According to THE GUARDIAN, “British-born Richard Williamson is one of four bishops who are members of the Society of Pius X, a traditionalist Catholic order, whose excommunication was lifted a week ago. Williamson, who now lives in Argentina , had claimed in a television interview that historical evidence was ‘hugely against six million having been deliberately gassed in gas chambers as a deliberate policy of Adolf Hitler ... I believe there were no gas chambers’.”
Mark Tran of THE GUARDIAN wrote, “Williamson was excommunicated 20 years ago after being consecrated by the French archbishop Marcel Lefebvre without papal consent. The Vatican said it had been unaware of Williamson's views on the Holocaust when the decision was made to readmit the group, and the Pope quickly distanced himself from the comments and expressed ‘full and indisputable solidarity’ with Jews.”
Because of the reappointment of this particularly un-repentant Holocaust denier Williamson, Israel and Jewish groups responded ten days ago with venom against the Pope, who had recently also criticized the mistreatment of non-combatants by the Israeli military some weeks earlier.
Deutsche-Welle noted that opposition to the Pope’s favor towards Williamson and his cohorts was leading to rejection across the country, “Earlier this week, Gerhard Ludwig Mueller, the Catholic bishop of the German city of Regensburg which is also the pope's home city, declared Williamson persona-non-grata in his district. Williamson has denied the Holocaust in recent weeks in Germany and Sweden .”
http://www.dw-world.de/dw/article/0,,3993755,00.html?maca=en-rss-en-all-1573-xml-atom
Meanwhile in Netherlands and across Europe there were further protests at the rehabilitation of not only Shoah-deniars but to the whole group of 4 priests and former priests rehabilitated in January 2009 by the current Roman Catholic Pontiff.
For example, in protest against Williamson’s reinstatement as priest and catholic, the Theology and Ethics Professor Jean-Pierre Wills (who lives in Germany but teachers across the Dutch border at Radboud University ) left the catholic church entirely
This popular Catholic priest and theologian, Jean-Pierre Wills, was cited in Dutch Catholic newspapers stating unequivocally, “I don’t want to be identified any more with the anti-modern, anti-pluralist, and totalitarian spirit of [the present] church leadership.”
Wils added, “The recently rehabilitated group of priests are an extremely reactionary and extremely anti-Semitic group that have time and again sympathized with autocratic and dictatorial regimes.”
The group of newly rehabilitated priests all belonged to the SOCIETY OF ST. PIOUS X.
http://sspx.agenda.tripod.com/id18.html
Meanwhile, the German news magazine giant, DER SPIEGEL, raised a headline last week entitled: “Pope Benedict is ‘Sabotaging Christian-Jewish Dialogue’.”
http://www.spiegel.de/international/world/0,1518,603525,00.html
Because the current German-born Pope was quite popular here in Germany until recently, one might go as far as saying that the Pope, by appointing such controversial bishops and rehabilitating such reactionary catholic groups such as the Society of St. Pious X is actually closing off any possible intra-catholic and ecumenical dialogues in Europe . Perhaps the next DER SPIEGEL article will be entitled just that:
“Pope Benedict X is Sabotaging Intra-Christian and Anti-Catholic Dialogue”
The Pontiff, now in his 80s, surely doesn’t want to be remembered as the most divisive Pope in recent memory, but he is on course to do so today.
