Pope Benedict met the Devil in Düsseldorf on Monday. To be more precise, a large papier-mâché figure of the German-born pontiff shook hands with another figure depicting the Holocaust-denying Bishop Richard Williamson. The mock encounter was part of the annual carnival parade on Monday, known as Rose Monday in Germany, where the parade floats traditionally poke fun at public figures.
Benedict’s decision to readmit four excommunicated bishops of the ultra-traditionalist Society of Saint Pius X (SSPX) last month sparked off loud protests among Catholics and Jews, especially in the German-speaking countries because Williamson appeared in a Swedish television interview only days before and denied the Nazis used gas chambers or killed six million Jews. The wing on the Williamson figure says “Anti-Semitism” and the brush at the end of his tail says Piusbrüder (Pius Brothers, the German term for the SSPX priests).
Just so there’s no confusion, the Williamson figure sports an armband clearly identifying who Benedict is shaking hands with. Thanks to Ina Fassbender for these shots.
UPDATE: Cardinal Joachim Meisner in nearby Cologne has criticised this float as “not only wrong but hurtful … When mirth becomes malice, a joke becomes a jab and a fantasy becomes a fraud, then the carival suffers.” By contrast, most readers commenting on the website of the local daily Rheinische Post liked it.
Whether such a handshake will ever happen in real life is highly doubtful. Although their 1988 excommunications have been lifted and they have been readmitted into the Roman fold, the four SSPX bishops still have to negotiate their future roles in the Catholic Church. SSPX leader Bishop Bernard Fellay will probably lead the talks and there is no need for Williamson — who has been ordered to leave Argentina — to be present. After the public relations disaster over the interview, the last thing Benedict will want to do is receive the man at the Vatican.
At 68, Williamson’s most likely posting seems to be retirement, possibly with a virtual diocese out somewhere in cyberspace. He’s kept posting on his blog Dinoscopus. In his review of the film Doubt, he says approvingly that it shows “a Church collapsing for lack of God” but faults its lead actress because “nothing in Meryl Streep’s performance suggests that it is anchored in God.” He also promotes four volumes of his collected sermons and writings. It will be no surprise if we hear still more from him.
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I think people need to remember to take this in context with what Rose Monday is. Public figures have traditionally been a huge part of the carnival. Given the recent comments of Williamson, it should not be a surprise that he was brought up.
Here is a video I found that has some different perspectives on the Williamson story from various news sources.
http://www.newsy.com/videos/controversia l_bishop_returns_to_the_u_k/
- Posted by EmbarkOnCertainly,it looks like nobody who wrote in this blog except the Columnist have been in Dusseldorf or at least take the time to read about the city surroundings, the population, the people, the actual socio-economic, religion tendencies, the diferent kind of ethnicity mixed,coexistance, etc.before writing. Am I WRONG?
I do not have the lucky to know the city, hope some day … but at least try to search some about it, before opinion, but at least and not less,always we all never end to learn….to search first….
Also,I see that some confuse the use of a seudonimous with anonimous, I hope it is a confusion, if it is not, the columnist have all the right to encourage to show yourself when it is necessary.I find that we are all using our freedom to gave opinion, that is healthy, to communicate, encourage, but not to insult, if you go inside that terrain,…. well have to show your name, if you send words as stones and hide your hand you are using an anonimous way.
Just in case , the context where this blog starts was a carnival parade in Dusseldorf. A carnival express what is the sentiment of the community, the inner conflicts inside the population, but in a way that it is used as a social and individual release of your inner concerns. You can see in carnivals of other sides of the world the same pattern, in diferent ways as is the difference of cultures are. Carnival is a way to analize what is going one in each of those societies.
Each year the ways are the same the meanings espressed are different, usually the meanings are very actual with the times. Good and bad things.
I am sorry to read how easy you judge actual German people, this generation and future are still paying the bill from WWII, but they are in actual times trying, not to erase the past, but to emmerge and recover from that past. Germans are working hard to be integrated with all the world. In a positive attitude of equality. I think we all are not better and not less that them now.
About The Pope and the Devil…. seems to be a great issuue that concerns thos e society, so much enough to be expressed in a parade, these make reactions like this blog , and in the mainstreets people, that is the good thing of Freedom, but with utual rights and duties.
- Posted by MariaI hope Dusseldorf people be more release because were being able to express thsir concerns and tabues without being punished.
Bishop Williamson must be hitting a nerve to be so persecuted and reviled. When I think of this man, almost 70 years of age, being stripped of his position in Argentina and sold out by SSPX and the pope, I cannot understand. One expects the “media” to behave as a pack of jackals because they ARE a pack of jackals; they manufacture “furor”.
- Posted by Grace