Holy Father, even your own people don't understand
JUST IN FROM AP:
VATICAN CITY – The Vatican on Wednesday demanded that a prelate who denied the Holocaust recant his positions before being fully admitted as a bishop into the Roman Catholic Church.
It also said Pope Benedict XVI had not known about Bishop Richard Williamson's views when he agreed to lift his excommunication and that of three other ultraconservative bishops Jan. 21.
The Vatican's Secretariat of State issued the statement a day after German Chancellor Angela Merkel urged the pope to make a clearer rejection of Holocaust denials, saying there had not been adequate clarification from the church.
They were understandably so proud in Germany four years ago, when Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger was elected the first Bavarian pope in history. From the Rhineland, and across the Prussian heartland, cries went out in jubilant refrain: “We are the pope!” This week, however, German chancellor Angela Merkel has added her voice to a growing, dismayed chorus, rebuking him for his decision to recall an excommunicated, Holocaust-denying bishop to his robes and office. A leading German bishop has called for the pope to resign.
As discussed at some length in this space, Pope Benedict XVI has inexplicably reinstated four anti-conciliation bishops, including the particularly onerous Bishop Richard Williamson, British-born and completely smitten with the notion that there was never a genocide of European Jewry and, specifically, that there is no evidence of the Nazi gas chambers.
Obviously, this is a highly-charged and bitter situation for the Jewish community, most emphatically the still thousands of survivors worldwide whose old age is now formally cursed with a sanction of the most heinous denial in history. But the moral outrage about the Pope’s decision is now hardly confined to the Jewish world—it has evidently offended and wounded German society in general.
The Pope will not step down. Pray he will step up.
Reuters reports: “Prominent Catholics, politicians and newspaper commentators in Joseph Ratzinger's homeland are pulling no punches in their criticism of his lifting of the excommunications of four bishops, including one who denies the extent of the Holocaust.” (Madeline Chambers, 2/3/09)
Statements from prominent lawmakers, scholars, and editorialists include terms such as “great damage on Germany,” “correct and reverse the mistake,” and “Please—not this!” Again, this is a spiritual crisis being experienced and expressed with great lamentations and significant anger not by the Jews exclusively. The denunciations and calls for reversal are vivid, emotional, and derived in Christian terms.
It must be noted that Holocaust denial is a crime in Germany. Neo-Nazi websites and societies are having a field day with the Williamson debacle—all brought on by a pope who has also incited the sensibilities of Protestants and Muslims with a series of provocative statements since taking office.
Cardinal Karl Lehmann, the former chair of Germany's Catholic bishops' conference and head of Germany's 26 million Catholics, has described the affair as a “catastrophe.” Various theologians claim it has exposed flaws in the pope's detached governing style. Unflattering comparisons have been made to the pope’s predecessor, John Paul II, whose warmth and humor and ecumenism roused his native Poland.
"It's an unforgivable mistake,” summarized Cardinal Lehmann. Perhaps the Holy Father should summon a bit of the collective courage of the German people—so many of whom have truly embraced their ghastly past—and make amends with the Jews, with his native land, and with his own soul.
The Pope will not step down. Pray he will step up.
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