To recap: The Pope un-excommunicates a bishop of a conservative fringe group that seems like just the kind of guy I’d like to have dinner with (provide I can bring an aluminum bat with me and use it at will, like every time he says there was no Holocaust). The Pope, upon discovering his newly-un-excommunicated bishop is a pretty disgusting Holocaust denier, trying to make amends with Jewish groups and others who are horrified that the Pope’s vetting process is apparently just as bad as the Obama administration’s, tells the bishop to recant. So here’s the recantation:
Williamson made clear he does not plan to comply immediately, the weekly Der Spiegel reported. “Since I see that there are many honest and intelligent people who think differently, I must look again at the historical evidence,” the British bishop was quoted as saying.
“It is about historical evidence, not about emotions,” he added, according to the report. “And if I find this evidence, I will correct myself. But that will take time.”
And just to make sure you really understand the mendacity of this man:
The magazine suggested that he could make a personal visit to the former Auschwitz death camp. Williamson replied: “I will not go to Auschwitz,” it said.
No. Because why would you go and see with your own eyes the evidence of the gas chambers, and of the genocide? That would interfere with your ability to pretend to be a reasonable man.
I actually don’t give a damn who the Pope communicates or excommunicates. It’s not my religion. He can do what he wants. But when he brings a POS like this back into the fold, he can’t expect to have no consequences from the Jewish world. It is bishops like Williamson who caused the deaths of Jews by Catholics over the last two millennia. And it really hasn’t been that long since Catholic priests led the charge against Jews in Europe and in America. Poland is still full of Catholics in high places who blame the Jews—of which there are about 25,000 remaining of the millions who lived there in 1938—for all of Poland’s problems.
Bishop Williamson may say the words that the Pope requires. But he won’t believe them, and he won’t mean them. So for him, a chorus of the Yourish.com mantra (Anti-Semites of the world, just die already) is in order, with an extra special helping of: Kiss my shapely Jew ass. Deny the holocaust. Be a bishop. And eff off.
Thank you for so succinctly articulating my own thoughts on this vile man and his equally vile statements and actions.
The pity is that so many superficial people will take the headlines/soundbites generated by a media that care little for accuracy or truth and conclude that the Pope and the Church actually reigned in a dangerous anti-semite.
Somebody should inform Bishop Williamson that lying is a sin, and that his denial of the Holocaust is a lie. Do you think he ever read the Ten Commandments? Nah, me neither.
In my mind, the question is, did the Pope actually know about Williamson’s views, and what should he have done if he did know?
I agree that Holocaust denial is a sin, but it can either be an intentional sin, as in the case of somebody who KNOWS the holocaust happened, but denies it anyway with intent of turning opinion against Jews, or a sin of omission, where they haven’t taken the issue seriously enough to actually look into it. Essentially, the sin of sloth, albeit particularly harmful sloth.
Since Catholics (like all Christians) believe that everyone sins, the question becomes, is Williamson’s sin big enough to warrant excommunication? If Williamson’s denial has pernicious motives, I would think the answer is yes. But if he really is just going down the wrong track out of sheer intellectual laziness, the question is blurrier.
Since I can’t read the man’s mind, I think there may be room for the possibility that he really can see the truth and get his head screwed on straight. If this is the case, and if Holocaust denial wouldn’t necessarily result in excommunication in the first place, it makes the Pope’s decision appear more defensible. I’m not sure it’s fair to imply that he expects no consequences from the Jewish world. He may have weighed the consequences, but found them worth the risk. Whether or not this was a wise decision will become clear.
To say “Catholic priests led the charge against Jews” is a little over the top. While the individual clergy who did these things should be excoriated, I’m not sure that their influence was such that you could call them leaders of the 20th century anti-semitic surge overall.
John, I didn’t mean recently. I meant in the past.
State-sponsored pogroms, which became all the rage in the last few centuries, were preceded by centuries of forced conversion and murder of Jews by the Catholic Church. That’s on top of taking Jewish children and raising them Catholic, a practice which continued through the Holocaust.
And today, the Vatican has hundreds of Jewish documents stolen from Jews over the centuries—our Torahs, our Talmuds, our hand-written commentaries—that they’ve only just allowed Jews to read. They’re not giving our documents back to us. But we can read them.
Big whoop.
Gotta say, I’m not a big fan of the Vatican. Never really have been.
John,
Williamson wasn’t excommunicated for Holocaust denial, which is not a matter of Catholic doctrine as far as I know. He was excommunicated for being a follower of Bishop Lefevre in refusing to accept Vatican II as a valid Church Council and accept its doctrinal innovations, including the vernacular mass.
Holocaust denial is a lie, because there is an immense amount of actual evidence, physical evidence, the statements of survivors, witnesses and participants, documents, etc. To deny a huge historical event that took place within a lifetime of when you are denying it, argues a wilfull blindness to truth. It is like denying that WWII itself took place. So I don’t think anyone can plead ignorance as an excuse, a general acquaintence with it is something we should expect any educated person, however rudimentary that education, to know. So that’s why I say that Holocaust denial is a lie, a wilfull lie that constitutes a sin.
Mike,
I was aware of the reason for his excommunication. I actually kind of meant that to be my point, i.e., if he wasn’t excommunicated for Holocaust denial, then it shouldn’t really be a barrier to his reinstatement. They are two different issues. I should have been more clear.