(Photo: Pope Benedict at his Wednesday audience, 28 Jan 2009/Tony Gentile)

The Vatican published today the official text of an unprecedented letter Pope Benedict has sent to Roman Catholic bishops around the world explaining his reasons for readmitting four ultra-traditionalist bishops to the Church and his dismay at the uproar caused by the Holocaust denial of one of them, British-born Bishop Richard Williamson. Papal protocol usually keeps a safe buffer around the pope, shielding him from the rough and tumble of daily disputes, but Benedict broke with that tradition to write about his dismay at the Williamson controversy, admit it was mishandled and reveal how isolated he was from information anyone could easily find on the Internet. Given its unusually personal nature, we reprint it here. The text and translations into other languages are available in the Vatican’s daily bulletin.

Do you find this convincing? Should he have said more? Or should this now close the Williamson controversy?

LETTER OF HIS HOLINESS POPE BENEDICT XVI

TO THE BISHOPS OF THE CATHOLIC CHURCH

concerning the remission of the excommunication

of the four Bishops consecrated by Archbishop Lefebvre

Dear Brothers in the Episcopal Ministry!

The remission of the excommunication of the four Bishops consecrated in 1988 by Archbishop Lefebvre without a mandate of the Holy See has for many reasons caused, both within and beyond the Catholic Church, a discussion more heated than any we have seen for a long time. Many Bishops felt perplexed by an event which came about unexpectedly and was difficult to view positively in the light of the issues and tasks facing the Church today. Even though many Bishops and members of the faithful were disposed in principle to take a positive view of the Pope’s concern for reconciliation, the question remained whether such a gesture was fitting in view of the genuinely urgent demands of the life of faith in our time. Some groups, on the other hand, openly accused the Pope of wanting to turn back the clock to before the Council: as a result, an avalanche of protests was unleashed, whose bitterness laid bare wounds deeper than those of the present moment. I therefore feel obliged to offer you, dear Brothers, a word of clarification, which ought to help you understand the concerns which led me and the competent offices of the Holy See to take this step. In this way I hope to contribute to peace in the Church.

An unforeseen mishap for me was the fact that the Williamson case came on top of the remission of the excommunication. The discreet gesture of mercy towards four Bishops ordained validly but not legitimately suddenly appeared as something completely different: as the repudiation of reconciliation between Christians and Jews, and thus as the reversal of what the Council had laid down in this regard to guide the Church’s path. A gesture of reconciliation with an ecclesial group engaged in a process of separation thus turned into its very antithesis: an apparent step backwards with regard to all the steps of reconciliation between Christians and Jews taken since the Council – steps which my own work as a theologian had sought from the beginning to take part in and support. That this overlapping of two opposed processes took place and momentarily upset peace between Christians and Jews, as well as peace within the Church, is something which I can only deeply deplore. I have been told that consulting the information available on the internet would have made it possible to perceive the problem early on. I have learned the lesson that in the future in the Holy See we will have to pay greater attention to that source of news. I was saddened by the fact that even Catholics who, after all, might have had a better knowledge of the situation, thought they had to attack me with open hostility. Precisely for this reason I thank all the more our Jewish friends, who quickly helped to clear up the misunderstanding and to restore the atmosphere of friendship and trust which – as in the days of Pope John Paul II – has also existed throughout my pontificate and, thank God, continues to exist.

Another mistake, which I deeply regret, is the fact that the extent and limits of the provision of 21 January 2009 were not clearly and adequately explained at the moment of its publication. The excommunication affects individuals, not institutions. An episcopal ordination lacking a pontifical mandate raises the danger of a schism, since it jeopardizes the unity of the College of Bishops with the Pope. Consequently the Church must react by employing her most severe punishment – excommunication – with the aim of calling those thus punished to repent and to return to unity. Twenty years after the ordinations, this goal has sadly not yet been attained. The remission of the excommunication has the same aim as that of the punishment: namely, to invite the four Bishops once more to return. This gesture was possible once the interested parties had expressed their recognition in principle of the Pope and his authority as Pastor, albeit with some reservations in the area of obedience to his doctrinal authority and to the authority of the Council. Here I return to the distinction between individuals and institutions. The remission of the excommunication was a measure taken in the field of ecclesiastical discipline: the individuals were freed from the burden of conscience constituted by the most serious of ecclesiastical penalties. This disciplinary level needs to be distinguished from the doctrinal level. The fact that the Society of Saint Pius X does not possess a canonical status in the Church is not, in the end, based on disciplinary but on doctrinal reasons. As long as the Society does not have a canonical status in the Church, its ministers do not exercise legitimate ministries in the Church. There needs to be a distinction, then, between the disciplinary level, which deals with individuals as such, and the doctrinal level, at which ministry and institution are involved. In order to make this clear once again: until the doctrinal questions are clarified, the Society has no canonical status in the Church, and its ministers – even though they have been freed of the ecclesiastical penalty – do not legitimately exercise any ministry in the Church.

In light of this situation, it is my intention henceforth to join the Pontifical Commission “Ecclesia Dei” – the body which has been competent since 1988 for those communities and persons who, coming from the Society of Saint Pius X or from similar groups, wish to return to full communion with the Pope – to the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith. This will make it clear that the problems now to be addressed are essentially doctrinal in nature and concern primarily the acceptance of the Second Vatican Council and the post-conciliar magisterium of the Popes. The collegial bodies with which the Congregation studies questions which arise (especially the ordinary Wednesday meeting of Cardinals and the annual or biennial Plenary Session) ensure the involvement of the Prefects of the different Roman Congregations and representatives from the world’s Bishops in the process of decision-making. The Church’s teaching authority cannot be frozen in the year 1962 – this must be quite clear to the Society. But some of those who put themselves forward as great defenders of the Council also need to be reminded that Vatican II embraces the entire doctrinal history of the Church. Anyone who wishes to be obedient to the Council has to accept the faith professed over the centuries, and cannot sever the roots from which the tree draws its life.

I hope, dear Brothers, that this serves to clarify the positive significance and also the limits of the provision of 21 January 2009. But the question still remains: Was this measure needed? Was it really a priority? Aren’t other things perhaps more important? Of course there are more important and urgent matters. I believe that I set forth clearly the priorities of my pontificate in the addresses which I gave at its beginning. Everything that I said then continues unchanged as my plan of action. The first priority for the Successor of Peter was laid down by the Lord in the Upper Room in the clearest of terms: “You… strengthen your brothers” (Lk 22:32). Peter himself formulated this priority anew in his first Letter: “Always be prepared to make a defence to anyone who calls you to account for the hope that is in you” (1 Pet 3:15). In our days, when in vast areas of the world the faith is in danger of dying out like a flame which no longer has fuel, the overriding priority is to make God present in this world and to show men and women the way to God. Not just any god, but the God who spoke on Sinai; to that God whose face we recognize in a love which presses “to the end” (cf. Jn 13:1) – in Jesus Christ, crucified and risen. The real problem at this moment of our history is that God is disappearing from the human horizon, and, with the dimming of the light which comes from God, humanity is losing its bearings, with increasingly evident destructive effects.

Leading men and women to God, to the God who speaks in the Bible: this is the supreme and fundamental priority of the Church and of the Successor of Peter at the present time. A logical consequence of this is that we must have at heart the unity of all believers. Their disunity, their disagreement among themselves, calls into question the credibility of their talk of God. Hence the effort to promote a common witness by Christians to their faith – ecumenism – is part of the supreme priority. Added to this is the need for all those who believe in God to join in seeking peace, to attempt to draw closer to one another, and to journey together, even with their differing images of God, towards the source of Light – this is interreligious dialogue. Whoever proclaims that God is Love “to the end” has to bear witness to love: in loving devotion to the suffering, in the rejection of hatred and enmity – this is the social dimension of the Christian faith, of which I spoke in the Encyclical Deus Caritas Est.

So if the arduous task of working for faith, hope and love in the world is presently (and, in various ways, always) the Church’s real priority, then part of this is also made up of acts of reconciliation, small and not so small. That the quiet gesture of extending a hand gave rise to a huge uproar, and thus became exactly the opposite of a gesture of reconciliation, is a fact which we must accept. But I ask now: Was it, and is it, truly wrong in this case to meet half-way the brother who “has something against you” (cf. Mt 5:23ff.) and to seek reconciliation? Should not civil society also try to forestall forms of extremism and to incorporate their eventual adherents – to the extent possible – in the great currents shaping social life, and thus avoid their being segregated, with all its consequences? Can it be completely mistaken to work to break down obstinacy and narrowness, and to make space for what is positive and retrievable for the whole? I myself saw, in the years after 1988, how the return of communities which had been separated from Rome changed their interior attitudes; I saw how returning to the bigger and broader Church enabled them to move beyond one-sided positions and broke down rigidity so that positive energies could emerge for the whole. Can we be totally indifferent about a community which has 491 priests, 215 seminarians, 6 seminaries, 88 schools, 2 university-level institutes, 117 religious brothers, 164 religious sisters and thousands of lay faithful? Should we casually let them drift farther from the Church? I think for example of the 491 priests. We cannot know how mixed their motives may be. All the same, I do not think that they would have chosen the priesthood if, alongside various distorted and unhealthy elements, they did not have a love for Christ and a desire to proclaim him and, with him, the living God. Can we simply exclude them, as representatives of a radical fringe, from our pursuit of reconciliation and unity? What would then become of them?

Certainly, for some time now, and once again on this specific occasion, we have heard from some representatives of that community many unpleasant things – arrogance and presumptuousness, an obsession with one-sided positions, etc. Yet to tell the truth, I must add that I have also received a number of touching testimonials of gratitude which clearly showed an openness of heart. But should not the great Church also allow herself to be generous in the knowledge of her great breadth, in the knowledge of the promise made to her? Should not we, as good educators, also be capable of overlooking various faults and making every effort to open up broader vistas? And should we not admit that some unpleasant things have also emerged in Church circles? At times one gets the impression that our society needs to have at least one group to which no tolerance may be shown; which one can easily attack and hate. And should someone dare to approach them – in this case the Pope – he too loses any right to tolerance; he too can be treated hatefully, without misgiving or restraint.

Dear Brothers, during the days when I first had the idea of writing this letter, by chance, during a visit to the Roman Seminary, I had to interpret and comment on Galatians 5:13-15. I was surprised at the directness with which that passage speaks to us about the present moment: “Do not use your freedom as an opportunity for the flesh, but through love be servants of one another. For the whole law is fulfilled in one word: ‘You shall love your neighbour as yourself’. But if you bite and devour one another, take heed that you are not consumed by one another.” I am always tempted to see these words as another of the rhetorical excesses which we occasionally find in Saint Paul. To some extent that may also be the case. But sad to say, this “biting and devouring” also exists in the Church today, as expression of a poorly understood freedom. Should we be surprised that we too are no better than the Galatians? That at the very least we are threatened by the same temptations? That we must always learn anew the proper use of freedom? And that we must always learn anew the supreme priority, which is love? The day I spoke about this at the Major Seminary, the feast of Our Lady of Trust was being celebrated in Rome. And so it is: Mary teaches us trust. She leads us to her Son, in whom all of us can put our trust. He will be our guide – even in turbulent times. And so I would like to offer heartfelt thanks to all the many Bishops who have lately offered me touching tokens of trust and affection, and above all assured me of their prayers. My thanks also go to all the faithful who in these days have given me testimony of their constant fidelity to the Successor of Saint Peter. May the Lord protect all of us and guide our steps along the way of peace. This is the prayer that rises up instinctively from my heart at the beginning of this Lent, a liturgical season particularly suited to interior purification, one which invites all of us to look with renewed hope to the light which awaits us at Easter.

With a special Apostolic Blessing, I remain

Yours in the Lord,

BENEDICTUS PP. XVI

From the Vatican, 10 March 2009

(Photo: Clouds over the Vatican, 12 Dec 2008/Chris Helgren)

The World Jewish Congress has already reacted to the pope’s letter in the following statement:

Ronald S. Lauder: “Continue to work with Vatican to strengthen understanding”

NEW YORK / BRUSSELS - The president of the World Jewish Congress (WJC), Ronald S. Lauder, has praised Pope Benedict XVI for issuing a personal letter to Catholic bishops explaining the circumstances of the Williamson affair. “The Pope has found clear and unequivocal words regarding Bishop Williamson’s Holocaust denial, and he deserves praise for admitting that mistakes were made within the Vatican in the handling of this affair,” Lauder said.

“The Pope’s letter conveys the essential requirements for inter-religious dialogue: candor and the willingness to tackle difficult issues squarely. His expressed anguish at the events following the Holocaust-denying statements by Williamson reflects the similar emotional pain felt by Jews worldwide during this affair. We reciprocate his words of appreciation for Jewish efforts to restore inter-religious dialogue and will continue to work with the Catholic Church to further strengthen mutual understanding and respect,” the WJC president stated.

Those of us who thought the pope had said the final word on the Williamson saga will have to think again. It seems to be never-ending.

On Thursday the Vatican officially releases a letter to the world’s bishops in which the pope essentially acknowledges that the Vatican handled the lifting of the excommunications of four ultra-traditionalist bishops very badly and that it hurt him personally that things went awry.

(Photo: Pope Benedict at his weekly audience, 11 March 2009/Alessia Pierdomenico)

The story started leaking out on Tuesday night in the blog of Andrea Tornielli of Il Giornale and a story with partial excerpts was published in the Italian newspaper Il Foglio on Wednesday.  The Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung printed what it said was the full text in German of the pope’s letter. Our story is based on a face-to-face conversation I had with an Italian archbishop who received the letter. We discussed it over a light meal near St Peter’s Square.

If the leaks and the archbishop’s comment are any indication, the letter may be a sort of first — a pope explaining to his bishops why he did something that some of them contested, at times openly. He talks about his pain and also speaks of the Society of Saint Pius X (SSPX), how he felt that he had to bring them back into the fold because there are good people among them. But the pope also acknowledges how some of them are arrogant and think they know better than everyone else.  He says some speak in ways that are discordant with the Church and its teachings. Why do you think the pope felt he had to do this? Was it necessary to write the letter? Will it be interpreted as a sign of weakness or strength?  The entire letter will be  be on the Vatican’s website tomorrow after 1100 gmt.

(Photo: Bishop Richard Williamson, 28 Feb 2007/Jens Falk)

For those of you who read Italian, here is a link to Andrea Tornielli’s blog. For German speakers, here’s today’s Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung text. Following are some excerpts from the German text translated by Reuters:

“The lifting of the excommunications of the four bishops ordained by Archbishop Lefebvre in 1988 without a mandate from the Holy See has led, for several reasons, to a dispute inside and outside the Catholic Church more vehement than we have seen in a long time. Many bishops felt helpless in the face of an event that came unempectedly and hardly corresponded to the questions and tasks of today’s Church . While many bishops and believers were ready to view the pope’s will to reconciliation positively, there was on the other hand the question of the appropriateness of such a gesture in view of the really urgent issues for believers in our time. Some groups openly accused the pope of wanting to go back to before the Second Vatican Council. An avalanche of protests began whose bitterness showed hurt that went beyond the present moment. So I felt obliged to write to you, my brothers, to clear some things up and help understand the intentions that I and the responsible organs of the Holy See had in making this step. I hope in this way to contribute to bringing peace into the Church…

“A mishap that was unforseeable for me occured because the Williamson case overshadowed the lifting of the excommunications. The calm gesture of mercy towards four validly but illicitly ordained bishops suddenly seemed to be something completely different: a rejection of Christian-Jewish reconciliation, a withdrawal of what the Council had declared in this matter as the path of the Church. In this way, an invitation to reconciliation with a breakaway Church group turned into its opposite: an apparent retreat behind all steps of reconciliation between Christians and Jews taken since the Council. From the start, taking these steps and developing them has been a goal of my theological work. I can only deeply regret that this overlapping of two contrary events has occurred and upset the peace between Christians and Jews and the peace in the Church…

“I hear that attentive tracking of the news available on the Internet could have made it possible to learn about this problem in time. I learn from this that we at the Holy See must pay more attention to this source of news in the future. I was also saddened to see that also Catholics, who actually could have known better, thought they had to lash out at me with ready-to-pounce hostility. I’m all the more thankful to the Jewish friends who helped clear up the misunderstanding quickly and restore the atmosphere of friendship and trust that — as during the time of Pope John Paul — has reigned during the whole time of my pontificate and, thank God, still exists…

“Another mishap that I honestly regret is that the limits and extend of the measure of 21 January 2009 were not clearly presented when the act was announced. Excommunication applies to people, not institutions. Ordaining a bishop without a papal mandate means the danger of a schism, because it challenges the unity of the college of bishops with the pope. The Church must therefore react with the harshest punishment, excommunication, in order to bring the punished ones to regret their act and return to unity. Twenty years after the ordinations, this goal has still not yet been reached … The lifting of the excommunications was a measure in the area of Church discipline: the people involved were freed of the burden on their conscience of having the harshest Church punishment. One must differentiate the doctrinal area from this disciplinary area. That the Society of Saint Pius X has no canonical standing in the Church is actually not based on disciplinary reasons, but on doctrinal reasons … As long as the doctrinal questions have not been cleared up, the Society has no canonical statue in the Church and its leaders, while free of the Church punishment, do not exercise any office legally in the Church…

“Can we be indvifferent to a community that has 491 priests, 215 seminarists, six seminaries, 88 schools, two university institutes, 117 brothers and 164 nuns? Should we simply let them drift away from the Church? I think for example of the 491 priests. We cannot know the web of their motivations. But I think they would not have decided to become priests if, along with some lopsided or sick (aspects), there had not been a love for Christ and the will to preach about him and with him the living God.  Should we simply shut them out of the search for reconciliation and unity as representatives of a radical fringe group? What would happen then?

“Of course, for a long time, we have heard occasional dissonant tones from representatives of this community — arrogance and a know-it-all attitude, a fixation on one-sidedness, etc. To be honest, I have to add that I have also received several moving testimonies of thankfulness that showed an opening of the hearts. But shouldn’t the great Church also be able to be magnanimous, knowing the long-term perspective it has and the promise given it?   Shouldn’t we, like good teachers, be able to ignore some bad things and try to move out of this squeeze? And shouldn’t we admit that dissonent tones have also come from Church circles? One sometimes has the impression that our society needs at least one group that it need not show any tolerance to and can lash out at with hatred? And whoever dares touch it — in this case, the pope — loses the right to tolerance and can also be met with hatred without anyone being shy or reserved about it?”

Tens of thousands of people have signed petitions either backing or criticising Pope Benedict for readmitting ultra-traditionalist Bishop Richard Williamson into the Roman Catholic Church. The supporters are ahead in statistical terms, but this isn’t really a representative sample so it’s hard to draw any firm conclusions. It does give some idea, though, of how much interest the issue has created.

(Photo: Bishop Williamson leaves for London after expulsion order from Argentina, 24 Feb 2009/Enrique Marcarian)

The Süddeutsche Zeitung in Munich reports today that about 30,000 people, including many theologians,  have signed a petition criticising the readmission of ultra-traditionalist Bishop Richard Williamson and urging Pope Benedict to defend the reforms of the Second Vatican Council. The petition (here in English translation) was launched by the lay reform movement Wir sind Kirche (We are Church), which the SZ says will present it to German bishops holding an assembly in Hamburg next week.

Searching on the support side, I found a French-based petition claiming 47,222 signatures so far. It praises Benedict for lifting the excommunications of the four SSPX bishops and adds: “By this brave gesture, You acted (as) the Good Shepherd of the flock entrusted to You by God.” The site includes a “letter of encouragement” by Rev. Régis de Cacqueray, head of the large French chapter of the SSPX, and sports a selection of logos from traditionalist websites — mostly not SSPX — supporting the petition.

One other petition that popped up on a google search was on the website of the French Catholic weekly La Vie, this one critical of the move as its title signals: “No negationists in the Church.” It doesn’t tally its figures but it has 90 intellectuals as initial signatories and over 6,000 comments from readers.

Any other petitions like this out there?

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.

Bishop Bernard Fellay, head of the ultra-traditionalist Society of Saint Pius X (SSPX), has made some interesting comments in an in-house video interview shown at a meeting of his supporters in Paris on Thursday evening. First of all, he said he was surprised to see how quickly the Vatican lifted excommunication orders against him and three other bishops. Relations with Rome had been “rather cold” for months, he said, since he declined to accept a Vatican ultimatum last June to stop criticising the pope and to accept his authority in doctrinal matters. Fellay said he wrote to the Vatican in December requesting the retraction of the excommunications as a way to make contact again. “Since the letter was relatively severe, I didn’t expect a quick response. It was just a way to reestablish contact,” he said.

(Bishop Fellay’s interview in French on Feb 5 in Paris, issued on Feb 12 by SSPX communications office DICI/also on gloria.tv)

Another reason not to expect any change in his status, Fellay said, was the fact that rumours he heard from Rome said the Vatican was thinking of reaffirming his excommunication because he was leading a “schismatic drift”. Just before he was due to leave for Rome in mid-January to make courtesy calls on some Vatican officials, he said, he got a call saying officials there wanted urgently to discuss the excommunications with him.

We know the rest of the story from there. The excommunications were lifted, Bishop Richard Williamson’s interview caused an uproar and the Vatican handled the whole thing very poorly. What is striking in this part of Fellay’s account is the apparently sloppy handling of this even beforehand. Let’s step back and remember that this split was the most important schismatic act since the Second Vatican Council. The Vatican has been dealing with this issue for years. Why such a rush all of a sudden?

(UPDATE: Le Figaro’s Jean-Marie Guénois reports that the decree lifting the excommunications was “signed on the pope’s orders by Cardinal Giovanni Battista Re on Saturday Jan 17 and handed the same day to Bishop Fellay, who had been summoned to the Vatican for this purpose.”)

Fellay did not discuss the much-criticised Vatican handling of the excommunications announcement. He  blamed the uproar over Williamson on “progressives and left-wingers” in the Catholic Church who “used the unfortunate comments of Bishop Williamson to force Rome to go back” on its opening to the SSPX. He denied the SSPX was anti-Semitic and said it was often labelled unfairly. It had earlier been branded as excommunicated and was now being branded as anti-Semitic. “We don’t like this label at all, it’s worse than the other one,” he said.

Asked about the future, he said the negotiations with the Vatican over rehabilitating the four SSPX bishops would be “not necessarily short, maybe even long”. As for the SSPX position going into such talks, he said, “The principle of the solution is in the purification of thought. We have to get back to Church doctrine in all its purity … one cannot hope for a stable and profound unity of the Church without a clear proclamation of the faith without any ambiguity, as it was done down all the centuries.”

Fellay is not as blunt as Williamson, but their message seems quite similar — we can’t support all of the Second Vatican Council. Fellay said as much in an interview distributed yesterday.

Pope Benedict is trying to patch up relations with Jews but the rumbling still goes on within the Church, especially in the Germans-speaking countries. Benedict confirmed on Thursday that he will go ahead with his planned trip to Israel, which is due in May. This story may be settling down after the initial uproar, but the Israel visit on the horizon promises to keep a certain tension that could flare up again at any time.

Two Jewish leaders due to meet Pope Benedict on Thursday say he has to ensure the ultra-traditionalist Society of Saint Pius X (SSPX) changes some of its core views before current Catholic-Jewish strains can ease. We’ve run a news story on my interviews with them and a timeline on Catholic-Jewish relations. To give a fuller picture of what they’re saying, here are the transcripts of our talks.

__________

Malcolm Hoenlein, executive vice chair of the Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations

(Photo: Conference of Presidents)

What do you hope to get from the meeting with the pope tomorrow? Can steps be taken to put this behind you?

Yes, I do believe that steps can be taken for us to turn this very negative experience into something positive and that is to use this as an opportunity, a pervasive opportunity in the Church, to root out those who engage in Holocaust denial or anti-Semitism of any form, for the Church to declare that there is no place within the Church for people who espouse such abhorrent views, that they renounce them and say that they will not countenance their presence. It is not just Bishop Williamson but members of that group, the organisation of which he is part, who have espoused anti-Semitic views over the years. I think it is important that before there can be an reconciliation with them, that not only there has to be a complete renunciation of those views and the Church establishing this as a standard and that the message will go out, especially at a time when we are seeing a resurgence of anti-Semitism in Europe, that the Church can play a critical role in helping to stem it and to declare it morally objectionable and religiously unacceptable.

What do want to hear from the pope tomorrow and what do you think he must say to start putting this behind us?

There are several things we hope to hear from His Holiness tomorrow. I think that he must renounce the organisation and their views and make it clear that there can be no reconciliation until there is complete transformation in their views and public renunciation not only of Holocaust denial but of their anti-Semitic expressions as well and there will be an effort by the Church to address this within the Church itself and to the public to help make clear that there can be no justification for such views, that the views of people like (Iranian President Mahmoud) Ahmadinejad, who espouses Holocaust denial, will find comfort in the fact that this group could be reconciled with the Church.

So, it is imperative for there to be a clear statement of declaration. There can be very great efforts by the Church and His Holiness tomorrow can help issue a clarion call about the rise of anti-Semitism, the unacceptability of anti-Semitism in any form, including those who call for the destruction of Israel, the de-legitimisation of Israel, a clear reaffirmation of the principles and tradition of Nostra Aetate. This I think (would be) a very important statement on the part of the Church at this time, for a group that renounces those principles and those provisions, to make clear that the Church stands by the commitments and that it expects all of the members of the Church to adhere to it.

Some members of the Vatican hierarchy say there were not aware of Bishop Williamson’s background. What do you think of that?

Well, it certainly raises questions, some of which remain unanswered, and we heard from the members of the hierarchy that they are deeply disturbed by the process. The question is at what point in the hierarchy were there people who knew but didn’t think it was significant or who may have even agreed with some of those views or didn’t believe that that this was reason
enough not to permit this process to go forward and to inform His Holiness, who has said he did not know about the views of Bishop Williamson and others. It seems this is a problem within the Church, not for us to decide, but for the Church itself to investigate and perhaps proper action taken to prevent its recurrence but also to hold to account those who were responsible.

(Photo: Pope Benedict with cardinals and archbishops at the Vatican, 22 Dec 2008/Max Rossi)

Did this wipe out decades of dialogue? You are now on the road to recovery but do you thing that the pain will be there forever?

The pain is very deep, especially for survivors in our community who went through the hell of the Holocaust and then are told that it is denied by people and that the Church didn’t feel that that wasn’t a litmus test for the actions that were taken. And for the community as a whole it seemed as not only symbolic but substantively very significant. But I believe that everyone wants to go into a process of reconciliation, a positive and constructive cooperation. We want it, I know that the Church has told us they want it. The question is what steps will be taken now, how do we take this opportunity and the Church take this opportunity to assert positively its positions on the issues of concern, on the issues that we have raised and see to it that we turn a negative into a positive.

__________

Rabbi Arthur Schneier, senior rabbi at New York’s Park East Synagogue, where he hosted the pope last year

(Photo by Gary Hershorn, 18 April 2008)

You welcomed the pope to your synagogue last year in New York. How did you feel when the whole Williamson affair exploded?

I am a Holocaust survivor. I lost my family in Auschwitz. I am a witness of man’s inhumanity to man. Therefore it was a despicable ideology that has no place, no room in the Catholic Church after Vatican II. I must say that I think that Pope Benedict’s visit, the first papal visit to a synagogue in
America, was a very significant moment because it shows his personal outreach and commitment to the Jewish community.

What would like to hear from him tomorrow about Williamson, about anti-Semitism and about the SSPX?

I can rely on Pope Benedict to send the right message. He already made a statement, a very clear statement, a firm statement, condemning Holocaust denial but also describing the relationship between our two communities and therefore I think what needs to be reiterated is a reaffirmation of the guidelines of Nostra Aetate and a very firm stand against anti-Semitism. There is no room for anti-Semite or Holocaust denier in the Church post-Vatican II.

What do think of the SSPX? Is the problem deeper than Williamson?

I think the problem is deeper than Williamson because of what the Pius X Society stands for, that is why they were excommunicated to begin with, because they rejected Vatican II. But I must say, as a Holocaust survivor, you have to look beyond the moment and we have a great opportunity to even strengthen Catholic-Jewish relations after this particular event.

What do you think went wrong in the Vatican. Some people, like Cardinal Kasper, didn’t know about the decree until just before it was made public.

(Photo: Clouds over the Vatican, 12 Dec 2008/Chris Helgren)

Really, I like to be constructive. The meeting with Pope Benedict tomorrow, when I will present leaders of the American Jewish community to Pope Benedict, is a very important statement in itself. Second, we need to find ways to heal the wounds and the pain, and particularly as a Holocaust survivor you can understand that I don’t have to read history books. I’m an eyewitness. We need to heal the wounds and then just build on the future because we need each other. Catholics and Jews need to work together. There are so many issues facing mankind. For the benefit of our own communities and in service to humanity. So, let’s not get stuck. There has to be not only clarification, there has to be a reiteration of the policy of Vatican II which
is the basis, the foundation, the road map of a relationship that really has come a long way. We have made many, many achievements. I also thing that the forthcoming visit of Pope Benedict to Israel will also be a very significant moment to even strengthen our relationship.

Do you think the visit to Israel will help heal this the way his visit to Turkey helped heal the Regensburg affair?

Let’s be clear. This is not just a Catholic-Jewish issue. Holocaust denial, yes, it certainly afflicts those of us who survived the Holocaust and the memory of those who perished. It’s beyond that. I think the very basic commitment of Vatican II, the vision of a Church reaching out, inter-religious dialogue, which has happened, that is being questioned by the Pius X society. So it’s just not a question of the Jewish community vs. the Catholic Church position. We have worked together on Nostra Aetate and were are very proud of some of our achievements, considering the past history of tensions. But we are going to go beyond that. We will emerge, I’m convinced, much, much stronger, with better understand of one another and
working together. However, there has to be a very clear affirmation that those who reject some of the values that we cherish, that are very basic in the Bible, in the Torah, that those values of respect for human dignity, respect for your fellow man, human rights, religious freedom, these are basic rights that every human being has and these rights are, again, reaffirmed in Vatican II. As a result of the reaffirmation, we have been able to work together all these years and have made progress. We still have a long way to go, but still … so yes, I feel that, yes, this is a painful moment, but on the other hand also an opportunity to go beyond this crisis and emerge in the better understanding and cooperation that we need to have.

What should be done with Bishop Richard Williamson? In the wave of protests following his denial of the Holocaust, many critics argued he should have no place in the Roman Catholic Church. He gave them more ammunition over the weekend by telling Der Spiegel that he would have to study the historical evidence before deciding whether to publicly recant, as the Vatican has demanded. But he and his three fellow rebel bishops from the ultra-traditionalist Society of Saint Pius X (SSPX) have already been let back into the Church thanks to Pope Benedict’s decision to lift their excommunications. They now have to find an official niche in the Church to occupy.

(Photo: Bishop Richard Williamson, 28 Feb 2007/Jens Falk)

It’s not clear when the SSPX bishops will begin negotiating their rehabilitation with the Vatican, partly because we don’t know how long Williamson will take for his new history assignment. But whenever those talks get under way, one of their goals will be to find a role for the four men who, although illicitly ordained, are valid bishops. And if they are rehabilitated, they will have to be bishops of somewhere or something. As the Catholic Encyclopedia puts it, bishops “are appointed for the government of one portion of the faithful of the Church, under the direction and authority of the sovereign pontiff, who can determine and restrain their powers, but not annihilate them”.

The operative word here is “restrain”. SSPX leader Bishop Bernard Fellay could be made bishop of a personal prelature, on the model of Opus Dei, but that still leaves the other three without official positions. The two others — Alfonso de Galarreta and Bernard Tissier de Mallerais — haven’t received too much media attention yet and it’s not clear what they might end up doing. But Williamson looks set for the sidelines even if he pops up on YouTube doing penitential readings from Saul Friedländer’s books.

(Photo: Bishop Jacques Gaillot/partenia.org)

The Vatican has a way of restraining insubordinate bishops. They can be appointed to a “titular see,” i.e. a see (diocese) in name only. These sees are normally given to bishops who don’t run a diocese, for example a bishop working in the Curia. But the case of French Bishop Jacques Gaillot shows they can also be used to sidetrack someone. Gaillot was bishop of Evreux in France from 1982 to 1995 and stood out for his left-wing political and theological views (including blessing a same-sex union in 1988).

In 1995, the Vatican told Gaillot to resign or be removed from his see. He refused to resign and was reassigned to the titular see of Partenia, a diocese now lost under the sands of the Algerian Sahara. It ceased to exist in the fifth (yes, 5th) century after Huneric, the King of the Vandals, drove its bishop Rogatus into exile.

Gaillot didn’t stop his activism, however. He created a Partenia website in seven languages that declares the extinct see a “diocese without borders” where he fields questions, comments on current events, gives Biblical interpretations, runs a forum and chat room and provides a collection of mostly left-wing links.

Despite his 68 years, Williamson is quite at home with cyberspace. He has his own blog, Dinoscopus, which has become a must-read for journalists following this saga. It features a caricature of him as a dinosaur (at left) that shows he has a good portion of self-deprecating British humour. There are so many unclaimed titular sees that the Vatican would have no problem finding him one. But no matter where they assign him, it’s a pretty good bet his new address will start with http://…

Holy flip-flop!

Vatican Secretary of State Tarcisio Bertone, who is Number 2 to Pope Benedict at the Holy See, ordered Bishop Richard Williamson to recant his Holocaust denial “absolutely, unequivocally and publicly” if he wants to serve as a prelate in the Roman Catholic Church. The tough statement, reported here by our Vatican correspondent Phil Pullella, came after a mounting chorus of Catholic bishops denounced Williamson’s statement and more or less clearly urged the apparently reluctant Vatican to take some strong disciplinary measures. Many of those appeals included calls for Williamson’s ultra-traditionalist Society of Saint Pius X (SSPX) to support Second Vatican Council reforms they have until now rejected.

(Photo: Cardinal Tarcisio Bertone, 19 June 2008/stringer)

Bertone’s statement (original here in Italian) also said clearly that an indispensible condition for a rehabilitation of the four SSPX bishops whose excommunications were lifted last week was “full recognition of the Second Vatican Council and the Magisterium of popes John XXIII, Paul VI, John Paul I, John Paul II and Benedict XVI.”

This might seem like the logical next step in the Vatican’s damage control campaign. But now look at the interview with Bertone the Italian Catholic daily Avvenire published just yesterday. When asked about Williamson’s comments, he answered: “There’s no need to confuse things… The Society of Saint Pius X …has asked the pope for forgiveness for this regrettable episode. The pope spoke clearly on Wednesday. It seems to me that the question can be considered closed.” (emphasis mine).

I wonder what the last straw was that made Bertone (and Benedict) suddenly change tack. Those unusual comments from German Chancellor Angela Merkel? The mounting chorus of comments from German and other bishops?  Whatever it was, this does seem to bear out a fact that several readers posting comments in recent days either fail or refuse to recognise – that the Church operates in the world and adopting a stand of sublime isolation from it can have its costs.  That doesn’t mean it should not have lifted Williamson’s excommunication, but it could have considered the context and explained it from the start.

(Photo: Bishop Richard Williamson, 28 Feb 2007/Jens Falk)

Sandro Magister, a veteran Vatican watcher, has posted a detailed and informative analysis on his website www.chiesa – Double Disaster at the Vatican: Of Governance, and of Communication. He has tough words for Bertone: “With Bertone, the curia seems even more disorganized than before, perhaps in part because he has never completely dedicated himself to fixing its problems.:

When Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger was elected the head of the Roman Catholicism in 2005, the best-selling daily Bild caught the national mood with a frontpage headline crowing Wir sind Papst! (We’re Pope!). Now, Germans are falling out of love with their pope for readmitting to the Church an excommunicated bishop who denies the Holocaust. For the vast majority of Germans, denying the Holocaust is beyond the pale. Shunning anyone who does deny the Holocaust is considered a civic virtue. So seeing the world’s most prominent German rehabilitate a Holocaust denier is quite distressing for a upstanding, post-war German democrat. How could he do it?

(Photo: Pope Benedict at the Vatican, 2 Feb 2009/Alessandro Bianchi)

The Vatican and Catholic bishops around the world have been defending the pope, saying the lifting of the excommunications for the controversial Bishop Richard Williamson and three other bishops was an internal Church issue unrelated to his political views. They say repeatedly that this is not a rehabilitation, but simply a readmission to allow discussions on rehabilitation to start. After botching the initial announcement, the Vatican has had a tough time trying to convince public opinion in other countries. In Germany, where many understandably think Holocaust deniers deserve no sympathy whatsoever, this task is proving to be doubly difficult.

From Chancellor Angela Merkel and former Foreign Minister to leading Catholic thinkers, Jewish groups and editorial writers in top-selling newspapers — they’re all criticising the pope’s controversial decision to welcome Williamson back. Here is our news story from Berlin wrapping up the reaction. In Rome, another German, Cardinal Walter Kasper, bluntly told Vatican Radio: “There wasn’t enough talking with each other in the Vatican and there are no longer checks to see where problems could arise.”

(Photo: Hans-Dietrich Genscher and Angela Merkel, 21 Oct 2008/Tobias Schwarz)

While Kasper takes a jab at Ratzinger now and then, it’s rare to see such a wide variety of opinion lining up in Rome and in other countries against a pontiff. It is almost unthinkable that a head of government should break with protocol and openly criticise a pope. But when a German pope ignores one of the deepest German taboos, getting a reaction like this is — as they say here in Germany — “as certain as hearing ‘Amen’ in church.”

There have been so many comments that we couldn’t fit them all into our news stories. Here are some of the comments from Germany:

• Merkel says says it’s all about “the pope and the Vatican making very clear that there can be no (Holocaust) denial and that there must be positive relations with Judaism.”
• Genscher writes: “Poles can be proud of Pope John Paul II. At the last papal election, we said “We are the pope!” But please — not like this.”
• Politicians from the Greens, the Left, the Social Democrats, the Free Democrats and even the Christian Democrats (CDU/CSU) criticise the pope’s decision. The CDU/CSU expert on church affairs, Ingrid Fischbach, said she was appalled and added: “This has disappointed me, a believing Catholic, very personally.”
• German newspapers have also joined in, including the top-selling popular daily Bild, whose editorial entitled “Infallible?” said “It is morally the last straw, the most despicable thing possible, when one relativises the racist murdering of and deadly envious fury against the Jews… The pope must correct his mistake, take back the decision and apologise.”
• The respected theologian Hans Maier said the handling of the affair was “an unforgivable failure, a political blunder … Why didn’t they get a broad consensus on these issues in advance? Such an important and decisive question must be discussed in a broader group of people.”
• Papal biographer Peter Seewald, author of two long interview book with Ratzinger entitled Salt of the Earth and God and the World, said the pope was badly advised: “This shows clearly that they’re not very professional behind the walls of the Vatican. There’s even some naïvité. This crisis could easily have been avoided with more precision. We have to get used to the idea that Benedict’s papacy will not be calm and quiet.”

The German service of Vatican Radio, which describes itself as “the voice of the pope and the world Church” (see logo below), gave in today’s news summary another explanation of the pope’s view by Vatican spokesman Rev. Federico Lombardi and a postive comment by Vatican Secretary of State Tarcisio Bertone (“For me, the issue is over”). It followed that by 10 — count ‘em, 10 – critical comments from top German clergy condemning Williamson’s Holocaust denial and demanding full support for the Second Vatican Council and no concessions to the ultra-traditionalists. The radio quoted Mainz Cardinal Karl Lehmann, Cologne Cardinal Joachim Meisner, Munich Archbishop Reinhard Marx, Bamberg Archbishop Ludwig Schick, Hamburg Auxiliary Bishop Hans-Jochen Jaschke, Münster Bishop Felix Genn, Magdeburg Bischof Gerhard Feige, Limburg Bishop Franz-Peter Tebartz-van Elst, Osnabrück Bishop Franz-Josef Bode and Paderborn Archbishop Hans-Josef Becker. They naturally don’t attack Benedict openly, but it’s hard to remember when the pope’s own radio station carried this many verbal nudges and winks and stage whispers from fellow Church leaders aimed in his direction.

What next? What should Benedict do when even his “home team” tells him he’s gone way out of bounds?

Amid all the controversy over the Vatican’s handling of the return of four excommunicated ultra-traditionalist bishops, some newspapers are reporting that Pope Benedict is now preparing to welcome a far larger group into the Church — the 400,000-strong Traditional Anglican Communion. We noted speculation about this last June. The Italian daily La Stampa wrote today that this group would be accepted into the Roman Catholic Church by Easter. Its headline was “Goodbye Canterbury, Benedict Takes Back Even the Anglicans.”

But it doesn’t look like it’s going to be that way. The Vatican can wait, something it normally is very good at. The arguments I’m hearing here against such a move anytime soon are:

• Large group conversions can be unwieldy and full of surprises.
• After the controversy over the botched PR for the lifting of bans on the Society of Saint Pius X (SSPX) bishops, you can bet a lot more homework will be done on this one first.