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 ...
I agree that they are all on a separate plane, and that the gas chambers are the synthesis of the specific evil of the Holocaust.
But you just did something very similar to denial of the gas chambers by Williamson: you denied the extermination aspect of the Gulag based on a book that you read. Does it cross your mind that perhaps Hannah Arendt’s book has been likewise rebutted? I could probably cite from Lenin, Trotsky and Stalin regarding their intentions as they formed the NKVD.
Williamson was an Anglican. He became a Catholic when the Anglicans started talking about ordaining women.
Arendt explains it, but her work is not the basis of my denial.
GULAG is plainly NOT exterminationist. They were work camps.
Are you aware of any facilities in GULAG designed for industrialized extermination? Any evidence that there was such intent?
I'd like to see evidence of some kind of Soviet Wannsee Conference, though I doubt any such thing exists. GULAG did not undertake to merely kill, as rapidly as possible, through the skillful application of modern efficiency. It was a hybrid of political imprisonment and slave labor.
These same atheists ignore the fact that Torah Jews live their lives according to a "totalitarian" Theocratic discipline that atheists imagine in their nightmares, but which they somehow see Jewishness as opposed to.
BTW, the great "champion of reason" Voltaire was a seething anti-Semite (may his name and memory be wiped out!).
In light of his various statements (including his denial of gas chambers at Auschwitz), my original point--that Williamson was/is a Holocaust denier--would thus seem to be demonstrated.
How do you know that work was the primary reason for the arrests? There is overwhelming evidence that the desire to exterminate certain groups of people was not to build a canal or something, but to kill them while preserving a facade of functioning jurisprudence. Work was just an added benefit, just like the gold tooth fillings that the Nazis got from the corpses.
Williamson is not denying the mass murder. He questions the method of the murder, which has become a symbol for some people. But questioning the historicity of the symbol is not questioning the underlying truths.
Regardless of what you think, it is neither a heresy nor a sin not to believe that x number of people died at Auschwitz or wherever. It is CRAZY and it is obviously an attempt to minimize the impact of the Holocaust, just the way the ravages of Stalin have been minimized to the point of nearly disappearing from history books.
Williamson is also a 9/11 “truther” and appears to have nothing but contempt for the US.
But he can still be a Catholic. As far as his public role, obviously, the Pope will prevent him from exercising it and will probably require him to go into seclusion.
I notice none of the wrath of folks like you when our very own President of Hope and Change “rehabilitated” and gave the US seal of respect to a Holocaust denier who hosted a conference of Holocaust deniers and in fact everyday publicly proclaims his desire to kill Jews: Ahmadinejad. And he’s somebody who really hates Jews, really would kill them if he had a chance, and is not about to come under the control of anyone who can change his mind.
Contrast that with sending arrested victims straight away to special treatment in a system designed to handle 2,500 such victims per hour (Auschwitz-Birkenau), a victim which Williamson denies existed.
Choose your terms carefully. He does deny the mass murder of more than 5.5 million Jews, and he at least implies that the 200,000-300,000 dead Jews he will admit died merely did so incidentally.
He's taking his cues from Fred Leuchter, for goodness sake. Don't try to pretend he is not denying the Holocaust.
Contrast that with sending arrested victims straight away to special treatment in a system designed to handle 2,500 such victims per hour
The intention of NKVD was to exterminate certain groups of people. The difference is techological.
We've dealt with Williamson and his numbers on this thread already. The remaining issue is gas chambers as a synthetic symbol.
I engaged in this colloquy to protest your suggestion that Williamson did not deny the Holocaust.
Clearly he has.
His numbers indeed are absurd, but he is not denying or justifying the event as a whole, as we discussed.
“That’s all well and good, but my point was that since Jewish survival despite all odds for four thousand years constitutes evidence for the truth of G-d and the Torah,”
absolutely.
“atheists and “enlightenment” types deal with this by turning the Jews from G-d’s Chosen People to The People That Religion Persecutes.”
yes, but also I don’t think it’s that much of a logical decision on their part, except for a few. It’s clearly a spiritual thing, don’t you think, the irrational jew-hate that seems to attach itself so easily to people
“Thus the miracle of Jewish survival, instead of witnessing to the existence of G-d, somehow occurred despite G-d.”
Yes. I can’t imagine seeing it like that, but perhaps people do. They are completely irrational in not seeing the work of God, generally. It reminds me of how they react to fossils. It should be a message of God’s judgement, a caution of sudden wrath, but instead they turn it into an atheistic statement
“Hence the tendency of atheists to wave the Jewish people like a flag”
Do they? there was a time when libs did. Is that still true anywhere?
“when everything about the Jewish mission is antithetical to atheism and indeed to the entire “enlightened” philosophy of the west”
yes, so they attempted to turn Jews into a liberal “cause”, peer with “save the whales”, so to speak, hiding the woods behind the trees. But as I say, have they not almost stopped doing that now? With regard the “enlightened philosophy”, the irony is that european atheism is a corruption of Christianity. Their corrupt & false “ethics” are a corruption of Christian ethics. That is their societal framework, and they seem blissfully unaware of it.
“(Judaism is actually closer to islam than to christianity in being a statutory religion)”
surely to call judaism a simple “statutory religion” is to do it a disservice. the Tenach is replete with examples of the prophets showing the meaning of the law; that the law was more complex than absolutes, although the absolutes themselves were important, they were not the end, but the means. David eating the shewbread, for example. The Jews were also commanded not to marry canaanites, but there are canaanites in David’s lineage, including Ruth. And the first time the law is given, there is an immediate point made of it’s inefficacy - the 1st commandment is specific to not make graven (engraved, carved) images, but Aaron had made a molten (moulded) image - this is clearly a statement of the inadequacy (but necessity) of the law.
“These same atheists ignore the fact that Torah Jews live their lives according to a “totalitarian” Theocratic discipline that atheists imagine in their nightmares, but which they somehow see Jewishness as opposed to.”
If that is true, do you think perhaps the impression that they have got from worldly liberal jews is part of that?
“Voltaire was a seething anti-Semite”
they always hide behind a veil of intellectualism don’t they. the same is true today
He certainly is.
Justifying? Who said anything about justifying?
He is denying it, as has been established.
I said — or meant to say — that justifying the Holocaust is inconscionable, while challenging historicity of some aspects of it is morally neutral.
Denial of particulars is not denial of the whole. You just denied the Gulags by the same token.
That's a lie.
Consider this rather revealing discussion over.
[NKVD victims] were arrested for political reasons, by and large, and then sent off to work
I think the Pope should resign now.
Can a Jew remain a Jew and claim Jesus the Messiah?
Not unless we change the meaning of Jew or Judaism becomes Christianity. For an individual Jew it means converting to Christianity and no longer being a Jew.
I believe this is the point of the quote.
“Williamson is not denying the Holocaust, but he is questioning its scope. It is based on a book that he read (mentioned in the article at source) and the book convinced him. He now promises to study the rebuttals of the book and see if the rebuttals change his mind. That is not a behavior of an irrational person.”
Yeah, the book convinced Williamson by feeding into his already preconceived notions. He bases the big mouth comments about the Holocaust he has made just recently on reading he did of a book in 1980? What’s he been reading or studying on this subject for the last 29 years of his life? Nothing at all? So to him, the gospel is a book he read 29 years ago and still considers to be the state of the art opinion on the subject of the Holocaust? What a crock. He’s an anti-semite and won’t admit it, but rather seeks cover behind the gospels according to his own interpretation. An anti-semite is an anti-semite is an anti-semite.
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