Posted on 02/04/2009 4:16:31 PM PST by DeepThought42
Responding to global outrage, especially in Pope Benedict XVI’s native Germany, the Vatican for the first time on Wednesday called on a recently rehabilitated bishop to take back his statements denying the Holocaust.
Late last month, the pope revoked the excommunication of four schismatic bishops, including British-born Richard Williamson, who in an interview broadcast last month denied the existence of the Nazi gas chambers.
A statement issued on Wednesday by the Vatican Secretariat of State said that Bishop Williamson “must absolutely, unequivocally and publicly distance himself from his positions on the Shoah,” or Holocaust, which it said were “unknown to the Holy Father at the time he revoked the excommunication.”
The unsigned statement seemed a clear indication that the Vatican was facing an internal and external political crisis.
(Excerpt) Read more at nytimes.com ...
Williamson IS a bishop. But he is a suspended bishop.
Fine, but my question was not where you are today but rather - were you poorly formed or were you not listening since you obviously can not figure out what has happened: the offices that these men have received have had a sanction removed. However, they remain personally suspended and most certainly have not been rehabilitated.
So what is the beef? They are suspended and have not been welcomed back into the fold What is there to be ashamed of? They will have to renounce much to be brought back to the fold.
Detraction of others is usually fueled by an outraged conscience of one’s own; when the guilt is purged, so is the indignation.
While I do not agree with the statements this man said, he personally has a right to believe whatever he does that is not ex cathedra, just as we can choose to believe or not in Fatima, Lourdes, and any other matter that is not dogma of the church.
You may not like it, but the popes authority ends at declaring on faith and morals within and regarding the deposit of faith, not opinions. While he can excommunicate someone for opposing church teaching,(ie Pelosi, Kennedy supporting abortion) he cannot excommunicate or reprimand those who do not agree with things like apparitions, or other opinions that do not disagree with church dogma.
While the Holocaust was indeed horrible, and even one person being murdered at the hands of the Nazi’s was appalling, so too is the Holocaust of the innocents condoned by the same people who decry the Jewish Holocaust, yet here, they are not only silent, but in support of it through voting for people who will expand it in large numbers. FYI, this bishop has NOT been brought back into the fold as a bishop, but as a catholic man with no power in the church. He is not the leader of a flock anymore, just catholic. If there can be “catholics for choice, catholics for women priests, and catholics for gay marriage, surely there is room for a catholic who denies the Holocaust was 6 million, hmmm?
Detraction of others is usually fueled by an outraged conscience of one's own; when the guilt is purged, so is the indignation
I hope I read you right on this sentence. I have thought it through carefully.
I stand corrected but I relate it to the case of David Irving, a historian. Irving served ten months in an Austrian prison in 2006. Besides revising the figures of six million dead downward, he was accused of "glorifying the NAZI party. He was ill advised to visit Austria.
Irving was only seven years old, when the war ended. He was in England throughout the war. I believe that it was 30,000 Jews who were identified in Austria and sent out on railway trains. A large number perished.
Simply put, it was the Austrians who were responsible, not Irving or his country. We now know the British were the losers after all, in WW2. Losers in what that country is today.
You know, even though I was pretty unimpressed with your original comment, I am glad that you are honorable enough to abstain from Communion while not in a state of grace, a concept too many Catholics fail to grasp. I'll remember you in my prayers, and hope you will look into this situation more carefully before you malign the Pope. The loudest Catholic voices against him are those who are the most liberal and the most radical and the most dangerous to the Faith. That should tell you all you need to know. They were waiting for a moment like this.
???
I don’t have a dog in the legal fight over David Irving, although I do think it’s remarkable how few defenders of free thought were willing to stick to their principles in his defence.
Freedom for the right kinds of free thought, in the end. Maybe the ACLU could publish a list of authors it won’t defend—some sort of Index, maybe...
I liked your sentence.
A fair point regarding the thoughtcrime laws of Austria and Germany; not that I was thinking of them at that moment.
My apologies in using it to illustrate thought crime, which exists in the very countries- Austria and Germany. Countries which brought us to the very fact of the holocaust.
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