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.
They began the clean up campaign last week. Anyone else notice this?
Why is he complaining? Isn’t this a good thing?
Because Antisemitism is the only unforgiveable sin.
If it truly represents a change of heart, it’d be a good thing. If it’s just damage control and cosmetics, it’s bad.
Hmmm. So the outrageously horrible action of the Pope has actually induced the SSPX to clean house to some extent and get rid of some of the anti-Semitic nutjobbery. Maybe, just maybe, it might be a GOOD thing that he did as far as fighting anti-Semitism is concerned. And if the SSPX were to fully regularize, then they would be more susceptible to Church discipline to prevent some of this stuff.
There is a huge difference between true repentance and simply removing scandalous statements from their website.
This is a pretty shoddy article — and appears to come from a hostile POV.
Here's a little sample from a thread entilted "Vatican orders Bp Williamson to recant":
From a poster called amadaeus: "If Bishop Williamson wanted to have fun with this he could ask them in detail what he should recant and prove to him where he was wrong. And then tell the hypocrites to go pound salt!"
Here's another from Longinus II: "It is hard to believe that the Vatican would create a criteria of political correctness to elevate upper-management clergy to positions of import; that the world trumps our Faith. The only true Holocaust ever was that in which the Jews of Christ's time had Him crucified, knowing fully that He had fulfilled the prophecies to be known as the Messiah. And our pope knows this also."
And this from Pax Vobiscum:"I guess we've found the one "dogma" that Modernist Rome won't tolerate anyone questioning."
And finally, this from salus: "Pray the Pope becomes more solid and orthodox especially in appointing Bishops."
Not only is anti-Semitism alive and well in the SSPX, so is anti-Catholicism.
How is salus’s comment bad?
Let's not revise history on this score either. Throughout history the Church did rule againt mixing with the Jews, and especially against common prayer with the Jews or working for them.
The social and economic prohibitions were all for the given demographic, economic, and historical context. The prohibition of religious concelebration is, of course, natural.
I read the Mystery of the Jews briefly (SJackson showed it to me). The first half of it is an exegesis of the confrontation between Jesus and the Sanhedrin, seen in the light of Pauline warnings against legalism and carnality. That was the context in which the contrast between Christianity and Judaism was drawn. There was nothing irrational or hateful about that part, anymore than the homilies of St. Peter on the steps of the Temple were irrational or hateful.
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. To take them seriously one has to believe that the Wall Street banker, the porn producer, the crypto-Marxist atheist journalist, so long as they are of Jewish ethnic stock, all present a common anti-Catholic front together with a pious Orthodox rabbi (with whom the Catholic social teaching agrees 100%) -- and with none of them a faithful Catholic should have anything to do. That crazy theory in itself is so pharisaically legalistic, it can put any Hassidic purist to shame.
It is a good thing they give this stuff less prominence, but it should not be taken as if no tension exists between the two faiths.
The Pope is not "orthodox" nor "solid" enough.
You agree with that?
There are points of legitimate criticism of the Pope. For example, there was criticism of his appointment of Cardinal Levada to the CDF.
It got me to thinking.....why is it antisemitic to even question the number of Jews killed by the Nazis?...isn't that a historical question that is interesting in it's own right?
But it seems to ask that question today,to want to know the facts, which has nothing to do with diminishing the evil of the Holocaust, is somehow a bad thing, subject to censure. Now why is that?
There are points of permissible criticism of the Pope but I don't see the AQ poster's writing as falling into that category.
The poster you referenced stated that the Pope himself was not "solid" nor "orthodox" enough.
It's one thing to say that some bishops are not "solid" nor "orthodox" (a statement which is indisputably true). It's quite another to say that the reason for this is because the Pope himself is not orthodox nor solid enough. This implies that he deliberately passes over more "orthodox" candidates in favor of weaker appointments.
If you think that applies to Levada, good luck to you. It doesn't mean your criticism is "legitimate", though because you don't know the reasons for the Pope's appointment nor how Levada has discharged his duties in God's eyes. It's permissable to disagree with the Pope on things like the appointment of bishops but to take that the extra step and suggest that the Pope himself is of dubious orthodoxy is to take one of the 39 steps on the road from being respectful and obedient to the Pope to becoming part of the "more Catholic than the Pope" movement.
I don't keep a grade card for the Pope. I have too many problems keeping my own house in order.
Of course it does, the contension is that there were a couple hundred thousand who died, not were killed, and that the Shoah was a fraud perpetrated on the world in order to establish the State of Israel. In furtherance of their plot to establish world dominion for the anti-Christ based in Jerusalem. The same Jews who took over the Catholic Church in the 1960s. Popes for the last 50 years being agents of the devil.
These are toxic views.
If the author of your fathers book contends 5,000 Afticans came her in furtherance of obtaining American citizenship for their descendents, who could collect welfare from white America, he's a racist.
The nice thing about the WWW, it will always be out there. I think the Vatican has handled this in a way that any tension will be, was, very short lived. I can see their views as a source of tension in the Church, unless they're truely abandoning all of them.
Angel Queen was founded by a former freeper who spent years spewing anti-Catholicism in this forum.
Well... if you think about it.
Antisemitism is the hatred of Jews. Jesus was Jewish, ergo Antisemitism must also include the hatred of Jesus.
Makes ya think, don’t it?
He’s no longer “former,” and I have pinged him since you’ve mentioned him.
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