No matter how clearly Pope Benedict XVI speaks out about the Holocaust his opponents will never be appeased

German Chancellor Angela Merkel had to make the most of her contemptible opportunistic outburst throwing doubt on the Pope's and the Catholic Church's attitude to the Holocaust and the Jewish community. Zenit newsagency in Rome reported 8 February that the German Chancellor and the Pope came to an agreement on the meaning and reality of the Shoah. But it was only after that sanctimonious hand-over-the-heart German lectured the Pope on his previous declarations about the Holocaust:

These declarations were considered "insufficient" according to what Merkel declared last Tuesday.

"On the part of the Vatican and the Pope, it has to be left definitively clear that negationism is not permitted and that there should be positive dealings with Judaism," she affirmed.

That's cynically milking the political opportunity to the last drop. And that last drop would have been eagerly lapped up by the like-minded. I will get back to what Pope Benedict has said in the past.

Meanwhile the media frenzy and hysterics flamed on like the Victorian bushfires, causing some of us to wonder where the mad stupid comments of a maverick irrelevant bishop who had no authority in the Church would lead.

Cath News competently kept us up to date with developments, linking their reports to the world reaction. Williamson was sacked. Then he was ordered to recant. The Vatican and the Pope were widely accused of clumsy handling of the Williamson case, as if the Pope were capable of looking into the thoughts of every single Catholic cleric. It's a pity that conservative commentator Gerard Henderson got on board here, displaying a deficient understanding of the SSPX issue, and Williamson's significance in it. Finally, Cath News reported that the Pope fronted an audience of 60 American Jewish leaders.

Issuing his strongest condemnation of Holocaust denial yet, Benedict affirmed the Catholic Church was "profoundly and irrevocably committed to reject all anti-Semitism."

It was clear from the reported reaction that some of those leaders were not convinced. Neither would ten times as many non-Jews who remain implacable opponents of the Catholic Church. For them nothing the Church or Pope says or has said would make any difference. Included in that multitude of anti-Catholic gentiles are many (pretend) Catholics of high standing. They will never be appeased. The pattern of their behaviour and their political objectives are well known. They will remain on constant alert for similar incidents that can be fruitfully manipulated. On each occasion the Pope and the Church will have to repeat ad infinitum what has already been said a hundred times, as if it had never been said, or as if the audience was in a constant state of amnesia.

Let me give an example of the clarity of past statements. I am grateful to theTransalpine Redemptorists on Orkney Island for providing two case-clenching examples: The Pope has already clearly spoken. I reproduce one here:

Pope Benedict XVI in Auschwitz

“...And in the 20th century,
in the darkest period of German and European history,
an insane racist ideology,
born of neo-paganism,
gave rise to the attempt,
planned and systematically carried out by the regime,
to exterminate European Jewry.
The result has passed into history as
the Shoah.
The victims of this unspeakable and previously unimaginable crime amounted to 11,000 named individuals in Cologne alone; the real figure was surely much higher. The holiness of God was no longer recognized, and consequently, contempt was shown for the sacredness of human life.
This year, 2005, marks the 60th anniversary of
the liberation of the Nazi concentration camps,
in which millions of Jews
- men, women and children -
were put to death
in the gas chambers and ovens. ..."

This statement was issued in 2005. Can it be any clearer? Any more unequivocal? I'd like to hear a statement that could say more in such brevity. But let's be serious and face reality. Ignoring or denying the meaning of such statements has a shared political objective. That political objective is the total discrediting of the Catholic Faith and the Catholic Church. The empirical evidence is overwhelming.

Chancellor Merkel should be careful of the devious propaganda game she is playing; she might appear to be in an incipient stage towards Catholics of what the Nazis did to the Jews. If incitement to hatred of Jews is a crime why shouldn't such incitement to hatred of another religious or ethnic group draw the same tag?

The reader, however, should not be misled in thinking that those Jewish leaders who immediately go into hysterics on such occasions are representative of the whole Jewish community, local and international. The anti-Catholic media is assiduous in giving space to their unreasonable disproportionate reactions on such occasions as the Williamson madness. Jewish leaders who acknowledge the efforts the Pope and the Church are going to to offer the hand of friendship to the Jewish community are not good news.

An example of a Jewish leader who has weighed up the Williamson affair in an understanding and dispassionate manner is Rabbi Irwin Kula. Rabbi Kula "is the President of CLAL-The National Jewish Center for Learning and Leadership in New York. He has served congregations in St. Louis, New York and Jerusalem." He has made a comment under the heading Jewish reaction to the Pope is disproportionate. The reader is strongly urged to read the full comment which is an effort to take the hand in friendship offered by the Pope and not return the gesture with a slap in the face. The following paragraphs reflect the thrust of the comment.

The official Jewish response to Pope Benedict XVI recent decision to reach out to the St. Pious X Society and to revoke the excommunication (though not yet determining the status) of four bishops says a great deal about the psycho-social state of American Jewish leadership or at least the leadership that claims to speak for American Jews...

How is it that the view of some cranky bishop who has no power evokes calls of a crisis in Catholic - Jewish relations despite the revolutionary changes in Church teachings regarding Jews since Vatican II? Where is the "proportionality", where is the giving the benefit of the doubt - a central religious and spiritual imperative - in response to something that is admittedly upsetting but in the scheme of things is less than trivial especially given this Pope's historic visit to Auschwitz in which he unambiguously recognized the evil perpetrated upon Jews in the Holocaust and in his way "repented" for any contribution distorted Church teachings made to create the ground for such evil to erupt.

Something is off-kilter here. Is it possible that the leadership of Jewish defense agencies, people with the best of motivation who have historically done critical work in fighting anti-Semitism, have become so possessed by their roles as monitors of anti-Semitism, so haunted by unresolved fears, guilt, and even shame regarding the Holocaust, and perhaps so unconsciously driven by how these issues literally keep their institutions afloat, that they have become incapable of distinguishing between a bishop's ridiculous, loopy, discredited views about the Holocaust and a Church from the Pope down which has clearly and repeatedly recognized the evil done to Jews in the Holocaust and called for that evil to never be forgotten...?

Comment: gerard@gerardcharleswilson.com