German court fines SSPX Bishop Williamson for denying Holocaust
Ultra-traditionalist Catholic bishop Richard Williamson was fined 6,500 euros Monday by a German court for publicly denying the Holocaust in 2009, a court spokesman said. British-born Williamson, 71, who belongs to a controversial Catholic splinter group, the Society of Saint Pius X (SSPX), was appealing a 2010 fine of 10,000 euros for telling Swedish TV that no more than 300,000 Jews perished in the Holocaust.
He also denied in the interview the existence of gas chambers at Nazi concentration camps. Holocaust denial is a hate crime in Germany. Consensus among historians is that the Nazis killed six million Jews in the Holocaust.
Williamson’s statements became an embarrassment for the Vatican which readmitted him after a 22-year excommunication only days following the interview. In his 2010 book, Light of the World, Pope Benedict XVI said he would not have lifted the ban on Williamson if he had known of his far-right views, adding that the Vatican’s poor communications in the matter was a “total meltdown.”
German prosecutors demanded increasing the fine to 12,000 euros during the appeals process.
Read the full story by Kalina Oroschakoff here.
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Catholic ultra-traditionalist splinter group sees no Vatican accord
Vatican talks with a controversial Catholic splinter group are nearing an end without any accord on reintegrating the ultra-traditionalists, including a bishop whose denial of the Holocaust has embarrassed Pope Benedict. Bishop Bernard Fellay has said his Society of Saint Pius X (SSPX) has not succeeded in convincing Vatican officials to turn Church teaching back half a century to where it stood before the reforms of the Second Vatican Council (1962-1965).
Benedict sparked off a wave of protest in 2009 by lifting excommunications imposed on the four bishops in 1988 without first requiring them to accept his authority on Church doctrine. His decision also prompted widespread protests, from Roman Catholics and Jews, because one of the bishops, Richard Williamson, had publicly denied the Holocaust. He has since been convicted and fined for hate speech in Germany.
“We are coming to the conclusion (of the talks), because we have made the tour of the major questions raised by the Council,” Fellay told the United States district of the SSPX in an interview posted on its website.
Asked if Vatican officials had changed their minds during the talks, which began in late 2009, he said: “I don’t think that you can say that.” He said the pope “has a certain sympathy for us, but within limits.”
He also said the beatification of the late Pope John Paul II, scheduled for May 1, presented “a serious problem, the problem of a pontificate that caused things to proceed by leaps and bounds in the wrong direction, along “progressive” lines, toward everything that they call “the spirit of Vatican II.”
Read the full story here. Follow FaithWorld on Twitter at RTRFaithWorld
Jewish group urges pope to shut Holocaust denier Williamson out again
A Holocaust survivors group urged Pope Benedict on Saturday to ban an arch-traditionalist bishop from the Catholic Church because he hired a lawyer close to neo-Nazi groups to defend him in court in Germany. Bishop Richard Williamson, one of four rebel bishops re-admitted to the Church in January 2009, recently hired a far-right lawyer to conduct his appeal against a 12,000 euro fine imposed last year for denying the Holocaust.
His ultra-traditionalist Society of Saint Pius X (SSPX), which is now negotiating its return to the Church with Vatican officials, also threatened to expel Williamson from its ranks if he did not distance himself from the lawyer.
Williamson’s re-admission to the Church only days after he denied the Holocaust on Swedish television sparked protests across Europe and created major problems for Pope Benedict, especially with Jewish groups outraged by the move.
In a book due out next week, Benedict says he would not have lifted the 22-year excommunication ban on Williamson if he had known of his far-right views. The pope said the Vatican’s poor communications in that row was a “total meltdown.”
“Holocaust survivors call on Pope Benedict to categorically assert moral authority and reinstate the excommunication of Bishop Williamson which was lifted last year,” Elan Steinberg, vice president of the American Gathering of Holocaust Survivors and their Descendants, said in a statement. “Williamson’s grotesque comments denigrating the tragedy of the Holocaust are now compounded by his engaging a notorious right-wing extremist as his lawyer.”
The SSPX issued a statement saying the society’s leader, Bishop Bernard Fellay “has expressly ordered Bishop Williamson to withdraw this decision (to hire the lawyer) and not let himself be used by political theses that have absolutely nothing to do with his tasks as a Catholic bishop in the service of the society.”
The Catholic Church has not had the will to remain true to its beliefs for many years. It is too committed to keeping its numbers up and is struggling to maintain sufficient numbers of leaders.
And it is not just the Holocaust deniers it cannot afford to purge, , or those who say the word of the Pope is NOT the word of God and choose to believe they can decide what is right and moral for themselves in disagreement with the Pops and still call themselves Catholic (that used to be called Protestant).
THEN there are also the many priests and other leaders and workers if they cleared out the child molesters.
Yup, , the Church is hurting.
Vatican talks with SSPX splinter group proving difficult – cardinal
Vatican talks with a controversial splinter group have been difficult and the ultra-traditionalist Catholics will have to make concessions if an accord is to be reached, a senior Vatican cardinal has said.
The Society of Saint Pius X (SSPX), whose four bishops were readmitted to the Church last year after a ban of 21 years, cannot conduct the doctrinal discussions on their terms, but only on those of the Vatican, Cardinal Walter Kasper told a news conference during a visit to Paris.
“Dialogue with them is not easy,” said Kasper, who heads the Vatican department for relations with other Christian churches and with Jews. “The main problem with them is not the Mass in Latin, but the concept of tradition. Do we want a living tradition or a petrified one?”
“I’m for a dialogue, but on our conditions, not on the traditionalists’ conditions,” he added. The SSPX had to accept the Council reforms, the “sine qua non” of any accord.
The use of the word petrified by Cardinal Kasper is unfair. Vatican II was pastoral not dogamatic. If Cardinal Kasper wants Catholics to accept new traditions, then maybe another dogamatic council should be held!
Influential Cardinals calling SSPX ‘the traditionalists’ is decisive. Are we not the One, Holy, Catholic, & Apostolic? The ancient Christian Church, who use to possess a universal liturgy 1,500 years old that contains living organic developments?
Ultra-trad Catholics upset rabbi’s lecture in Paris cathedral
Notre Dame Cathedral in Paris witnessed a scene on Sunday afternoon that seemed to be from a bygone age. A rabbi invited to deliver a lecture about Catholic-Jewish dialogue was interrupted by young arch-traditionalist Catholics who began to pray the rosary to make “amends for the outrage” of letting him speak there. Rabbi Rivon Krygier had to leave the nave and retire to the sacristy, where he read his text into a microphone to broadcast it to about 1,200 people who came to hear him. Read our full story here.
Rabbi Krygier, the head of a small Conservative Jewish congregation in Paris, had the grace to recognise that his hecklers were a tiny minority. “They’ll say they succeeded in banishing the rabbi to the sacristy,” he told the Catholic daily La Croix. “This is an act that has to be taken seriously, but the Christians active in dialogue seem much more determined to continue on this path.”
The warm round of applause that Krygier received when he returned to the nave after the lecture bore that out. At the same time, arch-traditionalists such as Rev. Régis de Cacqueray, head of the French section of the Society of Saint Pius X (SSPX) congratulated protesters for their “courage” and said: “The Paris cathedral is neither a synagogue nor a Masonic temple.”
An ultra-traditionalist blog called “Les Intransigeants” (The Intransigents) spoke its mind more openly: “Notre Dame again defended against the outrage by the merchants of the Temple.” The rest of the post was worse anti-Semitic venom.
This incident came at a time of growing tension between the mainstream French Church and a small minority of arch-traditionalists who reject the reforms of the Second Vatican Council (1962-1965), especially the opening it brought to fellow Christians, Jews and the faithful of other religions.
These arch-traditionalists, who are stronger in France than most other countries, have gotten several boosts from the Vatican in recent years. Pope Benedict lifted the excommunications of four SSPX bishops last year, a move that caused an embarrassing uproar when one turned out to be a Holocaust denier. The SSPX was then invited to doctrinal discussions at the Vatican, which are now going into their third round. Bishop Bernard Fellay, head of the Swiss-based SSPX, said recently that the Vatican theologians at the talks “wish the Church well but want to save the Council at the same time. This is a squaring of the circle.”
The French bishops, many of whom wanted the SSPX rebels to accept the Vatican II reforms before being returned to the Church, have responded by organising conferences such as Notre Dame’s Lenten Lectures series to explain the Vatican II reforms and their relevance for today’s Church to parishioners who may not know many details about an event that happened almost five decades ago.
To drosaupan:
I really wish that through this ecumenical dialogue, anti-Semites like you will be set straight, to get your history corrected and realize that the Romans killed Jesus, not the Jews.
The last Pope said “The Jews are our elder brothers.” Obviously, you weren’t listening.
Bishop Williamson says Vatican-SSPX talks “dialogue of the deaf”
Bishop Richard Williamson, the ultra-traditionalist prelate whose denial of the extent of the Holocaust created an uproar in the Catholic Church and with Jews early last year, has said the discussions at the Vatican to rehabilitate his Society of Saint Pius X (SSPX) are a “dialogue of the deaf.” Williamson, one of the four SSPX bishops whose bans of excommunication were lifted by Pope Benedict only days after his controversial views were aired on Swedish television, said the two sides had “absolutely irreconcilable” positions.
In a 15-minute interview posted on the French video-sharing website Dailymotion, Williamson discussed a number of issues with a man identified by the Paris Catholic daily La Croix as a minor French far-right politician named Pierre Panet. When asked about the negotiation under way at the Vatican to reintegrate the once-shunned SSPX into the Roman church, he said in fluent French:
“I think that will end up as a dialogue of the deaf. The two positions are absolutely irreconcilable. 2+2=4 and 2+2=5 are irreconcilable. Either those who say 2+2=4 renounce the truth and agree that 2+2=5 — that is, the SSPX abandons the truth, which God forbids us to do — or those who say 2+2=5 convert and return to the truth. Or the two meet halfway and say that 2+2=4-1/2. That’s wrong. Either the SSPX becomes a traitor or Rome converts or it’s a dialogue of the deaf.”
Williamson’s negationist views of the Holocaust caused such an uproar early last year that the head of the SSPX, Bishop Bernard Fellay, issued a gag order for him. It was so embarrassing for Benedict that he had to issue a letter to Catholic bishops around the world explaining his decision. Williamson was quickly removed from his post as head of the SSPX seminary in Argentina and sent home to Britain, where he lives in an SSPX home in the Wimbledon section of London. Asked about his life there, he said with dry British humour: “This is an unexpected but quite agreeable sabbatical year.”
Asked how he spends his days, he said: “Dormir et manger” (sleeping and eating), as well as writing his blog Dinoscopus, which was quickly turned into a private blog after the controversy last year.
When Panet asked for his views about Israel, Williamson said: “Many people think this state is legitimate, but that doesn’t necessarily mean that it is.”
La Croix quoted a Rev. Jacques Masson, a former member of the SSPX, as saying of Williamson: “He belonged to the group that was the most intransigent with Rome. I suspect that they pushed (SSPX founder) Archbishop (Marcel) Lefebvre to harden his line and finally go into schism.” The SSPX, which rejects the Second Vatican Council and the Catholic Church’s reconciliation with the Jews, broke from Rome in 1988 when Lefebvre disobeyed Pope John Paul and consecrated four bishops, including Williamson. Pope Benedict lifted the excommunications in 2009 and the negotiations with the Vatican aim at finding a way to reintegrate these traditionalists into the Church.
I work on the basis that Mr Wilensky is a nice man, an honest man who writes in good faith and then I say to him and to all who will listen that the Catholic Church has not repudiated any previous doctrines. In that, he is simply wrong. Now, admittedly from many years ago I know Bp Williamson whom I judge not only to be a nice man but also a highly intelliegnt and truthful man. I do not say his is preserved from all error – so he can, indeed, be wrong – but I have never heard of him erring in terms of the doctrine of the Faith. What he says may be unpalatable to some but the bitterness of some orange juice does not mean that it is not orange juice. It does not cease to be orange juice because I do not think it sweeet enough. I choose whether I drink it or not, of course, just as each must decide (if he has enough true knowledge and judgement) whether he accepts the entireity of the Catholic Faith or not. The Doctrine of the Faith is not a pick-and-mix candy stall. You take the prescribed package – assembled over the millenia, you assent to it and you are a Roman Catholic. Refuse it, abjure it, fail to teach it, pervert it, adulterate it and you are something else – you are not a Roman Catholic although you may be a neo-modernist ‘bishop’ of a new church that denies its past, and thus denies itself. Simple. No difficulty there. Bishop Williamson simply passes on what he has received. That is what a Bishop does. He who does not do that is at fault, not Bishop Williamson.
Vatican begins talks with ultra-traditionalists
The Vatican began talks on Monday with an ultra-traditionalist Catholic splinter group, one of whose bishops has denied the full extent of the Holocaust, with the aim of re-integrating it fully into the Church. Vatican officials and leaders of the Society of Saint Pius X (SSPX) discussed what a statement called “doctrinal differences still outstanding” between the group and Rome.
The traditionalists reject many of the reforms of the 1962-1965 Second Vatican Council, which modernised many aspects of the 1.1 billion member Church, including its liturgy, its relations with other Christians and its view of Jews.
The group, numbering several hundred thousand members, insists that it represents the true faith, and opposes the way the Church has evolved over the past 40 years. The SSPX says the Vatican and the vast majority of the Church went off the rails at the Council.
Read the full story here.
“Return to past” is SSPX motto for doctrinal talks with Vatican
As planned negotiations between the Vatican and the ultra-traditionalist Society of Saint Pius X (SSPX) near, the group’s Swiss leader, Bishop Bernard Fellay, has spelled out his view of what the Roman Catholic Church must do to resolve the crisis he believes it is in. “The solution to the crisis is a return to the past,” he has told a magazine published by the SSPX in South Africa.
Fellay said Pope Benedict agrees with the SSPX on the need to maintain the Church’s links to the past, but still wants to keep some reforms of the Second Vatican Council (1962-1965). “This is one of the most sensitive problems,” he said. “We hope the discussions will allow us to dispel the grave ambiguities that have spread through the Catholic Church since (the Council), as John Paul II himself recognised.”
Benedict has, in fact, listed SSPX acceptance of Vatican II reforms was a Vatican conditions in the talks.
In the same interview with the magazine Tradition, he also indicated the SSPX was ready to add several new issues to the agenda of the talks that could drag on the sessions for years. The talks are due to start later this month.
Fellay, who was readmitted into the Roman Catholic Church in January with three other bishops after two decades of excommunication, said the Church was in such a crisis that it would take more than one generation of “constant efforts in the right direction” and possibly as long as a century to overcome it.
He said he had no idea how long the SSPX’s doctrinal discussions with the Vatican would take. “This will certainly also depend on what Rome expects. They could take quite a long time.”
Bishop Fellay is only reiterated what has already been taught by Blessed Pius IX in his encyclical letter Quanta Cura & The Syllabus of Errors dated December 8, 1864 which is a list of 80 errors of modern times infallibly condemned. Two articles,which are relevant to to the discussion here, are cited. N.B. the statements or propositions have been condemned:#ll The Church not only ought never to pass judgment on philosophy, but ought to tolerate the errors of philosophy, leaving it to correct itself. (condemned)#80 The Roman Pontiff can, and ought to, reconcile himself, and come to terms wtih progress, liberalism and modern civilization. (condemned)
Unusual tit-for-tat in the Vatican over Williamson affair
There’s nothing new about tit-for-tat and finger-pointing in diplomacy and politics but the Vatican is usually quite careful not to wash its dirty laundry in public. So it was surprising to see some of the principal characters in the the long-running saga of Richard Williamson, the traditionalist bishop who sparked a crisis in Catholic-Jewish relations when he denied the extent of the Holocaust on Swedish television, now spatting in public over it.
Just when the Vatican thought it had put the Williamson affair behind it, the story has came back to haunt the Holy See. On Wednesday evening, the Swedish television network SVT aired a follow-up to its January 2009 documentary about the Society of St Pius X (SSPX). That program sparked off a public controversy because the Vatican lifted excommunications on Williamson and three other SSPX bishops three days later, creating the impression the Church either didn’t know or didn’t care about his Holocaust statement. In the uproar that followed, Pope Benedict once again condemned Holocaust denial and said he hadn’t known about the statements in advance. Usually discreet Vatican officials publicly blamed others for not informing him.
The new report on the “Uppdrag granskning” (Assignment: Investigate) program said the Vatican knew about Williamson’s views well before the bans on the SSPX bishops were lifted. To make matters worse, in conjunction with the new broadcast, the website of Stockholm’s Roman Catholic diocese posted a note saying Bishop Anders Arborelius and the Vatican nuncio to Sweden told the Holy See in November 2008 about the not-yet-aired interview that Williamson had given to Swedish television in which he said “I believe there were no gas chambers”. The interview was recorded in Germany in November 2008 and aired in Sweden on 21 January 2009. See our latest story on this here.
Now, in an interview with the Munich newspaper Süddeutsche Zeitung (excertps in German here and English here), the Vatican official at the center of the controversy, Colombian Cardinal Dario Castrillon Hoyos, is fighting back. Castrillon Hoyos was until July the head of Ecclesia Dei, the department set up by Pope John Paul in 1988 to try to bring the traditionalists back into the fold. He said “None of us knew about Bishop Williamson’s statements. None of us!” and then he adds this: “And no one had the duty to know it!”
In the full text of the interview published only in the print edition, Castrillon Hoyos fired away at Bishop Arborelius for saying he informed the Vatican last November. “I regret this dubious statement very much because it is wrong,” he said. “Spreading this information is slander. We store digitally all documents that we get. So Bishop Arborelius should say how, to whom and when he communicated that, and whether this was done in writing or orally.”
Williamson’s interview and the story and reactions to it made headlines in the Italian and international media for days afterwards. Radio Vatican’s German service reported on it as early as January 23. While defending himself, the cardinal implied he was completely unaware of all that for two weeks: “I was only informed of his (Williamson’s) statements on Feb 5. The nunciature had informed the Secretariat of State, which then gave me the information in sealed envelope that I have kept.” In his defence, he added that no other bishops had ever told him about Williamson’s views.
Several Catholic Mystics who have been approved by the Church in the past have related that a “New Mass” will be imposed on the Church that is both “Odious” in Gods sight (Marie-Julie Jahenny – 1902) and “Impious” Blessed Anna Catherine Emmerick – 1800′s, just to name a few. Recently a Jesuit German Seminary Professor, friend of JPII and HHPBVI, said that in 2000 he questioned then Cardinal Ratzinger about the supposed missing part of the 3rd secret of Fatima. He related that Cardinal Ratzinger said that Our Lady specifically warned in the 3rd secret that the Church was not to touch or change the Mass or the Sacraments and that that warning givin what today’s situation is the Church will not make public. So, it would seem from the above, which is no where exhastive on this subject, indicates that we are heading towards God’s punishment for going against Heaven and God’s will. Did not Our Lord say to Lucy in 1930′s in Spain that until Russia is consecrated to the Immaculate Heart of Mary (not the world but Russia by name – which has not been done yet) by all the Bishops of the world at the same time – that the Church and the world will fall into ruin – notwithstanding the indefectibility of the Church whereby God will intervene when all seems lost.
Vatican-SSPX talks due in second half of October
Doctrinal discussions between the Vatican and the traditionalist Society of Saint Pius X (SSPX) will begin in the second half of October, Vatican spokesman Rev. Federico Lombardi has said. He also confirmed the Vatican delegation will be made up of the Swiss Dominican Rev. Charles Morerod, the German Jesuit Rev. Karl Josef Becker and the Spanish vicar general of Opus Dei, Rev. Fernando Ocariz Brana. The Vatican Radio report gave no further details.
This shoots down one part of Vienna Cardinal Christoph Schönborn’s interview last weekend in the Passauer Neue Presse, where he said the first meeting would take place “in the next few days.”
It says nothing about his other point, that the Vatican will insist the SSPX accepts “such fundamental conclusions of the Second Vatican Council as its positions on Judaism, other non-Christian religions, other Christian churches and on religious freedom as a basic human right.” That point is far more important than the date, which is why our news item on Sunday led off with that angle, and it remains the main issue at these talks.
The Vatican Radio report in Italian spoke of “conversations” (colloqui) between the Vatican and the SSPX, but I still think Schönborn’s use of the term “negotiations” (Verhandlungen) is more appropriate. The SSPX wants full reintegration into the Roman Catholic Church and the Vatican has the power to decide if and how this happens. Sounds like a negotiation to me, no matter which language they use to describe it.
I’ve been (and shall continue) to pray for a clarification of Vatican II interpretation. This is something which is LONG over due. Church teaching cannot change with the times. There is no pre vatican II teaching and post Conciliar teaching (as much as most of the faithful have been led to believe thus for 40 + years). I pray every day for a restoration and teaching of eternal Catholic truth.
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I wonder if hitler would have readmitted the ghosts of 6 million Jews to life?
Yes sure, ugh
Benedict was born in 1928 and grew up in the nazi era. He learned his lessons well in their hitler youth core, even if he was drafted.
Just note that now that this issue has been exposed, we have all these complicated lies appearing.
The church will do anything to preserve its money and power. Its been reported that Williamson has about 600,000 neo nazi followers.
The church needs the money to pay off the victims of the endless hidden molestation of children.