The NY Times reports that in 1989 a Vichy war criminal, Paul Touvier, was found hiding in a monastery run by the founder of the group, Archbishop Lefebvre, and arrested. He was subsequently sentenced to life in prison for crimes against humanity.
Two things bother me about the Papal reaction. One, it is, not surprisingly, couched in an outreach to Jews. While this is understandable and makes perfect sense, it obfuscates the heart of the issue which is that Williamson is speaking complete lies and nonsense and is making claims that are totally anti-historical.
Simply put, this is not just an insult to Jews. It is an insult to truth and memory. It is an insult to intellect [something Pope Benedict values greatly]. It is an insult to rational thought.
The second thing -- and this is something which certain Catholic clerics with whom I am friendly have pointed out to me -- in his frequent condemnations of antisemitism, Pope Benedict always speaks of it as growing out of a pagan force. He completely fails to link it to Christian theology and history.
For example, at World Youth Day when he spoke at a synagogue in Cologne. He said the following [I have highlighted the seminal phrase]:
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.At best it is a form of historical obfuscation. At its worst it too is a form of denial.
11 comments:
Dear Dr. Lipstadt,
The New York Times article you cite says,
"In his weekly audience with the public on Wednesday, Benedict said he “renewed with love” his “full and indisputable solidarity” with Jews, whom he called “our brothers of the first covenant.”
He added that he had repeatedly visited Auschwitz, the location of the “brutal massacre of millions of Jews, innocent victims of blind racial and religious hatred,” and said that the Holocaust “should be a warning for everyone against forgetting, denying or diminishing its significance.”
You wrote that the Pope merely "mentioned the uproar". It seems to me he did a little more than just mention it.
But secondly, let me ask, which part of his statement do you think "obfuscates" and doesn't say that Williamson's Holocaust denial is not an insult to rememberance and memory?
He said, Auschwitz is "a warning for everyone against forgetting, denying or diminishing its significance.”
He said, "a warning for everyone against FORGETTING, DENYING, OR DIMINISHING ITS SIGNIFICANCE." (my emphasis)
Parse it this way and that I just can't get anything but a condemnation of Holocaust denial out of those words.
Moreover, without exactly placing the Holy Father in the same category as Robert Faurisson, you insinuate that the Pope himself is, perhaps, a subtler kind of Holocaust denier.
You mean the questionalble historicity of Benedict's claim that neo-paganism was a force.
It is true that the Pope has this view that there was a pagan element in the berserker murderousness of the nazis. No doubt he is referring to all the Odin thumping Norse mythology which littered the ceremonies of the Wagner inhaling Nazi command.
But I must ask, is it not possible for Catholic Jew-hating to cause murder right alongside the puerile murderousness of neo-Viking enthusiasms?
Gotta tell ya. Everybody in the Aryan Nations compounds wears those weird Viking runes on their t-shirts. Gotta tell ya, my father-in-law killed nazis in North Africa, France, and Germany. Then he liberated Bergen-Belsen and was the military governor of Sternberg Germany.
In Sternberg, his first job was to round up SS men suddenly become civilians in lederhosen. How did he identify the SS men? THose damn tattos of weird runic Norse shit hidden on their bodies.
My dad-in-law brought home boxes and boxes of Nazi regalia.
That pagan crap was runically embossed on everything those furious boy-men wore.
Could it be that the old Popester is on to something? Could it just be? And does his thinking so make him a subtler variety of holocaust denier?
Let me humbly suggest that when the Pope referred to "religious hatred" yesterday he was referring to his own religion, not the Viking one? I think he knows and affirms the previous Pope's acknowledgement of Catholic complicity.
Also, I must say with this post you are changing the subject. As of yesterday Williamson's Holocaust denial was the sin of saying murders did not happen when they did.
Now you are suggesting that to NOT be a historical denier you must not only affirm the fact of the nazi murders, but you must also stand ready to say that a particular religion was responsible for Jewish death.
And it has to be my religion.
Is this what you mean?
I did not intend to imply in any way that Pope Benedict is a denier. That would be a ridiculous supposition. He is anything but. I am sorry -- and a bit surprised -- that you got that impression.
Nor, by the way, do I think that he is an antisemite in any manner, shape, or form.
I do think he did something terribly thoughtless and in a choice between church unity and distancing the church from those who preach antisemitism, he chose the former.
He, of course, more than "mentioned" the uproar, so my choice of words could have been more precise. Hwwever, since I provided the link to the original article, I did not think it necessary to go into a long discourse on what he said. I may have been wrong.
Regarding your final paragraph. I did not say a particular religion was responsible for the Shoah.
I did say that antisemitism is not a pagan phenomenon. It has its roots in Christianity and it evolved in the Church over centuries.
Did the Church carry out the Holocaust? Of course not.
Without centuries of Christian antisemitism would there have been a Holocaust? I certainly doubt it.
Dr. Lipstadt,
Sorry, we seem to be shooting fusilades right past each other. Nonetheless, I do think we are on the same side.
You wrote,
"I do think he (Benedict XVI)did something terribly thoughtless and in a choice between church unity and distancing the church from those who preach antisemitism, he chose the former."
That is about as perfect an account of what he did that I can find. No argument there. I just think it was the right thing to get the SSPX "pissing inside of the tent instead of outside the tent". You do not. In the long run I think Benedict's choice will be good for all.
I overreacted to your dual use of denier.
The word "denial" or "denier" in the context of your life's work, that is, within the special semantics of your books and blog, takes on a special weight whenever it is used. In your final sentence on "obfuscation" I did read you as tying two kinds of denial together and spreading Williamson's guilt all over Benedict.
Therefore, I understand that you didn't mean B-XvI was a holocaust denier. But you did say something in your last sentence that suggested, by innuendo, that Benedict's sin of obfuscation shared a certain kinship of common genera with Williamson's.
A misunderstanding of mine.
My final reflection is that as a matter of rhetoric if you toss denial (little "d")(Benedict's) in with Denial (capital "D")(Williamson's) you are setting your cause up for defeat. As you have pointed out constantly, Holocaust deniers frequently are temporizing contextualizers. Fr. Abrahmowicz is a fine example.
If "denial" of the sort Benedict practices is seen as linked, however faintly, to the kind Williamson practices then because denial (little "d") is arguable, by extension and analogy the big "D" Denial which is factual can be made to seem just as arguable by equivocation.
I realize this is not where you were going.
One final mistake. I did not mean to say that B-XVI's thought paganism was a source for anti-semitism. I meant to say that it was a potent source of nazi ideology.
On that I owe you a clarification. I was not clear.
Whether there would have been a holocaust without the anti-judaism of the CHurch I do not know. The Church certainly softened up the conscience of Europe. And for that it must take blame.
Many believe, as I do, that a very important force in the murder of European Jewry was the development of an entirely new theory of "totalitarian" government, which had its roots in race thinking, anti-semitism but mostly a general cultural crisis making political practice veer increasingly toward giant murder regimes.
I allude to the views of Hannah Arendt, and on this point must leave off because she, dear she, is a much, much, much longer discussion.
"Without centuries of Christian antisemitism would there have been a Holocaust? I certainly doubt it."
Well said. I concur wholeheartedly.
"Did the Church carry out the Holocaust? Of course not."
No, but ordinary Christians did. Many members of the Einsatzgruppen were church-going German Christians, family men.
Please, Prof. Lipstadt, you shouldn't have to apologize to Guy Fawkes simply because the complicity of his religion [Christianity] in precipitating the Holocaust discomposes and offends him. By the sounds of it, he is capable (or so his posts imply...) of facing up to the darker side of Christianity and the Catholic Church. It was Blaise Pascal who wrote in Pensees, "The greatest shame is to have no shame." There are many Catholics today who are not troubled by this "greatest shame." This also is not your fault, Prof. Lipstadt.
Dear Mr. Hockey Hound,
I don't think Dr. Lipstadt is apolgizing for making me, or my religion uncomfortable. She is being gracious about a mutual misunderstanding in regards to a couple of things.
Just to get you in the loop:
1.) The Holy Father has a penchant for saying (without a lot of explanation)that somehow the holocaust was due to a vague pagan force.
2.) Dr. L. took the Pope's odd seeming statement to mean that somehow ancient paganism was the mother's milk which nurtured German jew hating, and not historic christianity. (We both agree that Chrsitian anti-Semitism was the nurturing force.)
3.) Dr. L. went on to say that such a claim would qualify as a "form of denial". I took her to mean a form of denial having the same root as Williamson's denial which is anti-semitism.
4.) Therefore, I inferred that Dr. L. was calling the Pope a Williamson-like denier, a possible anti-Semite, and in some unspecified way a blackguard of the same genus if not specific kind as Williamson.
After sorting this out what is evident to me is:
1.) When the Pope meanders into references to the pagan force behind Nazism he is refering to that aspect of the Nazi ideology which reveled in the phantasy of Nazism being a revival of the old Norse war religion. His view is that they took it seriously, and acted upon it and murdered millions. It forms a partial explanation of the relationship between ideology and murder.
2.) This claim of the Pope's in no way interferes with assigning blame to Christianity.
3.) Not many people are aware that the last two Popes see the Nazi murder machine as having its spiritual source in christian anti-Semitism AND a godlessness which hurtled over to a worship of new gods. It also had its source in a wholly new political phenomenon: the totalitarian state, or as Pius XI and Pius XII called it" the total state.
Dr. Lipstadt pointed out that I had completely misread her meaning. She thought the current pope was trying to get Christianity off the hook by pointing to paganism. I maintain that he is not, he is simply pointing to another aspect of Nazi "spirituality" which encouraged murder.
End of argument.
First of all, Guy Fawkes, Prof. Lipstadt is Jewish. You are being rather indelicate in using the term "the Holy Father" on her blog. There are also other Jews who blog here. Jews do not recognize (nor do I) your Pope as a "Holy Father." Using the term "the Holy Father" rather arrogates a Christian religious estimation of your Pope within the confines of Prof. Lipstadt's blog. And that's simply bad manners, in my opinion. Better you had written "my Holy Father".
"We both agree that Chrsitian anti-Semitism was the nurturing force."
If you are convinced that Christian anti-Jewish hatred was "the nuturing force," then why are you still a Christian? How can you follow and apologize for a religion that has caused the Jewish people so much suffering and atrocious loss? Your pope was at one time a Hitler Youth. Does that fact of history now cause you any measure of shame or embarrassment? Are you aware of the fact that some Hitler Youth actually took part in murdering Jews?
Christians (and Muslims) must keep on apologizing and apologizing for the violent manifestations of their religion. If anti-Jewish hatred weren't so resilient within the broad confines of Christianity, if Christians were more objective about the innate and insidious anti-Jewish nature of the New Testament, we wouldn't be having this discussion. But here we are, discussing an anti-Jewish bishop (or whatever the hell Williamson is) and the words of a pope who was once an Hitler Youth. Words cannot express how astonished I am by all this.
"Who has read all of Augustine?"
"The Holy Father has a penchant for saying (without a lot of explanation)that somehow the holocaust was due to a vague pagan force."
Such exculpatory apologia actually makes me sick to my stomach.
"End of discussion"?? Is this a bull from Rome?
RE use of the term Holy Father. I have no problems with someone using that on my website. I understand fully. This the term they use. Why should I even think that they not use that term or be insulted if they do?
In Jewish circles, some people I know refer to Rabbi Joseph B. Soloveitchik as The Rav [THE Rabbi par excellence]. Some say Rabbi Soloveitchik which is often an indication that for them he was not THE Rav.
I think it is important to treat each other with respect.
Dear Mr. Hockey Hound,
I'll address your most recent points one by one.
1.) If there are Jews who object to my referring to Joseph Ratzinger as "The Holy Father" I will refer to him in the future as "The Pope", or "The Bishop of Rome".
2.) You asked with some probity "If you are convinced that Christian anti-Jewish hatred was "the nuturing force," then why are you still a Christian?"
The answer is that I believe in Jesus nonetheless, and I find the Roman Catholic Church the best representation of his teachings.
3.) You asked "How can you follow and apologize for a religion that has caused the Jewish people so much suffering and atrocious loss?"
Protestants have suffered my people too. This takes a much longer and reflective discussion. However I will try and make it short.
My answer is that I don't think that any other religion which has wobbled through history has done a better job. Where you have examples of religions that have lived up to a sort of medical credo of "first do not harm" you find a religion that has been quietistic and less ambitious in it's willingness to take on the responsibilities of politics and culture. I'm thinking of Buddhism or Confucianism both of which have less blood scarred records, but each of which while deeply influencing the culture and politics around them for good, have shrunken from wholeheartedly attempting to build a whole civilization.
With great ambitions come great problems, at least where humans are concerned. And great tragedies.
I do think that were Judaism given the scope and safety to build a civilization she would be equally ambitious in defining an entire culture. Her record in doing so and not harming others has been better than Catholicism's.
4.) You asked. "Your pope was at one time a Hitler Youth. Does that fact of history now cause you any measure of shame or embarrassment?
No, I am not ashamed. He was fourteen years old at the time. Almost everyone at fourteen was a Hitler Youth.
5.) You asked. "Are you aware of the fact that some Hitler Youth actually took part in murdering Jews?"
Yes.
6.) You went on to say, along with other things, ".....if Christians were more objective about the innate and insidious anti-Jewish nature of the New Testament, we wouldn't be having this discussion."
This is a larger topic which can hardly operate within the confines of a blog, however learned this blog is. However I'll touch on a couple of things.
In the Gospel of St. John, a Jewish Christian writes to a Jewish Christian Community about the perfidious nature of their fellow Jews just about the time the CHristian Jews were thrown out of the regular Jewish Synagogues. The result is that in the Passion Narratve the term "Judaeos" as it is used in the demotic Greek is a semantic muddle.
I am told that you can never really tell when the Jewish Evangelist's acid remarks about "the Jews" refer to all Jews, or Jewish leaders or just non-Christians, since at the time most Jews were Christians.
By and large, beautiful as it is I understand that the text hundreds of years later, in a completely different historical context, the Johannine text became THE TEXT for justifying anti-Semitism.
The actual intent, at the time of it's writing, was I believe, while polemical, much different than its final use.
THis touches on the subject of hermeneutics and the way a text is read differently at different periods. The text in fact absorbs the historical circumstances at the margins until the entire text "moves" as it were. Recovering the original meaning is a job for scholars and experts of which I am not one.
I go into this only to say that the roots of anti-Semitism as you find it in the New Testement is a long long discussion that requires more technical abilities and education than I have.
I am, however, aware of the problems.
You may have the qualifications to treat this in more detail. Have a go at it.
7.) Here's a question you keep asking of which I don't get your meaning. You ask, "Who has read all of Augustine?"
Not me. But I guess you may be pointing to the fact that those who have read all the writings of The Bishop of Hippo, (I promise not to call him SAINT Augustine) know that he said, by the by, some pretty nutty stuff, much of it about free will and predestination.
8.) You remarked that my comment on the Pope's connecting Nazism to godlessness or paganism was a species of that "exculpatory apologia (which) actually makes me sick to my stomach."
Sorry about that.
9. Your last comment was ""End of discussion"?? Is this a bull from Rome?
No.
Best Wishes on Super Bowl Sunday
"In the Gospel of St. John, a Jewish Christian writes to a Jewish Christian Community about the perfidious nature of their fellow Jews just about the time the CHristian Jews were thrown out of the regular Jewish Synagogues. The result is that in the Passion Narratve the term "Judaeos" as it is used in the demotic Greek is a semantic muddle."
Cavil will enter at any hole. Obviously, this discussion is going nowhere.
You may impose upon Prof. Lipstadt and she consents, but you don't fool me. I was formerly a Christian: I know when you are throwing your religion around like a wild left hook even if she doesn't. If you had any respect for Prof. Lipstadt's Jewishness, you would not have used the term "the Holy Father." The use of such a term on an open blog is blatently arrogant. If you possessed any measure of humility, you would perceive your fault. But, as is the custom of many Christians and Muslims, you are not ashamed of your religious bullying.
Yeah, this discussion is over.
German Jews Break Ties with Vatican Over Holocaust Denier
Shevat 5, 5769, 30 January 09 10:12by Hana Levi Julian(IsraelNN.com) The Central Council of Jews in Germany was the latest in a march of national and international Jewish umbrella organizations to announce it would sever ties with the Church over the matter on Thursday.
Tensions have continued to mount between Jewish communities around the world and the Catholic Church over the Holy See's rehabilitation of a bishop who denied the wholesale slaughter of Jews during the Holocaust.
Last Saturday Pope Benedict XVI lifted an excommunication ban against Bishop Richard Williamson, who has repeatedly insisted that the Nazi gas chambers did not exist and that no more than 300,000 Jews were killed during World War II, and those mostly due to starvation.
Charlotte Knobloch, president of the Council of Jews, told Germany's Rheinische Post newspaper in an interview published Thursday, "Under these conditions, there will certainly be no talks between myself and the Church for the time being – I stress the words 'for the time being.' "
Knobloch called for a general boycott against the Catholic Church in response to the removal of Bishop Williamson's excommunication. "I would like an outcry in the church against such actions from the pope," she urged.
Israel's Chief Rabbinate broke its ties with the Vatican on Tuesday to protest the decision to reinstate the bishop. Rabbinate Director-General Oded Weiner wrote a letter to the Holy See Commission for Religious Relations with the Jews explaining the decision. "Without an official apology and recanting, it will be difficult to continue the dialogue," he said.
The Rabbinate, whose ties with the Vatican are considered separate from those of the State of Israel, also cancelled a meeting with the Holy See that was set for March. The Israeli government has not made any changes in its relationship with the Vatican thus far.
Pope Benedict XVI responded to the letter Wednesday by saying he feels "full and indisputable solidarity" with Jews and said it was forbidden to deny the horror of the Nazi genocide. A Vatican spokesman had said earlier that Williamson's views "which are open to criticism" were irrelevant to the lifting of the ban.
Israel's Ambassador to the Vatican, Mordechai Lewy, warned in an interview with the Reuters news agency, however, that the Vatican's "eagerness to bring a Holocaust denier back into the Church will cast a shadow on relations between Jews and the Catholic Church."
Williamson has claimed in the past that the Jews are plotting to take over the world, and that the U.S. and Israel both planned the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center, the Pentagon and the attempt on the White House.
The Holocaust denier was one of four bishops who were banned in 1988 for taking on the clerical office against the wishes of then-Pope John Paul II.
Williamson said in a 1989 sermon in Sherbrooke, Canada, "The Jews created the Holocaust so we would prostrate ourselves on our knees before them and approve of their new State of Israel… As Catholics have grown over the centuries weaker and weaker in the faith, especially since Vatican II, so the Jews have come closer and closer to fulfilling their substitute-Messianic drive towards world dominion," he declared.
www.IsraelNationalNews.com©
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