Posted on 03/10/2008 11:15:44 AM PDT by NYer
A senior bishop of the Lefebvrist Society of St Pius X (SSPX) has endorsed the Protocols of the Elders of Zion, a notorious anti-Semitic forgery that enjoys widespread currency in neo-Nazi circles.Someone should invite him to Austria or Germany to give such a talk about Jews. He'd go to prison. One can't just dismiss this guy as 'crazy', he's about as vile as it gets. He took the wrong career path, he would have made a great mullah. His views of Jews and women would fit right in.
Richard Williamson, one of four bishops ordained by Archbishop Marcel Lefebvre, told The Catholic Herald that the document - which supposedly reveals a Jewish plot to dominate the world - was authentic.
He is also on record as saying that the Jews are fighting for world domination "to prepare the Anti-Christ's throne in Jerusalem". The SSPX has refused to condemn English-born Bishop Williamson and says it has "no policy" on the authenticity of the Protocols, a Russian Czarist forgery that has been described as "a manual in Hitler's war to exterminate the Jews".
The Society's support for Williamson - who also believes that the Americans planned 9/11 - is likely to end any chance of full reconciliation between the SSPX and Rome.
...
Williamson, 67, who was excommunicated along with Archbishop Lefebvre and now runs an SSPX seminary in Argentina, is a cult figure among ultra-Right seminarians. Some of his former students have posted video tributes to him on YouTube, in which he expounds his conspiracy theories.
In 2000 Williamson endorsed the Protocols on an official SSPX website. He wrote: "God put into men's hands the Protocols of the Sages of Sion... if men want to know the truth, but few do."
The SSPX's support for Williamson comes at a time when Pope Benedict has extended an olive branch to the breakaway traditionalists in the form of a liberalisation of the pre-Vatican II traditional form of the Mass.
Bizarrely, Williamson last week implied that the Pope was an anti-Semite because of the Pontiff's changes to the 1962 version of the Good Friday Prayer.
In an interview with the Herald, Williamson said that he himself was not an anti-Semite, but didn't like "adversaries of Our Lord Jesus Christ".
He said: "If Jews are adversaries of Our Lord Jesus Christ - obviously not all of them, but those that are - then I don't like them.
"My definition of anti-Semitism is to be against every single Jew purely because he's a Jew. That's not at all my case. I once had a Jewish rabbi come and speak to seminarians. Does that sound to you like anti-Semitism?"
Although Williamson's anti-Semitism has been an open secret in the traditionalist Catholic world for years, there will be widespread dismay at the willingness of the SSPX headquarters to defend his views.
The Rev Arnaud Sélégny, the general secretary of the SSPX General House in Menzingen, Switzerland, said Bishop Williamson would not prove an "obstacle in any reconciliation with the post-Conciliar Church" and that the Society was "sure to include Mgr Williamson if there was a reconciliation" because "everyone is allowed to have his opinion in the Society".
He also said that the Society did not have a policy on the Protocols of the Elders of Zion and that "the Society has no duty or ability to make a pronouncement" on the document's authenticity.
According to Fr Sélégny, reconciliation with Rome "as it is" is unlikely but he hoped that "one day Rome would rediscover its Catholic tradition". Williamson himself suggested that reconciliation between the Church and the Society was impossible, as there were two churches - "the religion of man and the religion of God".
He told the Herald: "The Second Vatican Council is the religion of man, of man put in the place of God. Deep down what it means is that it's a new religion, dressed up to look like the Catholic religion, but it's not the Catholic religion."
The Society of St Pius X, which was founded by Archbishop Lefebvre, broke with the Church when the archbishop illicitly ordained four bishops in 1988 against Pope John Paul II's express wishes. The bishops were excommunicated.
Williamson, who was educated at Winchester and Cambridge, is a former Anglican who became a Catholic in 1971. He was ordained priest at the Lefebvrist seminary at Ecône, Switzerland, in 1976.
He later became rector of the SSPX seminary in Winona, Minnesota. Since 2003 he has been rector of the Seminary of Our Lady Co-Redemptrix in La Reja, Argentina. In a YouTube video, Williamson is filmed arguing that the Twin Towers were not brought down by aeroplanes but by "demolition charges".
He has also condemned The Sound of Music as an immoral film because it "puts friendliness and fun in the place of authority".
The Protocols of the Elders of Zion presents a Jewish plot for world domination. The text claimed to be the secret minutes from a meeting of Jewish elders conspiring to take over the world through economic manipulation, controlling the media and stoking religious conflict. Used by Czarists and the Nazi Party, among others, the Protocols have carved out a huge new readership in the Arab Middle East, according to the US State Department's Global Anti-Semitism Report.
Ping
I used to post on some boards that were SSPX oriented. I stopped because their anti-Jewish attitude was worse than the anti-Catholic attitude on FR.
I may have my disagreements with Catholics, but I respect them. SSPX, however, is nothing more than a dangerous cult. They are to the RCC what the Moonies are to Calvinism.
He even has a problem with “The Sound of Music”, calling it “soul-rotting slush”.
http://www.sspx.ca/Documents/Bishop-Williamson/November7-1997.htm
1) Mr. Williamson's review of TSoM is soul-rotting slush.
2) I strongly recommend To the Last Salute, the wartime memoirs of one Georg von Trapp. The man was a hero.
Moonies are schismatic Calvinists?
One of my best friends is SSPX, I feel like throttling her sometimes. She has become a mean bigot and I’d cut her out of my life except I believe that I can be a good influence. They definitely have her brainwashed.
Thank you for posting this. I have previously noticed the radical left politics of the SSPX.
The political spectrum is actually a circle, the radical right and the radical left work together closely.
Thanks. I need this info.
I was at a traditionalist conference where this trash was being sold as if it were true.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Protocols_of_the_Elders_of_Zion
This is well beyond a couple of wacky beliefs. It’s out and out malice.
Unfortunately, this is the view of all too many extreme right Catholics who are so good and solid on so much else (including defense of the Jewish Scriptures).
But there is an important point here that most people miss. I have seen an Eastern Orthodox article that claims that the "chr*st" awaited by Fundamentalist Protestants is actually the "antichrist" because he will rule the world from Jerusalem. In other words, as John Hagee said, Fundamentalist Protestants (most of them, at any rate) do not believe the "first advent" was "messianic" at all. The "messianic" advent will be the "second advent" during which J*sus will allegedly rule the world literally from a throne in Jerusalem. This is in fact the literal message of the messianic prophecies of the TaNa"KH. Classical chr*stians insist that all messianic prophecy was fulfilled two thousand years ago "allegorically," with the church being "ingathered Israel" and the chr*stian era the "millenium."
In the greatest irony of all, it is this very belief in a future literal definitive messianic advent that liberal Jews most often invoke as the reason they reject Fundamentalist chr*stian support for Israel. The "fig leaf" is that "those people believe J*sus will return and convert all Jews to chr*stianity" (in other words, they believe in the eschatological vindication of their religion just as all orthodox religions do). The real reason is liberal Jews don't want a future literal messiah as described in messianic prophecy and would much rather he have come two thousand years ago where he won't interfere with their liberal plans for mankind's utopian future.
Thank you. That was informative. You wrote it more diplomatically than I could have.
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