Pope Removes Ban on British Holocaust Denier Bishop

Arutz 7 ^ | 1-25-09 | David Shammah

[Nachum]

(IsraelNN.com) In a move that many Jewish community officials said would cause relations between Jews and Catholics to further deteriorate, the Vatican on Saturday lifted an excommunication ban against Bishop Richard Williamson, one of four bishops who were banned in 1988 for taking on the office of bishop against the wishes of then-Pope John Paul II.

Williamson is a Holocaust denier, and has repeatedly said that the gas chambers did not exist and that no more than 300,000 Jews were killed during World War II, mostly of starvation. In addition, Williamson has declared that the Jews are plotting to take over the world, and that the U.S. and Israel were behind 9/11.

In an interview with Swedish television conducted last November but broadcast last week, Williamson said that he believed that there were “no gas chambers."

“Between 200,000-300,000 perished in Nazi concentration camps, but not one of them by gassing in a gas chamber,” he said, adding, “I believe that the historical evidence is hugely against 6 million having been deliberately gassed in gas chambers as a deliberate policy of Adolf Hitler.”

Back to Middle Ages Williamson has had a long history of Holocaust denial. In a 1989 sermon in Sherbrooke, Canada, Williamson said that "there was not one Jew killed in the gas chambers. It was all lies, lies, lies. The Jews created the Holocaust so we would prostrate ourselves on our knees before them and approve of their new State of Israel... Jews made up the Holocaust, Protestants get their orders from the devil, and the Vatican has sold its soul to liberalism." In dozens of sermons and letters, Richardson reiterated the same theme, adding that Hitler “liberated” Germany from the Jews.

Richardson advocates a return to the Middle Ages, with the Inquisition the preferred model of the Catholic relationship to Jews. “As Catholic faith goes up, so Jewish power goes down, while as Catholic faith goes down, so Jewish power goes up. In the Catholic Middle Ages, the Jews were relatively impotent to harm Christendom. But as Catholics have grown over the centuries weaker and weaker in the faith, especially since Vatican II, so the Jews have come closer and closer to fulfilling their substitute-Messianic drive towards world dominion... When Spanish Catholics were truly Catholic, God granted them by 1492 to reconquer Spain from the Arabs, and then granted them to create a Catholic empire in the Americas.”

Jewish community officials have expressed serious concerns over the Pope's move. Rabbi Shmuel Ricardo Di Segni, the Chief Rabbi of Rome, told reporters that the rehabilitation of Williamson opens “a deep wound” in Catholic-Jewish relations.

The Anti-Defamation League, an anti-Semitism watchdog group, said that the reinstatement “could become a source of great tension between Catholics and Jews.” The umbrella group of Jewish communities in France called Williamson “a contemptible liar whose sole objective is to reawaken centuries-old hatred against the Jews.”

In a report, Reuters quoted Mordechai Lewy, Israel's ambassador to the Vatican, as saying that Israel “has no intention of interfering in the internal workings of the Catholic Church. However, the eagerness to bring a Holocaust denier back into the Church will cast a shadow on relations between Jews and the Catholic Church.”

A Vatican spokesman said that the lifting of the ban had nothing to do with Williamson's views. “It has nothing to do with the personal opinions of a person, which are open to criticism, but are not pertinent to this decree.”

[steve-b]

His excommunication had nothing to do with his Holocast fantasies, but with his conflicts with certain Church doctrine.

So what? He acted in a way that caused the Church to boot him out. Being allowed back in is a privilege, and the Church can and should require more than a murmurred (and almost certainly insincere) "my bad" on the technical doctrinal issues in question.

By letting him back in, the Church chose to associate themselves with him. One is known by what one chooses to associate oneself with.

[steve-b]

Having said that, it's important to note that his "holocaust denial" never had anything to do with his excommunication -- and therefore has nothing to do with his reinstatement.

See previous message for why this argument is in error.

To illustrate by analogy: Suppose a drunken lout keeps showing up at your restaurant. Getting drunk and rowdy is not in and of itself sufficient reason for you to keep him out -- but then one day he grab-asses one of your waitresses and that gets him banned. Do you let him back in if he promises only to keep his hands to himself, or do you demand that he behave himself in general?

[Alberta's Child]

That's not a good analogy. Here's a better example:

A guy who regularly patronizes your restaurant has a serious problem with the IRS and is facing tax evasion charges. If he gets drunk one day and grabs one of your waitresses, he may very well face potential criminal charges for sexual assault, etc.

When he stands trial for tax evasion, I can assure you that the assault on your waitress will have absolutely no bearing on how his Federal tax case is adjudicated. The regular customer of yours who keeps his hands to himself will be no better off in tax court than the drunken lout . . . because the charges have nothing to do with each other even if they are strong indicators of the character of the person or people in question.

[steve-b]

Your analogy fails because it involves two separate adjudicating authorities. Last time I looked, there weren’t two independent Popes making two independent sets of decisions for the Church.

[Alberta's Child]

OK . . . then consider an example involving the SAME adjudicating authorities.

If a person is a defendant in two different criminal trials, judges will go to great lengths to ensure that the facts of one case cannot even be brought up in the other case . . . so as to avoid having any of the facts from one trial serve as prejudicial information in the other.

[the scotsman]

There are times I am very happy and proud my ancestors became Protestant...

[Puddleglum]

The point is, it branches him back into the apostolic sucession, and thus retrieves the people he ordained. He can still be punished by the pope for his other errors - before he could not. In fact, he has been instructed not to teach (I think).

You need to understand the apostolic sucession and how it works to understand the mechanics of this.

[Puddleglum]

All that has been done is to lift his excommunication, effective this week. He remains suspended a divinis. which means he cannot confer any of the sacraments, establish new parishes, or employ any of the other powers of bishops. That remains true of all other SSPX bishops and priests - further talks are needed to fully regularize their position with the Church.

Williamson (and the other SSPX bishops) were excommunicated in the first place precisely for being ordained. Archbishop Marcel Lefebvre consecrated these four bishops in June 1988 without any authorization by the Pope, and in so doing all involved automatically incurred late sententiae excommunication.

Because Lefebvre had the power to consecrate new bishops, Williams (alas) is technically a valid bishop, but he is not a licit one, because he was not authorized to become one by Rome.

As for his ideas on the Holocaust, they are ludicrous but not technically heresy and therefore don't affect his excommunication. But I dare say he will have to recant before he is regularized as part of any deal with the SSPX, assuming he is regularized at all.

Excellent answer - much better than mine.

[Petronski]

...unless the Catholic Church wants people to very reasonably attribute his views to the Catholic Church to some extent.

FAIL