point concerns the doublethink that radical Islamists display. On the one hand they are quick to blame atrocities like 9/11 and 7/7 on the iniquities of Western policy towards the Muslim world, whether this involves support for Israel and neglecting the Palestinians, or (post-2001) military intervention in Iraq and Afghanistan. Yet, at the same time, fundamentalist clerics are swift to deny that radical Islamist terrorists can actually commit atrocities - even in reprisal for the “crimes” of the West. The sentiment seems to be best described as ‘We didn’t do it, but you deserved it anyway’.
Thirdly, I can’t help but wonder how Jamaat e-Islami and the Muslim Brotherhood’s attempts to blame 9/11 on Mossad will be received by Al Qaeda. Ayman al-Zawahiri expressed fury last April when the Iranian government made similar claims:
In an audio tape posted on the internet, Zawahiri insisted al-Qaeda had carried out the attacks on the US.
He accused Iran, and its Hezbollah allies, of trying to discredit Osama Bin Laden’s network. Correspondents say the comments underline al-Qaeda’s increasing public hostility towards Iran.
In a two-hour audiotape posted on an Islamist website, Osama Bin Laden’s chief deputy responded to questions posted by al-Qaeda sympathisers.
In response to a question about persistent rumours in the Middle East that Israel was involved in the 9/11 attacks, Zawahiri said the rumour had begun on the Hezbollah television station, Al-Manar.
“The purpose of this lie is clear - [to suggest] that there are no heroes among the Sunnis who can hurt America as no-one else did in history,” he said. ”Iranian media snapped up this lie and repeated it.”‘
I can’t imagine him being impressed with this ‘open letter’ either, assuming that he or his adherents ever get to hear of it. All in all, the ructions between Islamist movements and governments who seek to spread 9/11 denial and al-Qaeda are reminiscent of this. Life truly does immitate art, at least as far as crackpots are concerned.
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25 responses
You failed to mention why these bishops were excommunicated in the first place and why they have now been welcomed back into the Church. Neither of these events had anything to do with the supposedly anti-semitic views of Bishop Williamson. They are about internal Church unity and the primacy of Rome.
I don’t dispute this, Chris, but my main point (in this and my previous post on Holocaust denial) concerns the crossover between counterknowledge and extremism amongst the far right, both secular and religious.
Mr.Welch, your implicit comparison between the Catholic Church and Al Qaida has been noted. And you have been placed in my own personal list of people not to be taken seriously. That may not mean a damn to you, but I would like to place it on record.
Fabio, you have completely misunderstood what I have written. I am not comparing Catholics to AQ. I am comparing religious nutters of all stripes, and saying how lunatics on the fringes of Christianity and Islam have a lot in common.
I would no more consider Richard Williamson to be as representative of Catholicism as I would Yusuf al-Qardawi to be representative of Sunnis. If you read what I have to say with more care that would be evident.
Fabio,
Look back at the title of the post. The criticism was not of any individual religion, but of individual maniacs within a religion that wreck a religion’s credibility.
I would venture that there isn’t a single religion which doesn’t have some nutter who has said something that would make their co-religionists groan.
Williamson is a perfect example.
I agree with Chris. The Vatican decision to rescind the excommunication had nothing to do with personal views. Catholics do not practice thought control.
If the author wishes to point out inconsistencies in Williamson’s behavior and beliefs that is one thing. To open an article with a derogatory paragraph about the Pope is in the least poor composition.
Mr.Welsh, I regret to say that your statement is poppycock. By bringing in these two people, and making the Pope’s decision (which I have severely criticized in my blog, because I knew how people like you would use it) as the antefact, you have created a structure that says: Catholics = Islam = murderers/holocaust deniers. Do not, after doing that, come all innocent and claim that you never claimed to suggest any such thing. Especially since even in your denial you are suggesting an exact moral equivalence between Catholic Christianity and Sunni Islam (the average Catholic, you say, is to Richard Williamson as the average Muslim is to Yussuf al Qaradawi). Which is plain nonsense, and it is wrong on the facts. Williamson is a fringe figure, the leader of a few schismatics. Al Qaradawi is an established worlwide leader whose broadcasts are followed by hundreds of millions of Muslims, financed by Gulf Arab states, and approved by Al Azhar. Don’t insist - the more you try to extricate yourself from the quagmire your anti-Catholicism has got you into, the deeper you sink.
Fabio, you are jumping to conclusions. If you cannot understand my post, then have it translated into Italian. If you can’t understand it after that, I really don’t know what to say.
And Fred, if you do not think that it reflects badly on the current Pope to let people like Williamson back into the fold, then what do you think would actually discredit your faith? Assuming you are a Catholic, do you feel happy about a man like this administering the Eucharist?
Mr.Welch, I understand your post all too well, and you have not answered a single point I made. You have not denied that you see no difference between the religion of jihad and the religion of the Cross; you have not denied that you implied that the Pope was no better than Williamson and that Williamson’s position was the same as Al Qaradawi’s. And you cannot deny these things, because they are there in your post for anyone to read. Instead, you had the unmitigated bloody cheek to attempt to patronize me. That, sir, is a very foolish thing to do. As for your absurd suggestion that I cannot understand what is all too clear only because I speak another language, well, sir, if you cannot talk straight in English, I hardly expect you to do so in Italian. If you have no answer to criticism, it is profoundly silly to try and act as though you were above rather than below it. And your incredibly stupid remark implying that one bad man on the fringes of the Church discredits two thousand years of philosophy, art, and activity of every kind, only shows the depths of your prejudice and the desperacy with which you cling to any excuse to feed it.
Fabio, you have done what all too many people do on this site. You have chosen to wilfully misinterpret my post. If you want to do that, that’s your prerogative. Just tell me how rehabilitating a maniac like Williamson does the Catholic Church anything other than discredit. I’d be grateful for your justification for a policy decision by the current pope which can best be described as crass.
If you think that there are no problems whatsoever with Benedict XVI’s decision - particularly given the murky wartime record of the Vatican, and the efforts his predecessor made to atone for that past - I honestly don’t know what so say. I can only presume that your own religious faith has blinded you to common sense.
Fabio, I don’t want to get into a discussion about how you interpret Joseph’s post. But I would like you to consider this:
Who am I talking about?
Different strains of the same disease, if you ask me.
DavidMWWW: you call it a disease. I call it the reason for Dante, Beethoven and Michelangelo (among others). As for comparisons, I can easily make one between you and other keen deniers of God - such as those who filled the gulags. You see, dumb and malevolent comparisons work both ways.
Mr.Welch: you chose to write as you did. The parallel between the Pope and Islam was so obvious that every single commenter on this thread - including ideological fellow-travellers of yours such as David - picked it up. In the face of that, your claim that I wilfully misunderstood what you said is nonsense. You implied that the Pope is no better than Richard Williamson and that neither have any substantive difference from Yussuf Al Qaradawi. Everybody understood you to say exactly that. Your fellow Catholic-haters were delighted; Catholics like me were insulted and disgusted. But we all understood you to say exactly the same thing. And you have not even tried to deny that that is what you think. The only thing that seems to have annoyed you is that it has been spelled out.
Fabio, stop waffling. Do you think Williamson is fit to be a bishop in the Catholic Church, yes or no? Do you think Pope Benedict XVI made the right decision in readmitting him (and Lefebvre’s three other acolytes) to the fold, yes or no?
I assume that your first few comments were due to a misunderstanding. Now I can only presume that you are wilfully misinterpreting my comments so as to avoid having to address these two embarrassing questions.
The main fact is, there is no reason - no excuse - for an educated adult in the 21st century to believe ANY of those things I listed in my comparison. So until you ditch them, you’ll just have to put up with feeling insulted and disgusted while the rest of us point and laugh.
This affair goes well beyond the holocaust denial of Williamson. The whole point of the St Pius X Society was to turn its back against the modern world. Why did they name themselves after Pius X? Because he was the Pope who raged against “modernism”, refusing even to recognise the Italian state, after the nationalist revolutionaries had seized control of the Papal territories.
Pius X sided with the forces of reaction everywhere. He denounced the separation of state and church in France which led to the French government (rather more muscular than more recent French regimes) breaking diplomatic ties with the Vatican.
The holocaust is not the only historical event the SSPX has problems with. For them, the trouble began with the French revolution. They think it was a thoroughly bad thing, and that Europe was much better off ruled by absolute monarchs (as long as they were catholics). The only modern French regime SSPX founder Lefebvre approved of was Vichy.
Lefebvre and his followers whined at great length abot the need to restore Catholic “tradition”. Part of that tradition, of course, is anti-semitism. It wasn’t the Nazis who invented ghettoes, or forced Jews to wear special clothes.
Those ideas came out of the Vatican, and were first formulated in the papal bull “Cum nimis absurdum” of Pope Paul IV, in the mid 16th century. He enforced the Rome ghetto, and it was not destroyed until 1870.
Anti-semitism was not a quirk of a few bad popes but deeply rooted in Catholicism. So I’m not at all surprised that Ratzinger, a former member of the Hitler Youth, is welcoming back a crazed anti-modernist sect, which includes outright holocaust deniers.
It seems that there is some confusion about what the lifting of an order of excommunication means. It does not restore a person to communion with Rome; it is merely an invitation to reconciliation. Such reconciliation will necessarily involve abandonment and repentance of prior behavior.
Perhaps an analogy will help:
Imagine the coach of a basketball team. One of his players begins to act out, first rejecting specific requests by the coach, then specific commands, then rejecting the coach’s authority entirely. He also says many things about a variety of subjects that are deplorable. The player storms out of practice, and the coach announces that he is no longer part of the team.
At this point, if the player decides he wants to rejoin the team, he must go to the coach, ask forgiveness, and repent of his actions. However, there is no guarantee that the coach will allow him to rejoin the team, as the onus is on the player to prove his sincerity and commitment to rejoining the team, repenting of his prior words and actions, and assenting to the coach’s authority.
Some time passes, and though the coach hopes that the player will have a change of heart and/or attitude and initiate reconciliation, he does not. Since the player’s return from exile - provided the player abandons and repents of his prior actions - would benefit both the the team and the player**, the coach announces publicly that the player is welcome to rejoin the squad.
[**-I think it can be fairly stated that the repentance required for Williamson and the SSPX folks to rejoin full communion with Rome would be a good thing.]
Does this mean the coach approves of the player’s words and/or actions that got him thrown of the team, or of any general or specific behavior of his since then? Not in the least.
Does this mean the player is automatically part of the team again? No. He must muster up the courage to walk through the gym door, suit up, rejoin the team, and abide by team rules.
Does this mean that if the player resumes his bad behavior that he will still be welcome? Of course not. He must abandon and repent of his prior behavior, and he would be well-advised to go the extra mile to prove his loyalty to the coach and team, and to prove that he has changed his ways and his attitude.
So really what the coach did by announcing that the player may rejoin the team, as did the Pope by lifting the excommunication, was offer an invitation to reconciliation. There would still be repentance and a change of behavior required on the part of the player (i.e. Williamson), and in no way should the invitation be interpreted as approval of, or lack of disapproval of, previous behavior. This is not my personal interpretation of a lifting of an order of excommunication, but encoded in the Code of Canon Law.
——————
Rather than be accused of “waffling”, I’ll attempt to answer Mr. Welch’s two questions addressed to Mr. Barbeiri :
“Do you think Williamson is fit to be a bishop in the Catholic Church, yes or no?” If he responds to the Pope’s invitation of reconciliation by undergoing the necessary repentance and change of attitude, yes. Until then, he is not considered in full communion with Rome.
“Do you think Pope Benedict XVI made the right decision in readmitting him (and Lefebvre’s three other acolytes) to the fold, yes or no?” As I have illustrated above, lifting an order of excommunication != “readmitting him to the fold”.
Respectfully,
GR
Several years ago, a CBC commentator named Michael Enright famously compared the Catholic Church to the Mafia.
An uproar predictably ensued, and demands for an apology were issued.
On a later broadcast, Enright apologized — to the Mafia!
Actually, Fabio, you don’t have to go back all that far into history to find the Catholic Church coercing, burning, crusading, and otherwise behaving in such a way as to gain the approval of any al Queda strategist.
Granted, here in the 21st Century, I’d rather live next to a fanatical, enraged Catholic than a fanatical, enraged Muslim. Still, from where I stand, all religions are based on fear and ignorance, and as one looks over the historical record, there’s not all that much to choose between them.
Joseph, I’m inclined to cut the pope some slack on this. All this decision amounts to is saying that Williamson (and the three other bishops) are not condemned to hellfire and damnation for becoming bishops under Lefebvre’s sect. It does not amount to accepting Williamson as a bishop in the church. If the pope does that, then I will join in blasting the decision.
Pat, as far as I’m aware Benedict XVI has not stripped Williamson of his title as a Bishop, or defrocked him.
Mr. Welch:
As I stated in my above comment, the lifting of the order of excommunication does not automatically bring him “back in the fold”, but is an invitation to repentance and reconciliation.
The Pope has not “stripped” him of his title of bishop because lifting the excommunication does not grant him this title, as evidenced in this article:
(http://www.france24.com/en/20090204-bishop-must-retract-holocaust-statement-vatican)
Holocaust-denying bishop Richard Williamson must “unequivocally” distance himself from his statements before he can be admitted to episcopal office in the Roman Catholic Church, the Vatican said on Wednesday.
If he must perform an action of repentance before “he can be admitted to episcopal office in the Roman Catholic Church”, then it stands to reason that he does not hold one now.
As far as your call for Williamson to be defrocked, a priest in the Church will only be defrocked if he has broken his vows and resists efforts by the Church to have him repent. Having incredibly stupid opinions - not mention voicing those opinions publicly - are not covered in priestly vows, and therefore not a violation of them. However, at the present time, Williamson is not a bishop in the Roman Catholic Church, nor is he a practicing priest - he will be prohibited from administering the sacraments of the Church until such a time comes that he is reconciled with Rome, the requirements of which (recantation of his previous statements, recognizing Vatican II and the Popes that followed it as legitimate, submission to authority of the magisterium) are being made public.
If you wish to continue to castigate the Pope for granting a status to Williamson that he has not been nor will be granted (without recantation and repentance), you will do so in defiance of the facts.
Respectfully,
GR
Based on everything I have read, Geronimo is correct:
Williamson’s post of Bishop is not recognized by the Vatican and he will not be permitted to serve as a member of Catholic clergy until he recants his views regarding Jews and the Shoah and accepts Vatican II teachings.
That said, Pope Benedict and his staff handled the situation poorly and clearly should have anticipated the international scope of the backlash (in many cases from his own Bishops and Cardinals.) The statements that he was unaware of Williamson’s views is just embarrassing.
As far as I’m concerned, this is the last word on this subject. The Vatican has admitted that they have really ballsed this one up:
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/europe/vaticancityandholysee/4446728/Vatican-admits-errors-in-rehabilitating-bishop-who-questioned-Holocaust.html
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/comment/faith/article5663726.ece
My point is that if the Pope had been far-sighted enough, he’d have demanded that Williamson recant his views before renouncing his predecessor’s verdict on excommunication. For Benedict XVI, this has been a serious own goal.
And I would reiterate my basic point - with religious maniacs on all sides, fact and evidence is overcome by dogma and fanaticism.
The Taliban in Afghanistan had the slogan ‘Throw reason to the dogs. It stinks of corruption’. That sort of attitude belongs on the extremes of all religions, not just Islam.
“And I would reiterate my basic point - with religious maniacs on all sides, fact and evidence is overcome by dogma and fanaticism.”
The same is true of anti-religious maniacs.
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