Posted on 02/04/2009 7:57:02 AM PST by NYer
The MSM (mainstream media) is having a field day at the expense of the pope and the Catholic Church over the lifting of the excommunication of Bishop Richard Williamson of the Society of Pius X.
In an interview on Swedish television in November 2008, Bishop Williamson denied the existence of gas chambers in the Holocaust and maintained "two to three hundred thousand Jews perished in Nazi concentration camps . . . but none of them by gas chambers."
As pointed out by Bill Donohue of the Catholic League, most of the news coverage has been inaccurate. None of the bishops of the Pius X Society have been fully reinstated in the Catholic Church. The lifting of the excommunication is the first step in a long road toward reconciliation.
Necessary to the reconcilation will be a full embracing of Church teaching, including, as Donohue states, "the necessity of respecting our Jewish brethren."
Taking the ring, however, for media distortion is a "news" story from AFP (Agence France-Presse). The occasion of the article is a comment from Germany's prime minister, Angela Merkel, critical of Benedict XVI, and calling upon the Vatican to "clarify" its position on the Holocaust.
The Vatican spokesman replied to Merkel that the pope's position has always been perfectly clear, and then offered a number of recent examples.
Then the unnamed reporter adds the following comment:
Since becoming the leader of the world's 1.1 billion Catholics in 2005, Benedict has offended Muslims, women, native Indians, Poles, gays, and scientists, but his latest move is fast snowballing into his most damaging.
From this, you would think Benedict XVI has the popularity rating of the Democrats in Congress!
Speaking of the Democrats in Congress, specifically the Catholics among them; 47 sent Benedict XVI a letter expressing their concern for the lifting of the excommunication of Bishop Williamson and asking him to "publicly state your unequivocal position on this matter so that it is clear where the Church stands on one of the most consequential events of the 20th century.”
Once again, Bill Donohue points out the irony of this latest "posturing" from the Catholic Democrats in the Congress:
“The hypocrisy is mind-boggling. They beg the pope to ‘publicly state your unequivocal position on this matter so that it is clear where the Church stands….’ How ironic that most of these very same Catholics fail to speak with clarity about what the Church teaches on abortion. Of the 47 signatories, the majority have a 100 percent NARAL score (meaning they vote with the radical pro-abortion group on every issue). The leader of this group, Rep. Rosa DeLauro, never agrees with the Catholic Church on abortion—her NARAL score is 100 percent.
As I have pointed out before, Rep. DeLauro has become the de-facto leader of the pro-abortion Catholics in Congress. She is from the New Haven, CT area and has represented the 3rd District in Congress since 1990. Her ordinary is Bishop William E. Lori of Bridgeport, CT.
Ratzinger, 85, the Regensburg Music Director, told German newspaper Leipsiger Volkzeitung that he is angered by how unjust and misinformed people are:
"We always speak about an informed society, when in reality it is uninformed.”
The pope's brother found Merkel's comments particularly disappointing:
"I always thought she was a rational woman. But perhaps at the moment she is under pressure to say something irrational."
I, too, find this frenzy to be utterly ridiculous. Are there really so many people out there unable to comprehend the pope's actions?
Granted, I find the Vatican sorely lacking sometimes in PR savvy. We live in a media-saturated world now, where every word from the pope's mouth can be twisted or misunderstood in less than two seconds and reach billions of people. Is there no one at the Vatican whose job it is to anticipate and prepare for such backlash?
Most of the criticism of the Pope”you musy take it from whence it comes”We Catholics have been fortunate to have GREAT Popes in our lifetime.
What a brother!
So rational and matter-of-fact. Like his kid brother.
Something the chattering class does not know how to handle.
What the bishop is quoted as saying about the holocaust is NOT that it did not happen - but that the scale and methods are not certain.
How saying as much can be considered sinful is beyond me.
He may stupid and imprudent, but sinful?
Meanwhile, viable children are ripped apart precious-tender-limb-from-precisou-tender-limb in the womb fo profit with the applause and encouragement of the same fools who complain about this bishop’s comparitively minor imprudence.
Yesterday there was a report that a German theologian, a liberal Catholic, had said that Pope Benedict XVI should resign over this. Talk about irrational.
Just to be clear: he's not a bishop any more than I am. For clarity, he's an "SPPX bishop".
The Vatican should learn to say sometimes "What kind of crap is that, next question please"
I'm not joking, plenty of folks would be right behind the Vatican.
Our world is in desperate need of no-nonsense leadership.
Just look at how long this asinine stupidity has been going on and how many people in high places are weighing in!!!
I’m not sure which would be better: Hearing a bishop say that ... or watching the resultant exploding heads on the left.
I must have missed in the Gospel where the power of the keys and the power to bind and loose were given to the German Chancellor. So she is saying that an excommunication, imposed for something completely unrelated to Williamson’s holocause lunacy, should not be lifted because of that lunacy? And then she has the gall to state that the Pope should denounce Williamson’s views on the holocaust, when he has ALREADY explicitly done just that? This is completely unfair of Maerkel.
Times have changed ... people have empowered the government to speak on their behalf. The attacks are coming from all directions.
He [Williamson] was validly, but illicitly consecrated a bishop. Therefore, he IS a bishop.
The Catholic Church can only excommunicate Catholics. Williamson is a CATHOLIC bishop. I wish he wasn’t. But he is.
“What the bishop is quoted as saying about the holocaust is NOT that it did not happen - but that the scale and methods are not certain.”
That is classic Holocaust denial.
The horror of the Holocaust was its scale and method. To deny its size and systematized genocide is to minimize it.
I agree. But idiocy and imprudence are not crimes. And the entire sane and rational world agrees that not all acts that are sinful should be made criminal, and the church certainly has never excommunicated people for saying stupid things. There few sins that would justify excommunication.
I have to ask you:
Should minimizing the holocaust of jews in WW II be a secular crime?
Should denying rhe holocaust of jews in WW II be a secular crime?
Is minimizing the holocaust of jews in WW II a secular crime?
Is denying rhe holocaust of jews in WW II a secular crime?
Should minimizing the holocaust of jews in WW II be grounds for excommunication?
Should denying rhe holocaust of jews in WW II be grounds for excommunication?
Is minimizing the holocaust of jews in WW II grounds for excommunication?
Is denying rhe holocaust of jews in WW II grounds for excommunication?
I think there has been a tremendous overeaction to this.
The criticism of the Pope on this matter has been linked to his other supposedly inappropriate statements on Islam which I think were brilliant and courageous. The same countries in Europe who are hysterical now over this, and who use the Holocaust to show how liberal and Jew loving they have now become, have no problem with the actual violent acts of anti-Semitism which have risen all over Europe and are tolerated. They don’t enforce their own hate crimes laws (which I am totally against) vis-a-vis Jews but only prosecute Islamaphobia. They are using this episode to show their Jew loving bona fides, but it is on the cheap. Shooting darts at the Catholic Church is easy and popular no doubt, but it does nothing to help the real Jews in their own countries who are beseiged.
In other words, this is total hypocrisy.
I am more concerned about the Pope’s envoy who compared Gaza to the Holocaust. This other matter is an internal Church matter, and I believe the official statements which say this is not an endorsement of this idiot’s views.
I entered this conversation becuase you whitewashed Williamson’s Holocaust denial. I also think it is important to call a spade a spade.
Are those who describe Hitler's genocide as the killing of six million Jews "Holocaust Deniers"?
I take it that you would answer “No.” to all eight of the questios I posed in post 15.
Now, assuming the reader has processed that first line, I will proceed.
I have no use for Holocaust deniers, but the hypocrisy of the mass media on this issue is so palpable it's disgusting. Usually liberals insist that religions require too many things to be believed; now they are demanding that belief in the Holocaust be made an article of Catholic faith. Considering the liberal (and all too often the Catholic) attitude towards events of Jewish history recorded in the Bible (Adam, Noah, Babel, and the splitting of the Red Sea, anyone?) this is absolutely . . . maddening!
As I have observed on several occasions, liberal seek to make the Holocaust the foundation of morality (and thus mandated as belief). This also has the side-effect of turning the Jews from the Chosen People of G-d whose history is among the greatest proofs of His existence into the "anti-religious" people, the people whose suffering finally taught the world the evils and irrationality of religion.
And finally, the fact that the same liberals have done nothing but apologize for out-and-out Holocaust denial throughout the Arab/moslem world--especially for Ahmadinejad, who actually hosted David Duke at a conference of Holocaust deniers--contains enough blatant hypocrisy to induce nausea.
And in the words of Forrest Gump, "that's all I have to say about that."
And in my opinion, intentionally so.
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