"There's a lot of controversy among people who study the so-called Holocaust..There's a misperception that Hitler had a position to kill all the Jews. It's all a fraud. Six million people..it didn't occur." - Douglas Bersaw of the Saint Benedict Center in Richmond, New Hampshire, quoted in The Boston Globe article "Cherishing an Older Catholicism."
The Holy Father is to hold a meeting with the Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish organizations and will give an address on the Holocaust (the Shoah) and the dangers of Holocaust denial.
What does Louis Villarrubia ("Brother" Andre Marie of the Saint Benedict Center cult in Richmond, New Hampshire) believe about the Holocaust? Read here. And why would Catholic author Philip Lawler attend the Saint Benedict Center Conference as a guest speaker? Two relevant posts here and here.
I've made a few enemies over the past five years for exposing anti-Semitism in the Granite State. Stormfront has called me "the village communist." I have received death threats.
Hatred of the Jewish People is anything but Catholic. The Church condemns anti-Semitism as incompatible with the Gospel. The Jewish People are our elder brothers in the faith. In fact, Catholicism is the fullness of Judaism.
Related reading: Italian priest removed for Holocaust denial. And more here.
Mr. Lawler still hasn't distanced himself from the SBC. This, in itself, is deeply troubling.
ReplyDeleteGerman bishops say 'no room' for Holocaust denier in Catholicism
ReplyDelete(CNN) -- Germany's Catholic bishops are calling for the expulsion of a bishop, recently brought back into the church by Pope Benedict XVI, after new reports that Richard Williamson denies the Holocaust.
Bishop Richard Williamson, shown in a recent Swiss interview, says he'll recant "if I find this proof."
In statements to Spiegel Online, the Web site of the German news magazine, Archbishop Robert Zollitsch said the church should part ways with Bishop Williamson, a member of an ultra-conservative group that split off after Pope John Paul II excommunicated him and three other bishops in 1988.
"Mr. Williamson is impossible and irresponsible," Zollitsch, chairman of the German Bishops' Conference, told the magazine in an article published Saturday. "I now see no room for him in the Catholic Church."
The Vatican has faced criticism since Benedict lifted the excommunication of the four men January 21 and announced the move three days later. The announcement came days after a Swedish Public Television interview in which Williamson said Germany's systematic murder of millions of Jews during World War II never happened.
In the Saturday article, Spiegel quotes Williamson saying that he will not recant his theories and that he would need more evidence to believe the Holocaust really happened. Watch Argentines respond to ex-bishop's statements »
"If I find this proof, then I will correct myself," he said. "But that will require some time."
On Wednesday, the Vatican ordered Williamson to "distance himself" from his views "in an absolutely unequivocal and public manner."
The Vatican's secretary of state, Cardinal Tarcisio Bertone, has said Williamson will not be allowed to perform priestly functions if he does not recant. He said the pope was unaware of the comments when he rehabilitated the men.
Williamson apologized last week for the "distress" he has caused the pope but did not retract his comments.
Williamson, a Briton who now lives in Argentina, and three other bishops who belong to the Society of Saint Pius X were excommunicated by Pope John Paul II in 1988. The society was founded by Archbishop Marcel Lefebrve, who rebelled against the Vatican's modernizing reforms in the 1960s, and who consecrated the men in unsanctioned ceremonies.
Williamson's reinstatement and comments have been fiercely criticized by Israel, American Jewish groups and political leaders including German Chancellor Angela Merkel.
The pope -- who was born in Germany and was a child during the Nazi era -- rejected Holocaust denial in public statements January 28.
At the end of his weekly audience that day, the pope discussed his trips to the former concentration camp at Auschwitz and the images of "the heinous slaughter of millions of Jews, the innocent victims of a blind racial and religious hatred."
I agree with the German Bishops. There is no room for Holocaust denial in Catholicism. I also agree with the U.S. Bishops statement regarding Richard Williamson.
ReplyDeleteIf "never again" is to be a reality, we must not allow those who engage in revisionist history (like Richard Williamson and Douglas Bersaw) to use the Church to advance their distorted views.
From the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum:
ReplyDelete"The Holocaust was the systematic, bureaucratic, state-sponsored persecution and murder of approximately six million Jews by the Nazi regime and its collaborators. "Holocaust" is a word of Greek origin meaning "sacrifice by fire." The Nazis, who came to power in Germany in January 1933, believed that Germans were "racially superior" and that the Jews, deemed "inferior," were an alien threat to the so-called German racial community."
Source link:
http://www.ushmm.org/wlc/en/
index.php?Moduleld=10005143