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'I Will Not Travel to Auschwitz' (Interview with SSPX Bishop Richard Williamson)
Der Spiegel ^ | February 9, 2009

Posted on 02/11/2009 9:36:09 AM PST by NYer

Bishop Richard Williamson's denial of the Holocaust has done serious damage to the Catholic Church. In an e-mail and fax exchange with SPIEGEL, the ultra-conservative bishop says that he is willing to "review the historical evidence."

SPIEGEL: The Vatican is demanding that you retract your denial of the Holocaust, and it is threatening to not allow you to resume your activities as a bishop. How will you react?

Williamson: Throughout my life, I have always sought the truth. That is why I converted to Catholicism and became a priest. And now I can only say something, the truth of which I am convinced. Because I realize that there are many honest and intelligent people who think differently, I must now review the historical evidence once again. I said the same thing in my interview with Swedish television: Historical evidence is at issue, not emotions. And if I find this evidence, I will correct myself. But that will take time.

SPIEGEL: How can an educated Catholic deny the Holocaust?

Williamson: I addressed the subject in the 1980s. I had read various writings at the time. I cited the Leuchter report (eds. note: a debunked theory produced in the 1980s claiming erroneously that the Nazi gas chambers were technically impractical) in the interview, and it seemed plausible to me. Now I am told that it has been scientifically refuted. I plan now to look into it.

SPIEGEL: You could travel to Auschwitz yourself.

Williamson: No, I will not travel to Auschwitz. I've ordered the book by Jean-Claude Pressac. It's called "Auschwitz: Technique and Operation of the Gas Chambers." A printout is now being sent to me, and I will read it and study it.

(Excerpt) Read more at spiegel.de ...


TOPICS: Catholic; History; Moral Issues
KEYWORDS: sspx; williamson
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To: Petronski
I think the key to my point is "mass" murder. He's off by at least one order of magnitude.

More significantly, he describes them as "fortunes of war" civilian deaths rather than systematic genocide.

41 posted on 02/11/2009 11:03:59 AM PST by steve-b (Intelligent design is to evolutionary biology what socialism is to free-market economics.)
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To: FourtySeven
Williamson: St. Paul put it this way: The Jews are beloved for the sake of Our Father, but our enemies for the sake of the gospel.

Apparently, Rom 11:28.

DRA Romans 11:28 As concerning the gospel, indeed, they are enemies for your sake: but as touching the election, they are most dear for the sake of the fathers.

NAU Romans 11:28 From the standpoint of the gospel they are enemies for your sake, but from the standpoint of God's choice they are beloved for the sake of the fathers;
This seems to be terribly eisegesised to support anti-semitism.

YHvH's larger plan of salvation, where His People are blinded for a time,
in order to bring His salvation to the gentile nations as well.
NAsbU Romans 11:15 For if their ( His Chosen People )
rejection is the reconciliation of the world,
what will their acceptance be but life from the dead?

And their ultimate salvation after a period of blindness is guaranteed by YHvH's covenant :
NAsbU Romans 11:25 For I do not want you, brethren,
to be uninformed of this mystery--
so that you will not be wise in your own estimation--
that a partial hardening has happened to Israel until
the fullness of the Gentiles has come in;

26 and so all Israel will be saved; just as it is written
(in Isaiah 59),
"THE DELIVERER WILL COME FROM ZION,
HE WILL REMOVE UNGODLINESS FROM JACOB."

27 "THIS IS MY COVENANT WITH THEM, WHEN I TAKE AWAY THEIR SINS."

28 From the standpoint of the gospel they are enemies for your sake,
but from the standpoint of God's choice they are beloved for the sake of the fathers;

29 for the gifts and the calling of God are irrevocable.


shalom b'SHEM Yah'shua HaMashiach Adonai
42 posted on 02/11/2009 11:04:28 AM PST by Uri’el-2012 (Psalm 78:35 And they remembered that God was their ROCK, And the Most High God their Redeemer.)
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To: livius

“Yes, and one thing people are ignoring is the fact that until the SSPX becomes a regularized part of the Catholic Church again, there is NOTHING the Pope can do about Williamson or any other of them.”

Based on the Pope’s lack of action in light of the antics of Mahony and some of the others; I question what the Pope can actually do about any bishop, regularized or not.


43 posted on 02/11/2009 11:04:32 AM PST by rogator
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To: Petronski

It was still a heck of a lot of people. One human being destroyed by such utter arrogance and fairy tale spinning as der Fuerher perpetrated is too much.

My father was a combat veteran in Army Infantry, N. Africa, Sicily, Italy, Germany fighting the Nazis every step of the way. When they entered to liberate a concentration camp, the German guards were still “defending” their turf. . and hundreds of them died where they stood. Daddy talked about seeing piles of bodies piled ten feet high for over a quarter of a mile. - What a mess! An ungodly mess where the “old man’s war” becomes “the young man’s fight”! I won’t split hairs if anyone says “millions died”. Millions upon millions DID die, of all nationalities. Unspeakable. Unspeakable what I SAW that whole mess do to my father’s psychological life until the day that he died in his 80’s!


44 posted on 02/11/2009 11:04:51 AM PST by Twinkie (TWO WRONGS DON'T MAKE A RIGHT!!!)
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To: Petronski

I’ve met Holocaust Deniers before. One was the nicest old Polish gentleman, who rented a room to my girlfriend during her college years. He was the kind of guy who would have done anything for you.

But one day somehow the conversation slipped to WWII history ( he was of that age )...that guy, in a moment, turned into the vilest, most hateful person I’d ever met. I challenged his beliefs and he grew alarmingly angry. I put one last argument in and then changed the subject. The hate he had built inside him had to have come from years of indoctrination in the Old Country.

A week later, nicest guy you want to meet, unless you were Jewish.


45 posted on 02/11/2009 11:08:05 AM PST by rbmillerjr (2/6/09 The Day the Republican Party died.....Reagan's Birthday nonetheless)
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To: NYer

The most important part of the interview was Williamson’s last answer, which is absolutely on target: “A single interview on Swedish television has dominated the news for weeks in Germany. Yes, it does surprise me. Is this the case with all violations of the law in Germany? Hardly. No, I am only the tool here, so that action can be taken against the SSPX and the pope. Apparently Germany’s leftist Catholicism has not yet forgiven Ratzinger for becoming pope.”


46 posted on 02/11/2009 11:14:01 AM PST by Thorin ("I won't be reconstructed, and I do not give a damn.")
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To: annalex

Yes, 20 is still mass murder. But if he denies the existence of gas chambers, he denies the purely exterminationist, annihilationist aspect of the Holocaust.

As far as I’m concerned, beyond say five persons is mass murder. Williamson’s claims serve to deny about 5.5 million mass murders.

Further, denying gas chambers denies the essential character of Auschwitz-Birkenau, the vernichtungslager, the “extermination camp” at Auschwitz—as opposed to Auschwitz I, Auschwitz-Monowitz, etc., the arbeitslagern, “work camps”—and similarly denies the systematic, industrialized nature of the Holocaust....a very dangerous prospect.


47 posted on 02/11/2009 11:18:44 AM PST by Petronski (For the next few years, Gethsemane will not be marginal. We will know that garden. -- Cdl. Stafford)
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To: NYer
Williamson need to travel to Auschwitz. It is a life-changing experience.

Some of my trip here:

Welcome back, freeper Salvation! (Vanity)

48 posted on 02/11/2009 11:29:28 AM PST by Salvation ( †With God all things are possible.†)
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To: Petronski
if he denies the existence of gas chambers, he denies the purely exterminationist, annihilationist aspect of the Holocaust.

I agree that it has that effect. But on the other hand, working people to any kind of death on inadequate food and shelter is no less cruel. Has he denied the moral dimension of the Holocaust?

Consider this perspective. Stalin had work camps for his ideological enemies. Often, these were defined in ethnic terms: West Ukrainian, Polish, small nations that cooperated or were alleged to cooperate with the Germans. Or, no less cruelly, they were class enemies, i.e. simply productive hard working people, the "kulaks". Tens of millions perished: they were worked to death.

Stalin, and especially Lenin also had executions on the spot by bullet in the head.

But they had no gas chambers. I have a feeling someone digging dirt in the permafrost for 25 years eating rotted herring would not mind a gas chamber.

Making the gas chamber, -- and not mass murder by the godless state -- the centerpiece also denies something. It denies, or at least pulls the attention away from the victims of Communism, another "purely exterminationist, annihilationist" crime against humanity.

49 posted on 02/11/2009 11:36:05 AM PST by annalex (http://www.catecheticsonline.com/CatenaAurea.php)
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Comment #50 Removed by Moderator

To: annalex
Has he denied the moral dimension of the Holocaust?

Some of them, yes he has.

We not should say "even one killing is evil," though certainly it is.

What we must say is "each killing is evil."

The actual Holocaust is twenty times more evil than he claims, and that is just judging evil by body count, only one measure of the evil involved.

But they had no gas chambers. I have a feeling someone digging dirt in the permafrost for 25 years eating rotted herring would not mind a gas chamber.

I will not participate in this kind of comparison. I will not degrade the evil of the Holocaust by granting it some kind of merit of efficiency or quickness.

Making the gas chamber, -- and not mass murder by the godless state -- the centerpiece also denies something.

It denies nothing. That is a false dichotomy. It was systematic industrialized annihilation by a godless state. Both aspects are evil and both aspects apply.

It denies, or at least pulls the attention away from the victims of Communism, another "purely exterminationist, annihilationist" crime against humanity.

I recommend to you Hannah Arendt's Origins of Totalitarianism. The GULAG system was not purely exterminationist or annihilationist. They were worked to death, slowly, being fed enough to keep them alive for the further extraction of work. That is not systematic exterminationism. It is different, in the totality of the act and not merely from the point of view of each individual.

The victims of the Holocaust--Jewish or not--were killed smoothly and efficiently, as fast as the rolling stock could be misdirected to carry them.

51 posted on 02/11/2009 11:50:36 AM PST by Petronski (For the next few years, Gethsemane will not be marginal. We will know that garden. -- Cdl. Stafford)
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To: Petronski

So you are willing to grade muss murder by numbers but you are not willing to compare methods of execution. That is my point: it is the killing that is grossly immoral, not the method.


52 posted on 02/11/2009 11:56:49 AM PST by annalex (http://www.catecheticsonline.com/CatenaAurea.php)
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To: annalex
That is my point: it is the killing that is grossly immoral, not the method.

You are wrong. They are both evil, and some more evil than others.

53 posted on 02/11/2009 11:59:13 AM PST by Petronski (For the next few years, Gethsemane will not be marginal. We will know that garden. -- Cdl. Stafford)
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To: Petronski

How about torturing, then killing?


54 posted on 02/11/2009 12:02:46 PM PST by annalex (http://www.catecheticsonline.com/CatenaAurea.php)
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To: annalex
So you are willing to grade muss murder by numbers but you are not willing to compare methods of execution.

This is not a contest. Victim count is the only way I'm prepared to make direct comparisons between the Holocaust and the mass murder by Communist states. The Communists killed far more.

But you said something interesting before, about whether Williamson denied the moral dimension of the Holocaust--singular. I think that illuminates my position. There are many moral dimensions to any evil act, all the more true when speaking of the evil programs of a state.

There are aspects of the vernichtungslager that was not present in the Soviet state--systematic industrialized annihilation for annihilation's sake, as an act of genocide. The only thing Soviet that comes close is the imposed famine in the Ukraine (Holodomor).

Arguing about which is more evil is akin to disputing the number of angels on a pin. What is important is to recognize the manner--all of the manners--in which each program is evil.

55 posted on 02/11/2009 12:24:04 PM PST by Petronski (For the next few years, Gethsemane will not be marginal. We will know that garden. -- Cdl. Stafford)
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To: Petronski

Right. It is not one-dimensional. Each nation has its own evil genius. The German nation had the gas chambers and the Russian nation had Kolyma and Holodomor. May we never know what American evil genius is. To say that one method of killing is one a separate plane compared with others is to deny the other evil.


56 posted on 02/11/2009 12:30:18 PM PST by annalex (http://www.catecheticsonline.com/CatenaAurea.php)
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To: Petronski
Ach! I've been having difficulties with subject/verb number agreement all day.

There are aspects of the vernichtungslager that were not present . . .

57 posted on 02/11/2009 12:30:25 PM PST by Petronski (For the next few years, Gethsemane will not be marginal. We will know that garden. -- Cdl. Stafford)
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To: Petronski

Spelling these German words will do this to you.


58 posted on 02/11/2009 12:32:09 PM PST by annalex (http://www.catecheticsonline.com/CatenaAurea.php)
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To: annalex
To say that one method of killing is one a separate plane compared with others is to deny the other evil.

I reject that completely.

They are each on a separate plane compared with others...a separate plane of their own uniqueness.

There are aspects of evil in the Holocaust not inherent in the GULAG system: systematic industrialized extermination, based on religion/race.

59 posted on 02/11/2009 12:32:53 PM PST by Petronski (For the next few years, Gethsemane will not be marginal. We will know that garden. -- Cdl. Stafford)
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To: annalex

Gesundheit!


60 posted on 02/11/2009 12:33:16 PM PST by Petronski (For the next few years, Gethsemane will not be marginal. We will know that garden. -- Cdl. Stafford)
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