Saturday, February 21, 2009

Bishop Williamson's Long Track Record of Offensive Statements

According to Michael Paulson writing in the Boston Globe Williamson has been teaching antisemtism and misogyny since the 1980s. Two young seminarians encountered him when they enrolled in a small schismatic seminary in Connecticut. It was the kind of place where Mass was in Latin and modernity the enemy.

One of their teachers was Williamson who they found to be "an unabashed anti-Semite who was dismissive of the Holocaust and hostile to women."

[...]

"I have a sizable nose, and he would say to me, 'Rizzo, are you baptized, or are you a Jew?' " John Rizzo, who is now based in New Zealand, said in a phone interview from Australia. "There was another seminarian named Oppenheimer, and he would say: 'Oppenheimer, I don't like your name. If you keep it up, there's a gas chamber waiting for you at the boathouse.' "

[...]

"He called the Holocaust the biggest theatrics known to mankind - I remember sitting in a conference one time when he said those words, ...said Joseph Rizzo.

"I walked around the lake with him, and I said, 'Why would you say that?' and he said, 'There's no documentation.' He said it was all staged, and when I asked why, he said because the Jews own the country, they own the banks, and he felt it was some kind of effort to generate some sympathy toward them."

[...]

In 1989, the Royal Canadian Mounted Police investigated the bishop, but did not press charges, after he told an audience in Quebec: "There was not one Jew killed in the gas chamber. It was all lies, lies, lies." He has also questioned whether terrorists were behind the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks and has suggested that women should not wear pants.

4 comments:

Bron said...

Have you heard?

http://www.smh.com.au/world/argentina-expels-holocaustdenying-bishop-20090220-8dmd.html

MACNEALON said...

Dr. Lipstadt:

As I told you before -with my personal and direct knowledge- Williamson is repeating "revisionists" that he had read before.

But in Argentina, we have "heavy" anti-semitic groups, that have no relation with Williamson.

When State decides to kick him out of Argentina, is hidding the other anti-semitic dangerous groups.

Hezbolah: 1) is formally present here; 2) have militants; 3) show yellow flag with their guns; 4) speak about Gaza´s genocide.

Some left wingers support, sometimes with violence, that dangerous group.

M.C.

hockey hound said...

It wasn't just one Holocaust-denying Bishop – it's the entire group:

Report: Vatican readmits society that propagates anti-Semitism
By Cnaan Liphshiz, Haaretz Correspondent

In lifting the excommunication of Bishop Richard Williamson who has been accused of Holocaust denial last month, the Catholic Church also readmitted a priestly society that openly propagates virulent anti-Semitism, according to a probe by a Belgian Jewish newspaper.

The Roman Catholic Church excommunicated The Society of St. Pius X in 1988 along with Williamson and three other member priests, declaring their consecrations were "unlawful" and "schismatic."

In January of this year the Vatican lifted the excommunication. On the same day, a Swedish television station aired an interview with Williamson in which he denied the existence of gas chambers during the Holocaust.

In a research performed after the readmittance, a team of journalists from Joods Actueel, an Antwerp-based Jewish news publication, found what they describe as "a slew of anti-Semitic content" on the society's Web sites in five languages.

The probe whose results were made public on Thursday, found that the society's official U.S. Web site described Jews as "the enemy of man, whose secret weapon is the leaven of the Pharisees which is hypocrisy," adding that "heads of Jewry have for centuries conspired methodically and out of an undying hatred against the Catholic name."

The South African site said that "Jews have come closer and closer to fulfilling their substitute-Messianic drive towards world dominion." The Irish site asks whether "the Jews are guilty of Deicide," answering: "We must say yes."

The site from Germany, a country with strict limitations on anti-Semitic speech, clarifies that "contemporary Jews are for sure guilty of the murder of God, as long as they don't recognize Christ as God."

The Belgian site accuses Jews of "still believing they are the chosen people" while "awaiting world domination." The Austrian site warns that the Jewish organization B'nai Brith is "found everywhere" and "commands the entire world."

Michael Freilich, editor-in-chief of Joods Actueel, told Haaretz that anti-Semitic content was being pulled offline even as the team of four journalists were documenting and saving the material ? which Haaretz obtained from Joods Actueel.

Noting that The Society of St. Pius X is believed to have between 6,00,000 and a million followers, Frielich said: "Williamson's Holocaust denial has attracted much attention, but this anti-Semitic content is in many ways worse because he is a lone fool and not taken seriously by the masses, whereas here we are talking about an entire society spreading hatred around the world."

Freilich added that "while Williamson's lies negate the past, what we have uncovered here is preaching of lies and hate against Jews today."

The Society of St. Pius X was founded in 1970 by French Archbishop Marcel Lefebvre.

Experts on the Catholic Church such as Dirk Verhofstadt - brother of the former Belgian prime minister - have said that in addition to expressing these positions on Jews, society members have also disavows the Nostra Aetate - a document whereby the Church says Jews were not responsible for the death of Christ.

StGuyFawkes said...

Dr. Lipstadt gave a thumbnail sketch of an SSPX seminary when she wrote, "It was the kind of place where Mass was in Latin and modernity the enemy."

I would like to offer this reflection.

The old Tridentine Latin Mass, save for the Good Friday prayer for Jewish Conversion, is neither modern nor anti-Modern. Factually it is neither liberal nor conservative. The liturgical use of Latin should be no more politically charged than the use of Hebrew in a Reform Synagogue.

Nor should the use of the Tridentine Mass mark off a seminary as reactionary.

Nonetheless, Deborah Lipstadt has backed into an important point when she associates Latin with political reaction. .

The problem with the SSPX is that they appropriated that liturgy and made it a flag of sorts for a hundred other reactionary views.

A subtle part of Benedict XVI politics is to recapture the flag so to speak. He realizes that after Vatican II the traditional Mass fell into desuetude except in SSPX chapels and in the handful of officially installed "indult" Masses which the Vatican endorsed for the old folks who never got used to the new Novus Ordo Mass of Paul VI.

Benedict wants that Mass back for regular Catholics. He realizes that it represents a priceless spiritual treasure and in being separated from the life of ordinary Catholics it cuts them off from their traditions and history.

The schism is a schism in more than one dimension. The SSPX has a piece of the Roman West's spiritual patrimony and Benedict wants it back front and center in the life of the West -- but shorn of all the politics. Otherwise the schism is a schism between the Church’s past and future.

Here is the one big thing no one is seeing, but the Pope sees very clearly.

After the 1988 schism the popes allowed other -- less political -- Latin Mass orders to flourish. Currently, there are the FSSP, the Opus Mariae order, the ICCR and many more new orders who practice traditional Catholicism without any views at all about Vichy, women wearing pants, or the role of Jews in a Christian order.

Yet most of the parishioners in SSPX chapels got there primarily out of a choice of worship style which resulted in their being prey to the peculiar preaching obsessions of the SSPX. And they are in a rut.

With the development of the other traditional orders, and the lifting of the ban on the traditional Mass by the encyclical SUMMORUM PONTIFICORUM, there is really no reason for the SSPX to exist!

Remove the excommunication and regularize the order and in a funny way “poof" the SSPX loses their "raison d'etre". They lose their rationale. Ending the schism may end them.

Now it is a little more difficult than that to be sure! There is a danger that the SSPX will become the go-to hole for every ultra-right element in the Catholic Church. But I doubt it.

They were only established with one "charism" that I can see and that was to hold out with ancient worship forms until Rome changed.

Rome has changed on the Latin. Does the SSXP have any reason to continue its mission?

Maybe they do and maybe what’s left of their mission will be anti-Semitism. We will find out soon enough. But my guess is that they are going to slowly dissolve as their members find they can get everything they want (without the noxious politics) in any number of places within the Church.

Or maybe the SSPX will change internally and maintain tradition while dropping Paul Touvier at the Prefecture de Police.

Few of this blogs readers understand that isolated and in schism the SSPX is a resistance culture like polygamist Mormans. As they associate with regular Catholics (and Jews) the odor of foul ideologies will breeze away.

I could be wrong but I bet that's what will happen.

And if you want to know the reason I think they will change I will give it to you now.

Google SSPX and you will find that there is a dating service called “SSPX Singles”. DIG THAT!!! These guys were getting used to the idea of letting their children only date other SSPX members. That will all change when they are regularized. When Francis X. starts dating Mary Theresa from another traditionalist family not in the SSPX, then Francis will find he’s dating a girl who wears pants and who could give a darn about how misunderstood was Marshall Petain.

That will changes everything. And that is why ending he schism is necessary and wise.