Benedict's reconciliation move stirs controversy

The National Catholic Reporter ^ | Jan. 24, 2009 | JOHN L. ALLEN JR., NCR Staff

[narses]

By JOHN L. ALLEN JR., NCR Staff

Published: 

Jan. 24, 2009

Lefebvre: Archbishop Marcel Lefebvre presides at the 1988 ordinations of Bishops Richard Williamson, Bernard Tissier de Mallerais, Bernard Fellay and Alphonso de Galarreta in Econe, Switzerland. (CNS photo/Catholic Press Photo)In a gesture billed as an “act of peace,” but one destined both to fire intra-Catholic debate about the meaning of the Second Vatican Council and to open a new front in Jewish/Catholic tensions, the Vatican today formally lifted a twenty-year-old excommunication imposed on four bishops who broke with Rome in protest over the liberalizing reforms of Vatican II (1962-65).

Ironically, news of the move came just one day before the 50th anniversary of the announcement by Pope John XXIII of his intention to call Vatican II.

The four bishops had been ordained in defiance of the late Pope John Paul II in 1988 by French Archbishop Marcel Lefebvre, whose Priestly Fraternity of St. Pius X clung to the old Latin Mass after Vatican II and also expressed deep reservations about both ecumenism and religious freedom. Lefebvre died in 1991.

The four prelates involved are Bernard Fellay, superior of the Fraternity of St. Pius X; Alfonso de Gallareta; Tissier de Mallerais; and Richard Williamson. Their legitimacy as bishops has never been in question, since under Catholic law, Lefebvre was a legitimately ordained bishop and hence any ordination he performed is considered “valid” but “illicit.”

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Breaking News: Pope stirs Jewish fury over bishop

Breaking News: Catholic traditionalists elated over papal move

Breaking News: Analysis: Pope Benedict takes on huge risk; could further isolate himself inside Vatican

Watch Traditionalist Bishop Williamson deny any Jews were killed in the gas chambers.

Listen to Traditionalist Bishop Williamson deny that airplanes took down the Twin Towers on Sept. 11, 2001. Meanwhile, he says, a police state is taking over Europe and the United States.

Late Archbishop Lefebvre once said: "Muslims will kidnap your wives, your daughters...We cannot co-habitate with Muslims."
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The text of the Jan. 21 decree from the Vatican’s Congregation for Bishops, released this morning in Rome, presents the act of pardon as a “gift of peace at the end of the Christmas season ... intended to promote ‘unity in charity’ in the universal church, and to takle away the scandal of division.”

While Catholics will likely see the decree as a victory for a conservative reading of Vatican II, it has also sparked protest in Jewish quarters for a different reason: One of the four Lefebvrite prelates, Richard Williamson of Great Britain, recently made comments that appeared to cast doubt on the historical truth of the Holocaust.

In an interview with Swedish television recorded in November but aired in January, Williamson said that he did not believe the Nazis had used gas chambers. Fellay: Bishop Bernard Fellay, superior of the Society of St. Pius X, is pictured in a 2004 file photo. He was among the four men ordained bishops in 1988 by the society's founder, Archbishop Marcel Lefebvre. (CNS photo)

“Between 200,000 and 300,000 Jews perished in Nazi concentration camps, but not one of them by gassing in a gas chamber,” Williamson said, according to a transcript of the program.

Speaking to reporters today in Rome, a Vatican spokesperson insisted that the Vatican does not share Williamson’s views, and that his recent comments had “nothing to do” with the decree from the Congregation for Bishops.

Jesuit Fr. Federico Lombardi said that the decree is not tantamount to “marrying the ideas and the statements” of Williamson, which “have to be judged on their own merits.”

Likewise, Fellay distanced himself from Williamson’s comments, saying they represented a “personal opinion” which were being “instrumentalized” to discredit the Fraternity of St. Pius X.

Nonetheless, Jewish reaction has been critical. As rumors of a possible reversal of the excommunication began to circulate late last week, the Anti-Defamation League warned that it “could become a source of great tension between Catholics and Jews.” A federation of Jewish organizations in France, where the Lefebvrite movement is especially prominent, called Williamson “a contemptible liar whose sole objective is to reawaken centuries-old hatred against the Jews.” In a similar vein, the Chief Rabbi of Rome said the rehabilitation of Williamson opens “a deep wound” in Catholic/Jewish relations.

The row seems likely to aggravate what was already a difficult period in Catholic/Jewish ties, related in part to Benedict XVI’s 2007 revival of the old Latin liturgy, which includes a controversial Good Friday prayer for the conversion of Jews. Some Jewish leaders have also expressed alarm over recent comments by the pope to the effect that “inter-religious dialogue, in the strict sense, is not possible.”

Recently Italian Jewish leaders announced their withdrawal from an annual “Day of Judaism” sponsored by the bishops’ conference in Italy, in protest of these developments.

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Watch Archbishop Lefebvre ordain four bishops on June 30, 1988 in defiance of Pope John Paul II.

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Meanwhile, the lifting of the excommunication is likely to stir mixed Catholic reaction.

While some Catholics will welcome it as a gesture of reconciliation intended to heal the only formal schism that followed Vatican II, others, especially those on the church’s liberal wing, are likely to see it as another indication that a “conservative,” or “traditionalist,” reading of the council is gaining ground under Benedict XVI.

Lombardi today took pains to emphasize the more benign interpretation, calling the decree “an important step on the path towards full communion” with those traditionalist Catholics who followed Lefebvre into a break with Rome.

The Society of St. Pius X claims roughly a million followers in different parts of the world.

Ever since the break with Lefebvre in 1988, efforts to heal the breach have been a top Vatican priority. The late Pope John Paul II reached out to the Lefebvrite bishops on several occasions, and Benedict XVI met with Fellay shortly after his election to the papacy in 2005.

In part, observers see this outreach as the sort of pastoral attempt to end a schism that any pope would feel obliged to make. In part, too, however, Benedict XVI has repeatedly insisted that Vatican II must be interpreted in “continuity” with earlier eras of church history, and this decree is a symbolically powerful way of making that point.

Vatican solicitude for the Lefebvrites has long been a source of frustration for some on the Catholic left, who complain that there’s no similar concern to heal alienation among liberals. Jesuit Fr. Thomas Reese, for example, charged in a 1997 lecture: “As long as dissenters stay in the church they are treated like pariahs, but schismatics such as Lefebvre are wooed at the highest level. After you have been in schism long enough, you are honored and loved as separated brothers and sisters, even if you hold more extreme views than those of Catholic dissenters.”

Whether it will result in “full communion” with the complex galaxy of traditionalist Catholics, at least right away, remains to be seen. In a letter to members of the Fraternity of St. Pius X announcing the lifting of the excommunication, Fellay confirmed the group’s “reservations” about Vatican II.

Nonetheless, the mere fact that the four bishops wrote to the Vatican in December to request the lifting of the excommunication may itself be a sign of willingness to meet Rome halfway. In the past, spokespersons for the Lefebvrites have always dismissed the 1988 decree of excommunication as “invalid.”

[narses]

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Obama Says A Baby Is A Punishment

Obama: “If they make a mistake, I don’t want them punished with a baby.”

[Ransomed]

If you had to guess, what % of US Catholics have heard of the SSPX and know why they split?

Freegards, thanks for all the pings

[narses]

I think a majority have some knowledge. In areas like mine where they are active and the local Ordinaries heterodox or lax and often shockingly so, very high.

[Ransomed]

Huh. I was thinking only a small % know about them. I’ve never heard about them before I read about them on FR.

Freegards

[livius]

Many of them have at least a vague (but often very distorted) idea.

However, you’ll be happy to know the press is doing it’s best to make everything awful. The Reuters’ headline was “Pope Rehabilitates Holocaust Denier,” believe it or not. I don’t think the thing that the Pope actually did, or even the issue of the SSPX, was mentioned until the third paragraph. It sounded as if the whole event was about Williamson (an Anglican convert who is disliked within the SSPX, a Holocaust denier AND a 9/11 “truther”) and meant to show the Pope’s approval of him.

Nothing could be further from the truth. In fact, unless the SSPX comes back under the administrative authority of the Church, there’s not even anything the Pope can do about Williamson.

[ALPAPilot]

So the Jewish community is outraged that Pope has ex-ex-communicated four Catholic Bishops. Is this the same community that voted 70% for Obama? Obama who want to coddle Jewish hating Islamofacists. Do I have to take this Jewish community seriously?

[fatima]

I guess that means all the priest's that were ordained by the Bishop's are in or maybe they will review them on an individual basis.

[Lorica]

The timing of Bp. Williamson’s interview is most unfortunate. Ultimately the most damage may be to Pope Benedict.

[sneakers]

I’ve heard about them for years, and I know why they split. If they were active in my area, I would have been tempted to attend mass there, but wouldn’t have because of the split. I am happy that the Pope lifted the excommunications!

[chase19]

The timing is perhaps too coincidental. I’ve read and agree that Williamson is a plant - very damaging at this critical stage in the reunion.

[chase19]

I think it was more like 75/78%.

[Houghton M.]

No, nothing has changed for anyone except the four bishops and all that changed for them was the lifting of the excommunications. The four bishops are still suspended a divinis as are all the priests they ordained. The bishops are valid bishops and the priests are valid priests, but none of them have valid faculties to say Mass or hear confessions. They are validly ordained and their Masses are valid but irregular, illicit.

The pope did not “rehabilitate” Williamson. None of the bishops are fully reconciled to the Church. But the lifting of the excommunications opens the way for talks that might lead to full reconciliation. That’s the point of Benedict’s action. The best round up I’ve seen on this is at Amy Welborn’s Charlotte Was Both blog yesterday:

http://amywelborn.wordpress.com/2009/01/24/your-move-2/

[fatima]

Great,I’ll read it later.Nice to know just in case I get asked,Thanks,Fatima

[Houghton M.]

I should have added that even though nothing changed for the rest of the SSPX or any of the Society’s priests and people, the reason the Pope did this was to open the way for something to happen. That’s the real news here—the SSPX explicitly asked that the excommunications be lifted and brought a spiritual bouguet of thousands of said rosaries to Benedict at Lourdes. So he did what they asked of him, out of mercy (the excommunications were not declared to have been invalid or unjustly imposed, rather, were merely canceled) and now the ball is in the SSPX’s court.

Full reconciliation and full communion with the Bishop of Rome and reintegration into the Latin Rite structures (most canonists say that formal schism does not exist here) is possible but will take a lot of negotiating and good will all around.

[livius]

That was probably Bp Williamson’s intention. He is a very disruptive character and derailed reunion moves at least once in the past.

[vladimir998]

Since these priests are in a religious order - and their orders (thier ordinations, that is) are considered valid by the Church - I suppose they need not go through any lengthy regularization process. They would essentially become registered with Rome (for lack of a better turn of phrase) and would remain the responsibility (and the problem in some cases) of the SSPX.

[RobbyS]

Liberal Catholics caused a mell of a hess all during the reign of Paul VI and well int the reign of John Paul. The pope is trying to clean up after them. These schismatics are not, at least,virtual or real heretics as many liberals are.

[RobbyS]

The Jews are into having- cake- and- eating- it- too mode. The truth is that not all the 6 million Jews died directly at the hands of the SS but also from the general effects of the war such as caused the deaths of tens of millions of other Europeans, the Russians in particular. What is dismaying, however, is the venom displayed toward the Jews before and since the war as if this remarkable people were the cause of all their miseries.

[fatima]

Thanks vladimir998.