Richard Williamson, one of the four excommunicated bishops whom Pope Benedict XVI wants to bring back into the Roman Catholic fold, is not the only Holocaust denier in the Society of St. Pius X, an ultra-right wing splinter group of the Roman Catholic Church. The Italian branch of the Society announced that it has expelled the Rev. Floriano Abrahamowicz for telling the northern Italian newspaper La Tribuna di Treviso that "I know that gas chambers existed at least for disinfection, but I don't know if they were used to kill people or not." Abrahamowicz, who called Jews "the people of deicide," has also described the reforms instituted by the Second Ecumenical Council of the Vatican, commonly referred to as Vatican II, which absolved contemporary Jews of responsibility for the death of Jesus Christ, as "worse than heresy."
Abrahamowicz's expulsion came in the wake of the firestorm over Williamson's declaration on Swedish television that "I believe that the historical evidence is largely against, is hugely against six million Jews having been deliberately gassed in gas chambers as a deliberate policy of Adolf Hitler . . . . I believe there were no gas chambers." Williamson went on to say that he thought that "between two to three hundred thousand Jews perished in Nazi concentration camps but none of them by gas chambers."
Williamson is also openly anti-Semitic. He has endorsed the authenticity of the Protocols of the Elders of Zion, the notorious Russian Czarist forgery that purports to depict a Jewish conspiracy to rule the world, and has written publicly of "the false messianic vocation of Jewish world-dominion, to prepare the Anti-Christ's throne in Jerusalem."
Faced with open revolt by leading Roman Catholic cardinals and bishops, especially in Germany and Austria, the Vatican last week conditioned Williamson's rehabilitation on his "absolutely, unequivocally and publicly" recanting his position on the Holocaust, something Williamson has refused to do, at least for the time being. He first wants to review the historical evidence. "If I find proof I would rectify (earlier statements) . . . But all that will take time," Williamson told the German weekly magazine Der Spiegel.
It is outrageous that Pope Benedict did not immediately respond to Williamson's stalling tactics by reinstating the renegade bishop's excommunication. When members of the Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations leaders meet with the Pope today, they must demand that he categorically and permanently revoke Williamson's rehabilitation.
Pope Benedict hopes that the memory of the Holocaust "will prompt humanity to reflect on the unpredictable power of evil when it conquers the hearts of men." But statements condemning Holocaust denial and reaffirming ecumenical sentiments toward the Jewish people are not enough. Pope Benedict should affirmatively declare holocaust denial to be heresy, and the Vatican should undertake a comprehensive program of Holocaust education.
Students at Roman Catholic schools, universities and seminaries throughout the world must be taught not only that the Holocaust occurred, but that centuries of Christian anti-Semitism helped make it possible. They must be taught that while Bishop Angelo Giuseppe Roncalli, later Pope John XXIII, helped rescue Jews from the Nazis during the Second World War, and while Archbishop Jules-Géraud Saliège of Toulouse, France, spoke out publicly on their behalf, Pope Pius XII remained silent, as did most Catholic cardinals, bishops and priests.
They must be taught that thousands upon thousands of baptized Christians actively participated in the mass murder of European Jewry, and that hundreds of thousands looked on or looked away. They must be taught that many of the French policemen of the collaborationist Vichy regime who rounded up French Jews and helped send them to their death at Auschwitz regularly attended mass on Sundays. They must be taught that the Vatican never excommunicated Adolf Hitler or other baptized Nazi leaders, and that after World War II, Bishop Alois Hudal was instrumental in spiriting Nazi war criminals to safety in Latin America.
They must be taught that the Franciscan priest Miroslav Filipović, known as "Fra Sotona" ("Brother Satan"), was a brutal commander of the Jasenovac concentration camp in Croatia, run by the collaborationist Ustasha regime, and that the Archbishop of Sarajevo, Ivan Šarić, enthusiastically supported and advocated the persecution and murder of Jews.
While the Vatican's relations with the Society of St. Pius X is an internal matter, its attitude, and Pope Benedict XVI's attitude, toward Holocaust denial and Holocaust deniers affects us all. My five-and-a-half year old brother, my mother's son, was murdered in a gas chamber at Auschwitz. For the sake of continued Jewish-Catholic relations, all Catholics, indeed all Christians, must be taught that my brother's brutal death and the deaths of more than one million Jewish children who perished in the Holocaust is at least as real as the death of a Jew named Jesus in Jerusalem almost two thousand years ago.
Menachem Rosensaft, a lawyer in New York City, is the Founding Chairman of the International Network of Children of Jewish Holocaust Survivors, and Vice President of the American Gathering of Jewish Holocaust Survivors and Their Descendants
(This article was previously published by JTA, the Jewish Telegraphic Agency)
Menachem Rosensaft: The Nazi War Criminal and Jesus: Patrick Buchanan's Obscene Comparison
None of Buchanan's MSNBC colleagues have called him to task in the more than 10 days since his loathsome column appeared -- not Joe Scarborough, or Chris Matthews, or Andrea Mitchell.
Menachem Rosensaft: Pat Buchanan's Bile Goes Unchallenged
Buchanan must be held publicly accountable for facilitating the dissemination of toxic hate speech that, as the Holocaust Museum shooting reminds us, can have tragic consequences.
"Pope Benedict should affirmatively declare holocaust denial to be heresy"
more ignorance. Committing murder is forbidden, excusing murder is also, but denying that murder happened isn't . Again, stupidity isn't a sin. . .
The arrogance here is in trying to tell the Catholic Church what to believe and do.
Tell you what, if the Jews will remove all derogatory references to goyim from the Talmud, the Catholics should think about it.
Form that ,anything else is a much lauded improvement.
But I don't see what my quote from another posting has to do with this.
The actual number of victims, however, is not a settled matter. The 6,000,000 figure may or may not be accurate (which does not lessen the evil of mass murder), but has acquired almost a mythological or mystical significance.
There seem to be, very broadly speaking, two types of what are called Holocaust deniers- one justly, the other unjustly.
The first group consists of historical revisionists and outright admirers of who seek to whitewash the Hitler regime and the criminal nature of National Socialism, many (but not all) of whom probably buy into the whole racist and anti-semitic philosophy of the "master race".
The other group is characterized by those who, while acknowledging the Nazis crimes, would point out that there were (confining ourselves merely to the 20th century) many "holocausts', each and every one with its own victims and perpetrators, and that to elevate one such event over all the others diminishes the very foundation of the universal respect
Bishop Williamson's preposterous views on the Holocaust, issued after the lifting of his excommunication, were quite unrelated to Vatican II, and disavowed by the Society of St Pius X as well as the Vatican.
The fact that Williamson is a public embarrassment to the Vatican and even to the Society of St Pius X does not alter the logic for the lifting of the four excommunications. That was and is an internal matter for the Catholic Church. In the event that he fails to renounce his statements on the Holocaust, he should not be excommunicated, but relieved of all episcopal and pastoral responsibilties. The punishment should fit the crime.
I quite agree that the study of atrocities should form part of school and other curricula. However, having witnessed the genocide in Rwanda and the ongoing slaughter in Somalia, I might propose a rather broader view of genocide than that set forth by Mr Rosensaft.
The Church should not forgo its teachings and procedures just because an hamfisted media cannot or will not consider the nuance in the context of the excommunications and in the Church's teachings and procedures. The Church should work on its PR management, but not by sacrificing important teachings and beliefs.
I also applaud you for not falling into the trap of attaching a title to Williamson's name. Usurping a title was why he got excommunicated in the first place. Things have gone a bit far for a simple recanting of position, the Pope should excommunicate him (again) specifically for Holocaust Denial. Williamson is a repeat offender, and no doubt he'll be sticking his thumb in the Vatican's eye again - whatever action the church takes.
Lifting original excommunication was a serious error in judgment. This ex-bishop is widely known for incoherent statements. Why the rehabilitation? Thewy were hoping that exiling him to far-away Argentina will do the trick. Didn't work out that way.
If the same standard were applied to any other holocaust, we'd near incessantly about the Herrero in Namibia, the Armenian genocide, the French massacring the Libyans, the genocide inflicted upon Native Americans, the extermination of Vietnamese by Europeans, the rape of the Congo by king Leopold etc, etc.
The Jewish holocaust is real, and a tragedy, but no more or no less of a tragedy encountered by many ethnicities whose plight is relegated to silence and ignominy. That ONE person had to suffer at the hands of the Nazis is tragedy enough, but to spawn a whole industry based on milking pity and influencing foreign policy is reprehensible, and in no way should be used to excuse and hide the current holocaust being inflicted upon the Palestinians....
You're right. Benedictt XVIs rehabilitation of conservatives who had broken with Rome over the liturgical reforms of Vatican II is an internal church matter—one that aims to heal a 40 year old rift within the Church that threatened to become a schism. Like the proposed beatification of Pius XII, the lifting of excommunication from the Society of St. Pius X has everything to do with how the Pope and the Curia lead the Roman Catholic Church and nothing at all to do with different faiths, even the Jews. I find it amazing that Jewish leaders routinely issue edicts to the Pope about how he should govern the Church, but these same leaders would howl with outrage should the Pope presume to tell them how to teach their faith.
OK haters--you're turn.
C'mon, the pope made it clear that the church does not deny the holocaust.