Melbourne's Age airs German Chancellor Merkel's ignorant opportunistic outburst against Pope Benedict XVI

Once again we see that if anything crops up to smear Catholics and the Catholic Church with, The Age will rush at it. It's probable there's a department at that moth-bitten rag specially commissioned to trawl the world's media for anything that can be used to incite the state-approved bigotry that has its constituency in its grip. And today they had landed a gigantic catch. It was headed sensationally:

Merkel attacks Pope's support of outcast bishop

Then followed in bullets:

■German Chancellor demands clear rejection of bishop's Holocaust denial from pontiff.

■Top Vatican official admits issue was mismanaged.

■Dispute points to rift between Rome and German Catholics.

GERMAN Chancellor Angela Merkel has denounced Pope Benedict XVI's decision to re-embrace a British bishop who denies the Holocaust.

Dr Merkel has broken with political tradition and demanded that the German pontiff make "a very clear statement" to reject the observations of Bishop Richard Williamson, who told a Swedish TV program he did not believe gas chambers existed in World War II or that six million Jews were murdered in Nazi concentration camps.

The journalist has to overstate the case, of course. Williamson did not deny the existence of the gas chambers. He said they did not do the work claimed for them. It's a minor point that he got a minor detail wrong; it makes no difference to the seriousness of Williamson's outrage. But it is a major indictment that the journalist either did not see the interviews with Williamson or deliberately overstated the case for political reasons. That overstatement sets the tone.

The rest of the piece is the usual distorting cant about "a revolt" in the Church against "conservative" Benedict giving the impression that the Church is on the point of implosion. In reality, much of the indignant outcry is coming from people inside and outside the Church who are politically opposed to the Pope - often with a thoroughly undignified ferocity. The same sort of outraged dignity was regularly hurled at Pope John Paul II by the same people and obligingly regurgitated by the likes of The Age. But let me get back to Merkel and her outburst. The Age quotes her (in translation):

"It seems to me that it is of great significance if the Vatican makes a decision that could diffuse the impression that a denial of the Holocaust is possible. I demand a detailed clarification on this issue from the Pope and from the Vatican."

These are despicable and contemptible politically charged words coming from a German leader who if she apologised for a year would only just be making a start for the murder and misery the German nation has inflicted on the rest of the world. Clean up your own backyard, Merkel, before you ignorantly run off at the mouth about an incident whose circumstances and people you clearly know little about. Your people built the concentration camps and the gas chambers where six million Jews were killed. It's one thing for a sanctimonious venal rag like Melbourne's
Age to throw doubt on the Pope's and the Church's view of the Holocaust and the Jewish community. It's another for the leader of a nation that again fancies itself the power house in Europe.

The record shows that from the appearance of that slanderous play, The Deputy, each Pope has bent over backwards to make clear the Church's great sympathy for the victims of the Nazi's attempt to wipe out the Jewish race and to offer the hand of friendship. Most Catholics would not know of the anti-Semitic literature that entertains pockets of people in the West. Mention the Protocols of Sion and most Catholics would say "what?"

I had lived forty years of my life before I heard those words. And I never heard any anti-Semitic language from any other Catholic growing up, let alone from clergy. Indeed, it was the opposite, I have memories of the Christian brother in third and fourth class (in the fifties when the World War II was still fresh in everyone's minds) talking about the horror of the Nazi regime and the suffering of the Jews. From an early age I was, like most Catholic school kids, confronted with those shocking photos of the Warsaw Ghettoes and the piles of bodies in the concentration camps.

If Merkel took the trouble to follow the measures that Pope John Paul II supported by Cardinal Ratzinger took to offer the hand of friendship to the world's Jewish community and to make clear that the Church and ninety-nine percent of Catholics condemned the Nazis and their attempt at Jewish genocide, she would not have dared to utter such despicable politically loaded words - unless she has her own political agenda. But let's get some facts straight about the Society of St Pius X (SSPX).

Bishop Williamson is one of four bishops consecrated by Archbishop Lefebvre in 1988. That act brought automatic canonical excommunication for the Archbishop and the four bishops. In other words, they were not formally excommunicated for gross acts of heresy or for schism in the normal sense. There was no alternative church with its own Pope. Archbishop Lefebvre for right or wrong reasons wanted to ensure that Catholics who wanted to keep their faith and attend Mass in the old rite would be provided for. He wanted to keep them in the unbroken line of Catholic Tradition. Whether or not his judgment was right in this is another question.

While SSPX priests and their parishes rigidly conducted the traditional rites and taught the unchanging doctrine of the Church in their irregular state, there was doctrinal chaos going on around them accompanied by the most appalling abuse of the liturgy. Big name theologians, feted by the anti-Catholic media, were openly contradicting the Pope. This is a long story that cannot be told in a few paragraphs. Enough to say, that the inconsistency of treatment and the lying hypocrisy of those wanting democracy and equal rights in the Church while isolating the unapproved made ordinary Catholics sick.

The majority of people who attend the SSPX parishes are there because of the liturgy and the adherence to Catholic teaching. They either do not care or don't understand the political aspect that arises from the dispute about the Second Vatican Council. Indeed, most media commentators don't know either. Those ordinary Catholics just want the unadulterated teaching of the Church and the unspoilt liturgy. For these reasons Popes John Paul and Benedict considered the issue with the SSPX a domestic issue. The aim in lifting the excommunication of the bishops was to make the way clear to bring ordinary people attending the SSPX parishes back into full communion with the Church. It was essentially a pastoral tactic. It had nothing to do with the political or historical ideas of the bishops. It is quite believable that people in the Vatican had no idea of the mad ideas Williamson was entertaining. All the dialogue between the Vatican and the SSPX was about doctrinal questions.

There is a further crucial point to be made here about that dialogue. It is almost certain that Williamson had little or no part in it. His extremism not only in his views about the Holocaust should have been evident to those that worked with him or came under his supervision. Indeed, it seems likely that the other three bishops understood the necessity of sidelining him. I have had many discussions with fellow orthodox Catholics about the implications for the SSPX and Williamson in particular when the differences are reconciled. And they will be. It is just a matter of time. We agree that the rigid extremist Williamson will most likely break off taking some die-hards with him. Then there will be the possibility of a real schism. But then he will not be part of the SSPX.

It is a despicable and indictable distortion of the true situation to paint the lifting of the excommunications of the four bishops as an act of anti-Semitism. You have to wonder at all hell breaking loose because of the views of one single maverick bishop when presently one can witness a growing anti-Semitism among the leftist groups in Europe and the most vile anti-Semitism running through the Islamic world.

It is an irony that I as an orthodox Catholic stand four square behind Israel and its legitimate action against Islamic terrorism and fully support the Pope and the Vatican's efforts to seek friendship and cooperation with the Jewish community while the leftist class, who have always regarded someone like me as a suspect anti-Semite no matter what I say, drift into criticism of Israel bordering on anti-Semitism and support for the Palestinian terrorists.

It's a mad world, as I have said before. Shame on Chancellor Merkel.

Addition 7 February 2009

Vatican clarification on Lefebvrites and Holocaust

The following point appears in this clarification

3. Declaration on the Shoah.

The viewpoints of Bishop Williamson on the Shoah are absolutely unacceptable and firmly rejected by the Holy Father, as he himself noted last Jan. 28, when, referring to that savage genocide, he reaffirmed his full and indisputable solidarity with our brother recipients of the First Covenant, and affirmed that the memory of that terrible genocide should induce "humanity to reflect on the unpredictable power of evil when it conquers the human heart," adding that the Shoah remains "for everyone a warning against forgetting, against negating or reductionism, because violence committed against even one human being is violence against all."

Bishop Williamson, to be admitted to episcopal functions in the Church, must also distance himself in an absolutely unmistakable and public way from his position on the Shoah, which was unknown to the Holy Father in the moment of the lifting of the excommunication.

The Holy Father asks accompaniment in prayer from all the faithful, that the Lord may enlighten the path of the Church. May there be an increase in the determination of the pastors and all the faithful in support of the delicate and heavy mission of the Successor of the Apostle Peter as "guardian of the unity" of the Church.

From the Vatican, February 4, 2009

If Chancellor Merkel had paused to inquire, or to get one of her flunkeys to inquire, she would have discovered the Popes have been unequivocal in their condemnation of the Nazi regime and their attempts to wipe out the Jewish race. I especially include Pope Pius XII whose action behind the scenes saved a multitude of Jews from the Nazi's genocidal plans.

Comment: gerard@gerardcharleswilson.com