Posted on 02/05/2009 2:01:31 PM PST by NYer
The SSPX "Tradicals," whose anti-Semitic concoctions have landed their would-be new best friend, Pope Benedict XVI, in hot water, have apparently begun scrubbing the web of their worst musings. One article, "The Mystery of the Jews," which I posted about earlier, has been taken down from their U.S. site. The article was all-too representive of the ideas they embrace, and which the Pope was too quick to overlook when he lifted the excommunications on their four bishop-leaders.
But while the SSPX is dropping stuff down the memory hole as fast as they can, the Vatican is still blaming a poor communications system for the fiasco. Father Federico Lombardi, the Vatican spokesman, told a French Catholic newspaper, La Croix, on Thursday that the Vatican had--and has--no media strategy. Reuters has the story:
"We didn't control the communications," said Lombardi, whose office originally announced the pope's decision in a simple statement accompanied by the Vatican legal document that readmitted the four back into the Roman Catholic Church.
"I think we still have to create a communications culture inside the Curia, where each dicastery (ministry) communicates by itself, not necessarily thinking of going through the press room or issuing an explanatory note when the issue is complex."
[snip]
Lombardi said modern communications made it difficult for the Vatican to issue some statements.
"Certain documents are meant for specialist of canon law, others for theologians, others for all Catholics or all people," he said. "But today, whatever the type of document, it all ends up directly in the public sphere. It gets difficult to manage."
The announcement on lifting the excommunications was negotiated "up to the last minute," the spokesman said, and some points remained a bit confusing.
"The communique accompanying it left too much in doubt, giving rise to different interpretations," he said.
There is certainly a problem with the Vatican's media and communications strategy, as noted here. But there is also much to be critiqued in the message that is trying to be communicated, and the why's and wherefore's of it.
Fr. Jim Martin at "In All Things" had these stories first.
Mick,
You wrote:
“Now why is that?”
Probably because we actually have a very good idea how many Jews died at the hands of the Nazis and their allies. While we have only a relative handful of records that tell us how many slaves died we have modern census records, often exacting in their nature, the Nazis own massive record collection and the actual memoirs of Holocaust survivors.
What Williamson said that was so upsetting to people was this:
“I believe there were no gas chambers.” He said this after admitting he had once said, and still believes, that no Jew was ever killed in a gas chamber. He then goes on to say that revisionists have concluded that only 200,000 to 300,000 Jews died in concentration camps. He also verbally pust the Holocaust in quotes.
He is, in essence, denying the Holocaust. He doesn’t want to give the word itself any credibility! He dismisses the idea that many hundreds of thousands were gassed despite the overwhelming evidence - including that of survivors who knew of the operations of the chambers.
If he had just been disputing the number who had died in the camps as opposed to outside of the camps, that would have been one thing. But he was clearly dismissing the idea of genocide.
Now, I suppose it is possible for someone to doubt or even deny the Holocaust and not be anti-semitic. It always seems, however, that the people who doubt or deny the Holocaust are anti-semitic.
How is this comment bad? More orthodox than who? If anyone should be looking at bishops that have been appointed, it is these folks. The SSPX illicitly appointed Williamson, the very source of anti-Semitism, not the Holy Father. I hope, Pyro, that you are not in agreement with their anti-semite teachings.
The Catholic founder of AQ does not “spew anti-Catholicism.” The approach is different no doubt, and not one that I think is beneficial much of the time, but charity and truth trump those concerns. If we have Jesuits and Franciscans Maronites, Ukrainians, etc we can have the SSPXers. I am very glad to hear the website has been scrubbed.
Some seem to be skeptical; I suppose that’s not unreasonable on some level. A child’s first letters it makes with a parent’s hand are not truly the child’s; in time, the child can write poetry. Please give it a chance. It may not work out for all of them but the Holy Father nor Cardinal Castrillon are showing great example of patience and charity and some justice as well.
No one is trying to revise history. There was a time in the history of the Church when it had married popes who fathered children and appointed them cardinals. The Church is not static; she continues to grow in wisdom, guided by the Holy Spirit. Even the worst of the popes never once erred in matters of faith or morals.
The "conclusions" that the authors drew were, at least some of them, painful to read, as they superimposed the historical positions of the Church, and the foundational tenets of Christianity upon the modern culture war with breathtaking crudity.
That is why we have Councils. But the SSPX rejected VCII and some also went so far as to view the subsequent popes as false. The real question here is how deeply embeded is this teaching in their community? If the original ariticle was not that bad, then obviously they recognize their shameful comments. Their repentance, if it is sincere, should be commensurate with their actions over the past 40+ years. It should be in person, before Christ's earthly representative, who will expect them to embrace the documents from VCII, especially Nostra Aete.
My daughter is doing a college report right now on this very topic. In her research, she learned that some of the freed slaves actually purchased slaves of their own. That's just the way it was back then. Slavery was with us from ancient times (plenty of evidence of this throughout the Bible) but we, as a society have progressed. Slavery is wrong ... period.
why is it antisemitic to even question the number of Jews killed by the Nazis?
To pose the question as a student of history gathering statistics ... nothing. In the case of SSPX Bishop Williamson, he never asked the question. He simply denied the holocaust. We have too many 'statistics' to deny such an event ever took place. It would be tantamount to denying that 50 million babies have been murdered in our present society.
Definite numbers of those killed in the Holocaust (Jews and non Jews) will never be known for certain. But the Nazi state was very much into record keeping. So much so that even a short review of the surviving documents shows that millions of Jews were put to death in the camps.
A bit hard to dispute that. I mean they would write up the numbers of men, women, and children, their clothing size, and any personal effects seized. Now in the Eastern front right after the Germans over ran Eastern Russia, the records aren’t very good because of the nature of the time, but there are plenty of Russian historians who have excavated the mass graves.
The funny thing is that many try to say it was only a few hundred or thousand. Which begs the question “Then where the heck did 10 to 12 million people go? To Mars?” Now many Arabs will say “TO ISRAEL!”, but the numbers aren’t even close to matching up.
I spent a rather frustrating afternoon talking with a guy who thought way, two days after I talked with an older man who had been among those who liberated one of the camps.
We are not talking about private behavior of popes. Here's for example, is ON JEWS AND CHRISTIANS LIVING IN THE SAME PLACE. Is it responding to a specific demographic crisis? Yes. But it cannot be dismissed alongside the Borgias' bastards. It is a part of our patrimony.
The real question here is how deeply embeded is this teaching in their community?
Lefevbre signed all Vatican II documents, including Notra Aetate. Obviously, SSPX is not sedevacantist. That some currently associated with SSPX will find the emerging reunion untolerable, there is no doubt.
The teaching on faith relations is a delicate one. Surely some limits on it exist: we can't have interfaith conselebrations, for example. It should be examined without bitterness or sloganeering, and not ahistorically.
Hutton Gibson answered that a few years ago, to paraphrase, just look around you, in New York, Miami, Los Angeles, Sydney. I always figured they were hanging out in the Caribbean. Side by side with the millions on non-Jews who weren't killed. Deniers and their supporters never seem to address that. Didn't gas Jews, didn't shoot Jews, OK, what about the missing Christians?
Yes and no, my SSPX friend became way anti-Semetic because of all the propaganda, so just because they can’t read it today doesn’t mean the harm hasn’t already been done.
I did not know that Fr. Williamson said that about Jews dying in gas chambers. For an educated man to say something like that when we have eye witnesses and photo proof from American forces that liberated the camps is utter nonsense. And ignorant. I can see why honest people may conclude he has another agenda.
The book my father is reading is "An Imperfect God, George Washington, His Slaves and the Creation of America" by Henry Wiencek, which discusses the questions of the true number of Africans brought over here. It is an interesting puzzle
Similarly, I have heard some authentic historians saying that the number of victims in the Holocaust has been estimated too high. And being attacked by people who refused to even discuss numbers as if that would be to dishonor the victims. That was what my question was about. But it may have been misplaced with regard to this priest
For this Fr. Williamson seems to be a man not interested in an accurate accounting for the history books but to make some kind of political statement. Sad for a Catholic priest.
Well, Williamson doesn’t dispute that Jews were killed in concentration camps, of which we have ample evidence. He disputes whether they were specifically gassed as the method of execution. He also disputes the overall six million number.
I would agree that it is a toehold question: in itself legitimate, possibly innocent, but asked in order to minimize the undisputed grievance that the Jews have.
How can you even ask me that!!?? The question I asked, as well as the item I was asking about, has nothing, repeat NOTHING, about the Jews or anti-Semitism. I have been on this forum for nearly ten years, and no one, until this point, has ever accused me of bigotry, against any group. I never thought that you, of all people, would ask me that. It's wounding.
How can you even ask me that!!?? The question I asked, as well as the item I was asking about, has nothing, repeat NOTHING, about the Jews or anti-Semitism. I have been on this forum for nearly ten years, and no one, until this point, has ever accused me of bigotry, against any group. I never thought that you, of all people, would ask me that. It's wounding.
You wrote:
“For this Fr. Williamson seems to be a man not interested in an accurate accounting for the history books but to make some kind of political statement. Sad for a Catholic priest.”
I agree with you. Something is wrong with the man.
Maybe all the missing Christians from the Holocaust ended up in Argentina? joke
Exactly. The gift the pope has given to the SSPX is accountability. Now they will have to put up or shut up, including these uncalled-for statements by Bp. Williamson. I am sympathetic to the SSPX and I think it is all good. I hope and pray this will lead to a canonical regularization for the Society. But if it does, it will be because they ultimately submit to the pope, to whom they claim to remain faithful. They really have to make good on this opportunity or they will be officially declared schismatic, which would spell the end for them, I'm afraid.
I am not accusing you of bigotry and apologize if you misunderstood my remark. In the original exchange, you agreed with the comment "Pray the Pope becomes more solid and orthodox especially in appointing Bishops." and asked How is this comment bad?.
Of all the popes we have known during the past 50 years, B16 is by far the most orthodox. In fact, even the Orthodox leaders agree. If anything, I was surprised at your support for a group led by an anti-semite, illicitly appointed bishop.
I never thought that you, of all people, would ask me that. It's wounding.
My apologies again, if there was a misunderstanding. I know you to be a staunch supporter of traditionalism within the Catholic Church. I think you will agree, though, that there is a fine line one can easily cross when it comes to either end of the spectrum. In the case of Williamson, that line was breached. My concern for the Catholic Church as a whole, is just how deeply embeded are these anti-semite teachings within the traditionalist sspx community.
I ask a question about one commenter's remark, and this translates into support for the SSPX? I don't follow. And Williamson isn't the leader of the SSPX -- Fellay is, and that's the reason why Fellay "legitimately" silenced Williamson.
I know you to be a staunch supporter of traditionalism within the Catholic Church.
I am, but I try to stay from the Jewish issues like the plague. I think there's a tendency to knee-jerk from both those trying to defend the Pope, and from the SSPX crowd. That's a cause of a lot of the problems. We should remember, "In all things, charity."
My apologies again, if there was a misunderstanding.
I'm still not understanding how you got to be asking what you did: I hope, Pyro, that you are not in agreement with their anti-semite teachings. There was no cause for you to be asking me that, other than, perhaps, the fact that I'm "a staunch supporter of traditionalism within the Catholic Church." If that's the case, then you're stereotyping all traditionalists as anti-Semites.
For the record, since there seems to be some doubt on your part, my stance is the same as Pope Pius XI: "Mark well that in the Catholic Mass, Abraham is our Patriarch and forefather. Anti-Semitism is incompatible with the lofty thought which that fact expresses. It is a movement with which we Christians can have nothing to do. No, no, I say to you it is impossible for a Christian to take part in anti-Semitism. It is inadmissible. Through Christ and in Christ we are the spiritual progeny of Abraham. Spiritually, we [Christians] are all Semites."
Interestingly enough, the same Pope Pius XI, in his Act of Consecration of the Human Race to the Sacred Heart of Jesus, wrote, "Be Thou King of all those who are still involved in the darkness of idolotry or of Islamism, and refuse not to draw them all into the light and kingdom of God. Turn Thine eyes of mercy towards the children of that race, once Thy chosen people. Of old, they called down upon themselves the Blood of the Savior; may It now descend upon them as a laver of redemption and of life."
So go figure.
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