In what has been described as an unusally personal statement, the Pope has apologized for the Vatican's handling of the Williamson matter.
And for those who need a reminder of both the lies Williamson has spread and of the fact of just how much information about him was available, see all these collections of videos.
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Dr. Lipstadt,
The full text in a rough translation is available:
http://www.newliturgicalmovement.org/2009/03/papal-letter-about-lifting-of-sspx.html
Two quotes from the text seem pertinent to the debates carried out here.
1.) "That the Fraternity of Saint Pius X does not possess a canonical position in the Church is not based ultimately on disciplinary grounds but on doctrinal ones. As long as the Fraternity does not possess a canonical position in the Church, its officials do not exercise legitimate offices in the Church. One has therefore to distinguish between disciplinary level affecting the persons as persons, and the level of doctrine, at which office and institution are concerned. To say it once again: As long as the doctrinal issues are not resolved, the Fraternity has no canonical status in the Church and its ministers, even if they are free from ecclesiastical censure, do not exercise in a legitimate way any ministry in the Church."
In other words they are not now nor were they ever "re-instated".
2.)"Even more therefore I thank the Jewish friends who have helped to quickly clear away the misunderstanding and to restore the atmosphere of friendship and trust, which - as in the time of Pope John Paul II - also during the entire time of my pontificate had existed and God be praised continues to exist."
In other words, "I'm Pope but my best friends in this mess have been Jews, not my fellow Bishops."
Let it be known that nobody ever apologised for these statements and that I was just recently haunted off Harper Collin's Authonomy site (where I was with a ROMANTIC novel that plays in Portugal) as a hoax and a fraud.
You never even checked ionto 'Rachel Sarai's Vineyard', Ms Lipstadt, but you do allow S. Sergeant to accuse me of being a liar and deciding that the betrayal of my biological mother (yes, I have been in touch with the family and they acknowledge me as one of theirs)is the crux of the book. Sergeant also claims that the 'real' story is much nicer ... that's the one my half-brother told her, about a period he wasn't even there! Speaking about justice: the Pope is not better nor worse. Where were you when they crucified me, Deborah Lipstadt?
copy of comments:
dan said...
Some background on other books and backstories that got shot down later.
"Well, this is a blog entry I never thought I would be making, but I guess you never can tell. As you may have seen elsewhere, we along with Deborah Rey have decided to withdraw ‘Rachel Sarai’s Vineyard’ from sale. This hasn’t been what you would call an easy decision, and in a lot of ways it sickens me that it has come to this. Since the book was first announced last year, it seems to have become a target for all sorts of people intent on proving that it is a hoax, that Deborah is a liar. This wasn’t exactly unexpected given the subject matter, but in February, petrol was well and truly thrown onto the fire when it became known that Misha Defonseca’s ‘memoir’ was in reality a work of fantasy. Whilst as a book, it was nothing like Deborah’s, it did involve a young girl doing something extraordinary during the war, and because of this people put two and two together, got the answer wrong and Deborah, and Rachel Sarai’s Vineyard were on trial again. Guilty until proven innocent. Moving forward things got more complicated. Sharon Sergeant, a lady who was involved in uncovering the Defonseca hoax got in touch describing Deborah as a ‘Defonseca copyist’, and told us that Deborah was in fact the former radio star Dody Cowan. The latter part, at least, was true, and despite previously choosing not to do so, Deborah confirmed this on her blog. Did this come as a surprise? No, of course not. Deborah has chosen a pen name and we had respected her privacy. Did it have a major effect? No, I think the world simply yawned. It was hardly news. A while after this, we received a letter from Deborah’s brother, who strenuously disputed parts of the book, mainly centring on the family aspects, though at the same time confirming in general terms that Deborah and her family were indeed involved in the Dutch resistance during World War Two. Admittedly whilst arguing over some of the details. This proved to be the final straw for Deborah after many months of ceaseless anonymous attacks, and as both she and we couldn’t see that there would ever be an end to it all the decision was made that Rachel Sarai’s Vineyard would be withdrawn, and now it has been. I guess at this point, the obvious question we will hear is ‘was it a hoax?’ but as I’ve said many times, we have received evidence of Deborah’s work during the war, and now have heard from her brother who is perhaps the only surviving witness to part of what happened at that time, and he has confirmed that they were there and that their family indeed did do resistance work. I hope that this will bury that rumour once and for all. As I say, between her brother’s account and Deborah’s, there are conflicts on the detail, but I’m sure there always is between two witnesses of anything. Overall, I can only say that the book has been withdrawn not because it is wrong, flawed or fantasy, but because one lady who had already been through more as a child than anybody ever should have to, has continued to be attacked as she reached her seventieth birthday, and quite simply couldn’t see an end to it. Neither can we. As part of the withdrawal then, we will be contacting everybody that purchased a copy of RSV direct, offering a refund. To go with this, Deborah has written a note, which I reproduce below, and sums up how we all feel about this. I’d also ask that if anybody has queries, to contact us at bluechrome rather than Deborah, I think the lady has already had enough to deal with. Guilty Until Proven Innocent?
It seems to be so, but since I feel there is nothing more to prove and refuse to yield to the Fascist tactics of a few fanatics, I want to make it very clear to those who have bought Rachel Sarai's Vineyard and read it, and also to those who haven't read it and won't, that it is a book about me, about my life during the war and my relationship with the person I called Mother until the day of her funeral, and the one person who gave me unadulterated love during the first nearly seven years of my life.
It tells of things I actually lived and of things I have been told, and there is not one instance where I 'thumb-sucked' the story.
I am being called a liar. I am not and I cannot tell you how much it saddens me to, together with bluechrome publishing, have to come to this decision.
It is better like this, because they will not stop. The smell of the almighty dollar is so strong, that they will not shy back from a form of literary rape, yet another betrayal and constant harassment.
It is better like this. One should not set a young fish free in polluted water."
-- Deborah Rey
June 2008
http://bluechromeblog.blogspot.com/2008/06/rachel-sarais-vineyard-cancelled.html
November 12, 2008 9:58 PM
AncestralManor said...
The crux of the Rachel Sarai's Vineyard story was that her wicked stepmother turned her real Jewish mother into the Nazis. However, author Deborah Rey (Dorothy Koenig by birth, Dody Cowan in her first marriage) has an older brother Rob Koenig who offered to take a DNA test to determine if his mother (the purported stepmother) was also the author's real mother. Thus the continued refrain of "conflicts on the detail" and "harrassment" is also not historically accurate.
"...those who need a reminder of both the lies Williamson has spread and of the fact of just how much information about him was available..."
Some need a reminder of the fact that anti-Jewish hatred has always been, from its very inception, a main ingredient of Christian doctrine. Therefore it's perfectly acceptable to be a Christian and at the same time an anti-Semite. The existence of Williamson and his anti-Jewish sentiment and "beliefs", an existence many in the hierarchy of the Catholic Church were cognizant of, did not really cause a stir until recently, for whatever reason, but mostly because it refects bad on a Pope which was at one time an Hitler Youth (another segment of history that really didn't ruffle any feathers in the Catholic Church pecking order or the laity).
This Church, with its repugnant god-business, is so capsulized by sophisms and morbid sainthoods as to nurture stupidities and asinine, shameless obsequiousness as have been exampled by certain submissions to this blog. And these submissions are nothing more than justifications of this same shameless obsequiousness and its propagation; submissions that will not in any measure assist in the eradication of anti-Jewish hatred but only cloak that hatred with religious sounding, and therefore repugnant, apology.
These submissions have nothing to do with confronting anti-Jewish hatred and everything to do with cloaking the malevolency of evident New Testament anti-Jewish hatred with "ecumenical" (a term which within the context of Pauline doctrine is obvious mendacity) scoria, even to the absurd extent of blaming the very Catholics who foment anti-Jewish hatred yet justifying their existence within the Catholic Church from which they emerge.
Please, can we be done with all this provocative and apologetic subterfuge?
"If one wants an intellectual life one must lift up one's eyes and see the covenant, worth more than the cow pens of Lot's vision." -Avi Erlich, from Ancient Zionism
ROME, February 11, 2009 (LifeSiteNews.com) – The dissident, leftist movement in the Catholic Church over the last forty years has severely undermined the teaching of the Catholic Church on the moral teachings on life and family, a prominent US Orthodox rabbi told LifeSiteNews.com. Rabbi Yehuda Levin, the head of a group of 800 Orthodox rabbis in the US and Canada, also dismissed the accusations that the Holy See had not sufficiently distanced itself from the comments made by Bishop Richard Williamson of the Society of St. Pius X (SSPX) on the Holocaust.
"I support this move" to reconcile the traditionalist faction in the Church, he said, "because I understand the big picture, which is that the Catholic Church has a problem. There is a strong left wing of the Church that is doing immeasurable harm to the faith."
Rabbi Levin said that he understands "perfectly" why the reconciliation is vital to the fight against abortion and the homosexualist movement.
"I understand that it is very important to fill the pews of the Catholic Church not with cultural Catholics and left-wingers who are helping to destroy the Catholic Church and corrupt the values of the Catholic Church." This corruption, he said, "has a trickle-down effect to every single religious community in the world."
"What’s the Pope doing? He’s trying to bring the traditionalists back in because they have a lot of very important things to contribute the commonweal of Catholicism.
In Bishop Richard Williamson's interview on Swedish TV he simply said that evidence "is hugely against 6 million Jews being deliberately gassed." He also claimed that at most 300,000 Jews were killed, "but not one of them by gassing in a gas chamber."
How are these claims evidence of Bishop Williamson being "anti-Semitic?" How are his doubts about The Holocaust evidence that he is displaying "hostility toward or discrimination against Jews"(partial definition of "anti-Semitism")?
Why, when someone expresses doubts about The Holocaust, are there so many knee-jerk ad hominem attacks against the doubter? Don't we owe it to this gentleman to explain what evidence has led him to his conclusions?
If Bishop Williamson is so obviously wrong in his conclusions then simply present the evidence in an argument that will clearly demonstrate that he is wrong.
Or are there some claims that all are just supposed to accept as self-evident facts? If so, why?
A good book you should read, Mr. Mann, is History On Trial, the story of Prof. Lipstadt's battle with Holocaust-denier David Irving. As for Bishop Williamson being anti-Semitic, and regarding the knee-jerk reactions of people like me, I can verify for your benefit that all Holocaust deniers I've come up against have, without exception, been anti-Jewish biggots and pseudo-historians. The numbers speak for themselves. If you want to believe otherwise, go right ahead. Personally, I think such assumptions are grossly imprudent.
Prof. Lipstadt, I apologize for the grammatical mistakes in my last post. My father passed away this past friday and so, consequently, I was rather distracted. He was an Irish-Canadian, pro-Israel, impious red-neck. He and my mother were fortunate enough to have had Jewish friends when they lived in Toronto long ago. Their lives were changed for the better because of those friendships. I can proudly say that an Israeli Jew stayed an entire weekend at my father's farm back in the 80s. (My youngest son is named after this Israeli Jew.) I know this has very little to do with this blog, but what the hell: if we can discuss the politics of Catholic bishopry dating back to the days of Ambrose and Bernard, then we can mention an old Irish-Canadian who taught me the finer points of defending the Jewish people and the Israel that has become their sovereign homeland once again, no matter whether it offended the rest of the world or not.
Happy Shabbos from your fire-breathing, Irish-Canadian friend, Prof. Lipstadt.
Sincerely, Hockey Hound
Actually it was noted last year year in The Catholic Herald, a British newspaper, that Bishop Williamson had publically endorsed the Protocols of the Elders of Zion and claimed that world Jewery was engaged in an enterprise "to prepare the Anti-Christ's throne in Jerusalem".
The article can be found here.
The man was on record as an anti-Semite before his views on the Shoah became known as well.
No ones ever claimed that 6 million Jews were gassed, the correct number is in the region of 2.5 million people, being Jews and non-Jews who were gassed in the camps [how I hate the word 'gassed', it seems to suggest that the unfortuanates concerned were given an general anesthetic] Another one million Jews and non-Jews were shot, and there bodies hidden from public view by being thrown into mass graves, a further 500 000 detainees succumbed in various ways with gross starvation being the underlying cause of death, and about one million simply dissapeared presumed dead, killed, liquidated [read murdered] or displaced. The total Jewish death toll was in the region of 5 million dead, some claim 4.5 million, whilst others claim 6 million died. Williamson, an Catholic Priest disputes these figures. A priests office holds certain responsibilities with regards to 'discovering the truth, spreading the truth and educating sinners, fools and the gullible, nor must he openly consort with racists and hatemongers'. The furore is over the fact that he spoke nonsense with a certain amount of conviction and failed to 'ask advice from those better informed [than himself] of what went on during WW2 in Europe. It was always open to him to send a routine [students enquiry] on the Holocaust death toll figures to the Yad Vashem Museum in Israel, to any Rabbi or Synagogue, or to the Vatican itself, or Wilkpedia. All these sources would have provided authoritive answers. At all material times as an acting Priest of the Catholic church, it was his duty to check his facts'. He claims no one was gassed and immediately exposes himself as an Fool. People of his ilk should not hold public office, so he was dismissed. For whats it's worth the 'Vatican Press office' will confirm for him that thousands of Italian Jews were deported, gassed and murdered during the Holocaust.
Mike Mann:
Not all antisemites are Holocaust deniers.
BUT-
All Holocaust Deniers - every single one of them - is an antisemite.
But you knew that.
And still more fallout from the Williamson affair: Israeli T.V. protests Williamson's denial with comic skit depicting Jesus as too fat too walk on water. The Blessed Virgin is depicted as a teen knocked up by school chum.
http://mpelembe.blogware.com/blog/_archives/2009/2/23/4102133.html
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