The Pope's Side of Things - Vatican Calls For Holocaust Denier to Recant

UPDATED AT BOTTOM OF POST

Thanks to Carlos Echevarria for sending this to me:

The president of the U.S. episcopal conference, Chicago's Cardinal Francis George, called the Holy Father's gesture to lift the excommunications "an act of mercy and personal concern for the ordained and lay members of this Society" -- an analysis coinciding with Benedict XVI's own explanation that the decision aimed to heal a rift in Church unity. 

Cardinal George added: "The Holy Father's lifting of the excommunications is but a first step toward receiving these four bishops, and the priests who serve under them, back into full communion with the Catholic Church. If these bishops are to exercise their ministry as true teachers and pastors of the Catholic Church, they, like all Catholic bishops, will have to give their assent to all that the Church professes, including the teachings of the Second Vatican Council." 

The cardinal called Bishop Williamson's comments "deeply offensive and utterly false," and said they have "evoked understandable outrage from within the Jewish community and also from among our own Catholic people." 

"No Catholic," he said, "whether layperson, priest or bishop can ever negate the memory of the Shoah, just as no Catholic should ever tolerate expressions of anti-Semitism and religious bigotry." 

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http://www.catholicculture.org/news/features/index.cfm?recnum=60280

The deplorable public statements by Bishop Richard Williamson, questioning the gravity of the Holocaust, have obscured the true importance of Pope Benedict's decision to lift the excommunications of the four bishops who head the traditionalist Society of St. Pius X (SSPX). 

So before we examine what has happened, we need to understand what has not: 


Bishop Williamson has not been granted regular status as a Catholic bishop. Like the other SSPX bishops he remains under suspension, without canonical status. In effect the Pope has recognized the traditionalist bishops as passengers on the Barque of Peter, not as active commissioned officers. The process of reconciling the SSPX with the Holy See is far from complete. 

The Pope has not condoned Bishop Williamson's views, nor suggested that the public airing of such views by a Catholic bishop is acceptable. The Pope and the Vatican have affirmed the full horror of the Holocaust. Even Bishop Bernard Fellay, the superior of the SSPX has distanced himself from Williamson's statements, emphatically saying that they do not represent the views of the SSPX. Clearly Bishop Williamson holds outrageous opinions. (He has also said that The Sound of Music has pornographic tendencies. I hope it goes without saying that the Church does not endorse that opinion.) But other Catholics hold outrageous opinions (some of them serve in the US Senate), and other Catholics perform outrageous actions. We are a Church of sinners. While there is no doubt that the Vatican was acquainted with Williamson's views, and squirmed at the prospect of giving him greater public recognition, that discomfort was not sufficient to justify keeping him outside the Church. The Pope has absorbed a public-relations "hit," presumably knowing that it was coming, for the sake of Church unity.

UPDATE: The Vatican has called for the Holocaust Denying Richard Williamson to recant before being reinstated as a Bishop:

VATICAN CITY – The Vatican on Wednesday demanded that a prelate who denied the Holocaust recant his positions before being fully admitted as a bishop into the Roman Catholic Church.

It also said Pope Benedict XVI had not known about Bishop Richard Williamson's views when he agreed to lift his excommunication and that of three other ultraconservative bishops Jan. 21.

The Vatican's Secretariat of State issued the statement a day afterGerman Chancellor Angela Merkel urged the pope to make a clearer rejection of Holocaust denials, saying there had not been adequate clarification from the church.

The Holy See on Jan. 24 announced the rehabilitation of four bishops excommunicated in 1988 after being consecrated without papal consent.

Just days before, Williamson had been shown on Swedish state television saying historical evidence "is hugely against 6 million Jews having been deliberately gassed" during World War II.

Williamson has since apologized to the German-born pope for having stirred controversy, but he did not repudiate his comments, in which he also said only 200,000 to 300,000 Jews were killed during World War II and none were gassed.

Though the Vatican said it did not share Williamson's views, Jewish groups voiced outrage at his rehabilitation and demanded the prelate recant.

Williamson and the three other bishops were consecrated by the late ultraconservative Archbishop Marcel Lefebvre, who in 1969 founded the traditionalist Society of St. Pius X opposed to the liberalizing reforms of the Second Vatican Council, including its outreach to Jews.

The Vatican said Wednesday that, while Williamson's excommunication had been lifted, he still had no canonical function in the church because he was consecrated illegitimately.

"Bishop Williamson, in order to be admitted to episcopal functions within the church, will have to take his distance, in an absolutely unequivocal and public fashion, from his position on the Shoah, which the Holy Father was not aware of when the excommunication was lifted," the statement said. The Shoah is the Hebrew term for the Holocaust.

Jewish groups welcomed the Vatican statement, saying it satisfied their key demand.

"This was the sign the Jewish world has been waiting for," said Ronald Lauder, president of the World Jewish Congress.

Elan Steinberg, vice president of the American Gathering of Holocaust Survivors and their Descendants, thanked Merkel for her "righteous comments" and said the process to heal the "deep wound that this crisis caused to the Catholic-Jewish dialogue" could now begin.

Williamson's interview on Swedish state TV was aired Jan. 21. The decree lifting his excommunication bore the same date, although it was not announced until three days later. The broadcaster said the timing was a coincidence, but Williamson has expressed his views about the Holocaust previously.

Wednesday's statement was a remarkable turnabout by the Vatican, which had considered the Williamson case "closed" after Benedict issued a lengthy denunciation of Holocaust deniers last week and the society itself distanced itself from Williamson's views.

On Jan. 28, the pope said he felt "full and indisputable solidarity" with Jews, and warned against any denial of the full horror of the Nazi genocide.

The Vatican's secretary of state, Cardinal Tarcisio Bertone, cited those comments Tuesday in telling the newspaper of the Italian bishops' conference Avvenire that, as far as he was concerned, "the question can be considered closed."

Yet the pressure continued, including from Roman Catholic leaders in Benedict's native Germany and Merkel's comments Tuesday.

It was not immediately clear if the Vatican's newest statement Wednesday satisfied Merkel.

"The chancellor has spoken and has nothing to add to her comments from yesterday," her spokesman Ulrich Wilhelm told reporters in Berlin.

In addition to its demand of Williamson, the Vatican also said society as a whole must fully recognize the teachings of Vatican II and of all popes who came during and after it in order to have a legitimate canonical function in the church.

There was no answer to several calls placed Wednesday to Williamson's home in La Reya, Argentina.