Pope Benedict Lifts Excommunication of Holocaust Denying Bishop

Pope Benedict continues the rightward-lurching of the Catholic Church.

From AP:

Pope Benedict XVI has lifted the excommunications of four bishops consecrated without papal consent 20 years ago by the late French ultraconservative Archbishop Marcel Lefebvre, the Vatican announced Saturday.

One of the four bishops was shown this week in an interview saying that the Nazi gas chambers probably didn't exist. The report prompted Rome's chief rabbi to ask the Vatican to halt plans to rehabilitate him.

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Richard Williamson said in a Swedish state TV interview that historical evidence "is hugely against 6 million Jews having been deliberately gassed." The Vatican had no comment on the report.

Ruth Gledhill, the Religion correspondent for the Times of London notes the disaster of bringing Williamson back in as a representative of the church:

If he brings them back in with Williamson on board, then truly it will be a disaster. Vatican II might as well never have happened and it won't just be the Jewish community that would be justifiably disgusted.

The Times of London reports on the sense of dismay as the Pope acts to reinstate Williamson and his Society of St. Pius X (SSPX) bretheren, who opposed the reforms of the Second Vatican Council:

Some Vatican officials are also saying privately that although the Pope’s stated aim was to unite the Church by bringing the rebels back into the fold, his move would have the opposite effect. “The Church will pay a price for this” one Vatican prelate said. “The Pope is undermining the legacy of John Paul II.”

The denial of the existence of Nazi gas chambers, and of the holocaust itself are not Williamson's only anti-Semitic acts. According to Gledhill of the Times:

In an earlier story in the Catholic Herald, Bishop Williamson was exposed as endorsing the forgery, the Protocols of the Elders of Zion.

Pope Benedict has taken other steps to move the church to the right, and to move away from the raprochment achieved through Vatican II.

This month Elia Enrico Richetti, the chief rabbi of Venice, said Jews had been deeply offended by the reintroduction by the Pope in March of a Good Friday Latin prayer for the conversion of the Jews as part of the revived Tridentine Mass. “We are moving toward the cancellation of 50 years of Church history” the rabbi said

The Catholic Herald story on Williamson is well worth the read for anyone who wishes an understanding of the broad anti-Semitism preached by now-Bishop Williamson.


h/t: Andrew Sullivan at "The Dish", whose article contains a video of Williamson speaking on the Holocaust.