Medieval Catholic Southern Baptists?

At Ethics Daily Robert Parham celebrates Baptist historians, among them E. Glenn Hinson, once of Southern Baptist Theological Seminary. Parham reminds us that in 1980 amid the gathering fundamentalist storm, Hinson "took on Bailey Smith, the Southern Baptist fundamentalist, who said in 1980 that 'God Almighty does not hear the prayer of a Jew.'"

Hinson told FaithLab in an interview:

I made five points in response to Bailey Smith: (1) Jesus was a Jew – you may have disenfranchised Jesus' prayers; (2) You disenfranchised everybody from Abraham to Jesus; (3) The Bible teaches that God hears the prayers of unbelievers; (4) This conflicts with centuries of Baptists' respect for every person's religious belief; (5) This is the stuff from which Holocausts come. I think the last point may have ignited the tinder.

Hinson eventually left Southern, and although he still considers himself a Baptist was blunt in his assessment of Southern Baptists:

The Baptist tradition depends on a minority consciousness. And having become the majority, Baptists in the South could no longer think like Baptists, they thought like medieval Catholics.

Holocaust-denier Bishop Williamson returns with his verbal wrecking ball

The Vatican-SSPX talks are a “dialogue of the deaf,” Bishop Richard Williamson said in an interview with French anti-zionist Pierre Danet, posted at DailyMotion Tuesday.

Stepping on the pope's toes, already aching after a tense peacemaking visit to Rome's main synagogue last week, Williamson broke his months of silence by saying of the talks:

I think it will finish by becoming a dialogue of the deaf, because of two things. One: The two positions in themselves are irreconcilable. For example 2+2=4 and 2+2=5 it’s irreconcilable. Therefore of three things, one: either they say 2+2=4 , enounce reality and say 2+2=5 –that is to say the Fraternity would abandon the truth that God forbids us to do or that those who say that 2+2=5 convert and return to the truth or the two come half-way, that means everyone decides that 2+2=4 ½ . It’s wrong. Therefore, either the Fraternity betrays itself or Rome converts, or it is a dialogue of the deaf.

[Full translation of the interview here.]

The pope set off a firestorm of criticism by lifting the excommunication from four Society of St Pius X bishops last January, among them holocaust-denier Williamson. The pope eventually admitted his handling of the matter was a mistake. Yet controversy over the attempt to reconcile with the historically anti-Semitic SSPX continues to simmer.

In his most recent interview Williamson skates past his Holocaust denial, still without apologizing. Yet his interview is still rich in points of controversy. For example, he does say Christians have been "chased out" of the Holy Land and he defies mainstream Catholicism with the claim that Jews who don't accept Jesus are no longer the "chosen people."

Williamson's comments probably do harm by giving resounding affirmation to negative views of the Vatican's attempt to reconcile with SSPX. Yet he is not a spokesman for SSPX. Williamson is, in effect, speaking out of turn. His Holocaust denial caused such an uproar early last year that the head of the SSPX, Bishop Bernard Fellay, issued a gag order and Williamson was removed as head of the SSPX seminary in Argentina. Now at home in Britain, he lives in an SSPX home in the Wimbledon section of London in what he called "an unexpected but quite agreeable sabbatical year.”

Do you not wonder if Bishop Fellay will now further define for Williamson the restrictions of that sabbatical?

[H/T: Cathy Lynn Grossman ]

SSPX/Vatican negotiations/struggle to start Oct. 26

Leaders of the Society of St. Pius X and Vatican experts are to have their first meeting on Oct. 26 at the Vatican, Jesuit Father Federico Lombardi, the Vatican spokesman, said Oct. 15.

Little progress is likely and resolution will apparently be a long time in coming. Bishop Bernard Fellay, head of SSPX, reiterated a list of objections to the Second Vatican Council and said in an interview this week he hoped the dialogue deal with "errors" in the church.

He said:

The solution to the crisis is a return to the past.
We hope the discussions will allow us to dispel the grave ambiguities that have spread through the Catholic Church since [the Second Vatican Council], as John Paul II himself recognised.

The head-on collision is obvious, since Pope Benedict XVI has listed acceptance of Vatican II as a condition of reconciliation.

This process has been marked from the outset by SSPX intransigence and support for Benedict's requirement by bishops who did not leave over Vatican II.

Bringing anti-Semitic SSPX with its resistance to religious liberty, ecumenism and collegiality into the mainstream Catholic fold will be a long, delicate process. If it is possible at all.

Decades later in response to a Holocaust denial …

Irena's Vow reminds us of how buried memories, hers heroic and deserving our celebration, erupt irretrievably back into present consciousness.

Pope admits mistakes regarding Holocaust-denier, maps path forward

Pope Benedict XVI in a letter to be released Thursday admits mistakes in handling lifting of excommunication from four Society of St Pius X bishops, among them holocaust-denier Richard Williamson.

The Vatican's path forward includes paying more attention to how news spreads over the internet. After all, there had long been ample information on the Web documenting Williamson's incendiary holocaust-denying stands.

The letter is described as "unusually personal," and judging from the portions which have leaked out it is a sound corrective action.

From a full translation of the letter by Chris Gillibrand at Cathcon we read:

Several groups, however, accused the pope of wanting to return to the time before the Council and an avalanche of protests began to move, which made bitter injuries visible and this could be seen immediately. So I am under an obligation to you, dear brethren, to provide a clarifying word, which should help to understand the intentions, which I and the competent organs of the Holy See have been following with this step. I hope in this way to promote peace in the church.

One for me unpredictable mishap was that the lifting of the excommunication was overtaken by the Williamson case. The quiet gesture of mercy to four validly but not legally consecrated bishops appeared suddenly as something quite different: as a rejection of Christian-Jewish reconciliation and the withdrawal of what the Council in this matter has declared as the way of the Church.

An invitation to reconciliation with a separated Church grouping became the reverse: an apparent return from all the steps forward in the reconciliation of Christians and Jews, which had gone on since the Council and whose achievement had been from the start a goal of my theological work.

Thursday, when the full text of the Pope's letter is issued, when he is to resume a dialogue suspended by the Israeli side because of Williamson, by receiving a delegation of Israeli rabbis.

In some regards, timing is everything, even for the Pope.

Re-Excommunicate Holocaust-denying Bishop Williamson?

When Cardinal Roger M. Mahony of Los Angeles banned the Holocaust-denying Bishop Richard Williamson from Archdiocese of Los Angeles churches, he went a step beyond the Vatican. A long step. He said:

Holocaust deniers like Williamson will find no sympathetic ear or place of refuge in the Catholic Church, of which he is not --- and may never become --- a member.

Mark Silk at SpiritualPolitics observes:

Without criticizing the pope, [Mahony has] seized on Williamson's Holocaust foot-dragging to take the next step and send him back into outer darkness. It will be interesting to see if any of his peers follow his lead.

Most importantly, what plans does the Pope Benedict XVI have now?

Cardinal Mahony bans Holocaust-denying Bishop Williamson from Archdiocese of Los Angeles Churches

Cardinal Roger M. Mahony of Los Angeles today announced he is barring the Holocaust-denying Bishop Richard Williamson from entering any church in the Archdiocese of Los Angeles.

In an extraordinary move, Mahony and two Jewish leaders penned a joint op-ed piece published in both the archdiocesan newspaper, The Tidings, and a local Jewish newspaper, the Jewish Journal.

Cardinal Roger Mahony, Rabbi Gary Greenebaum and Seth Brysk wrote in part:

Williamson's recent "apologies" fall far short of satisfying the letter or the spirit of the Vatican's directives. Yet while Williamson seems unwilling or unable to reject his odious positions, many religious and civic leaders have used his situation to acknowledge the Holocaust and to affirm its unique and terrible place in history.

We are heartened by the many leaders around the world who have rejected Williamson's views. In particular, German Chancellor Angela Merkel, and Argentine Minister of the Interior Florencio Randazzo, whose country recently expelled Williamson, not to mention nearly 50 Catholic members of the U.S. Congress who wrote to the Vatican to express their concerns.

In the Los Angeles Archdiocese, Williamson is hereby banned from entering any Catholic church, school or other facility, until he and his group comply fully and unequivocally with the Vatican's directives regarding the Holocaust. Later this year, I, Cardinal Mahony, will visit Israel and pay my respects to the Jewish victims of the Holocaust at the Yad Vashem Memorial in Jerusalem.

Holocaust deniers like Williamson will find no sympathetic ear or place of refuge in the Catholic Church, of which he is not --- and may never become --- a member. . . .

For our part, as Catholic and Jewish leaders in Los Angeles, we recognize that only by working together with renewed vigilance will we be able to keep anti-Semitism at bay and prevent its reassertion as a legitimate expression.

Their entire statement is here.

Bishop Williamson has made himself an object of repudiation and placed himself in danger of being cast out of Society of St. Pius X (SSPX) by failing to recant promptly his repellent and historically unfounded views. Catholic thinking has suggested a suitably humble statement of the sort that has been overdue from Williamson, for decades.

Bishop Williamson warned against further Holocaust denial

Society of St. Pius X (SSPX) head Bishop Bernard Fellay has declared that Bishop Richard Williamson would be excluded from the order if he reiterated his holocaust-denial.

While Bishop Williamson's recent apology for his Holocaust denial (which he failed to recant) is an "important step," Bishop Fellay said, Bishop Williamson should probably stay quiet and “in a corner somewhere.”

Williamson is the only Holocaust-denier among four Catholic bishops whose excommunication was lifted by the Vatican on Jan. 21 as a first step toward healing a division between the church and SSPX. All four are members of the Lefebvre movement, whose long, troubled relationship with Judiasm was documented by the National Catholic Reporter.

Bishop Fellay's declaration suggests that SSPX wishes to proceed with restoration and will cast out Williamson to do so if it must.

SSPX not rushing to reconciliation offered by Pope Benedict XVI

Debate over church statistics and assignment of theological blame, is not unique to the Southern Baptist Convention, as we may see from the Vatican statistical yearbook delivered to the Pope last week. It says, reports BBC, "that the number of priests has increased by several hundred each year since 2000, after two decades of decline." And the "percentage of Catholics worldwide remains stable, at about 17.3% of the global population."

Turnaround accomplished, it seems.

Today Bishop Bernard Fellay of the rightist Society of Saint Pius X employed undocumented statistics to explain why SSPX, which he heads, is not ready to meet the Feb. 4 Vatican requirement that “a full recognition of the Second Vatican Council and the Magisterium of Popes John XXIII, Paul VI, John Paul I, John Paul II and Benedict XVI himself is an indispensable condition for any future recognition of the Society of Saint Pius X.”

In an interview with a Swiss newspaper he said:

The aftermath of the [Second Vatican] Council has been to empty seminaries, nunneries and churches. Thousands of priests have left their orders and millions of faithful have stopped being practicing Catholics and have joined sects. If these are the fruits of the Council, they’re strange indeed.

You may recall that Pope Benedict XVI lifted the excommunications of Bishop Fellay and three other bishops, who were ordained against papal orders in 1988, as a step toward dialogue and reconciliation. One of the four is Holocaust-denying Bishop Richard Williamson, whose disingenuous apology and failure to recant was well-rejected by the Vatican last week.

Williamson wants more time to consider whether the Holocaust occurred and Fellay says that if the Vatican requirement is met, it will be the after "doctrinal discussions" with his society. As if the Holocaust were really in doubt and rollback of Vatican II were actually on the block.

We wonder if there is a decidedly unhopeful SSPX pattern here?

Bishop Williamson the unrepetant radical rightist

Holocaust-denying Bishop Richard Williamson's disingenuous apology was well-rejected by the Vatican. It is unclear whether the Society of St Pius X can withstand careful scrutiny today, but Williamson is a creature of the radical, racist right. The London Times' Damian Thompson writes:

Trawling through Williamson's sermons is a sad experience. There's an intense piety there, powerful faith, but it's poisoned by anger, hatred and an all-consuming paranoia. This troubled man has links to the political Far Right, and has written about Hitler "liberating" Germany from the control of Jewish money.

Even more bizarre than his frequently expressed view that the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks were not carried out by terrorists, all of those assertions were in public view well before his excommunication was lifted.

We need not play that reprehensible game, "Kick the Pope," to wonder where this is going and exactly why Pope Benedict XVI put matters on this path, making the radical right more bold and the Catholic Church's position of moral authority less powerful.

Williamson apologizes but does not recant

Holocaust-denying Bishop Richard Williamson apologized today, after being booted out of Argentina, where on Feb. 9 he was dismissed as director of the Society of St. Pius X (SSPX) seminary in La Reja.

"I can truthfully say that I regret having made such remarks, and that if I had known beforehand the full harm and hurt to which they would give rise, especially to the Church, but also to survivors and relatives of victims of injustice under the Third Reich, I would not have made them," Williamson said, according to the website of Zenit, a Catholic news agency. . . .
"To all souls that took honest scandal from what I said, before God I apologise," he said. . . .
He did not say in his apology whether he had changed his views.

His failure to recant earned him the immediate rejection of some Jewish groups. This is a case in which half a measure should not be good enough for anyone.

Lest anyone be confused about where we stand: "Never again."

Shaking his fist, Williamson leaves Argentina

Holocaust-denying Bishop Richard Williamson left Argentina today rather than be expelled.

The un-excommunicated arch conservative priest's exit was not a graceful one. Bill Faries of Bloomberg Press wrote:

Williamson, wearing a black baseball cap and sunglasses, stopped to wave his fist in the face of a reporter for the Todo Noticias news channel at Buenos Aires’s international airport. The reporter was then held back by two unidentified men accompanying the cleric.

Holocaust-denying bishop ordered out of Argentina

Unrepentant Holocaust-denying Bishop Richard Williamson is being booted out of Argentina, where on Feb. 9 he was dismissed as director of the Society of St. Pius X (SSPX) seminary in La Reja. He has 10 days to leave.

Legally, Williamson failed to declare his true job as director of a seminary on immigration forms interior ministry, but Argentine officials make it clear that his Holocaust-denials "profoundly insulted Argentine society, the Jewish community and all of humanity by denying the historic truth."

Argentina's Jewish population, one of the world's largest, praised the decision.

Ordered by Pope Benedict XVI to recant, Williamson has not done so, claiming he needed time to research the issue so that he can act with sincerity. The head of Williamson's Swiss-based society, Monsignor Bernard Fellay, said in an interview published Monday that Williamson should be given time to reconsider his denials.

There is pressure on the pope to further repudiate Williamson's views, and time appears to be running out, now in more than one regard.

Pope casts Austrian Catholicism into crisis [Update: Wagner withdraws]

Controversial pastor Gerhard Maria Wagner said Sunday he will ask the pope to rescind the promotion to auxiliary bishop in Linz, Austria's third largest city.

The Associated Press reported:

"Regarding the fierce criticism, I am in prayer and, after consulting the diocesan bishop, I have decided to ask the Holy Father in Rome to take back my promotion as auxiliary bishop," Wagner said in a statement released by Linz Diocesan Bishop Ludwig Schwarz.

More is expected to be disclosed at the meeting Monday, detailed below.

---

Pope Benedict XVI's de-excommunication of a Holocaust-denying priest and appointment of an ultra-conservative to bishop in Linz have together set off a crisis in Austrian Catholicism that bishops are meeting in emergency session Monday to address.

The controversial appointee, Gerhard Maria Wagner, has condemned the Harry Potter books as satanic, said homosexuality was curable and ruled out lay participation in Church affairs. After the Hurricane Katrina disaster in 2005, he commented: "It's no coincidence that in New Orleans all five abortion clinics as well as night clubs were destroyed."

Together the appointment of Wagner and the de-excommunication of Richard Williamson sent an "appalling" signal from the Vatican, commented Erhard Busek, a Roman Catholic who served as Austria's vice chancellor between 1991 and 1995. A signal that the pope is either remarkably careless, or else intends to impose the most conservative kind of orthodoxy on the church. Unless, as Neil Schoenherr at the University of Chicago suggested, "underreported strokes suffered by the Pope in 1991 and 2003" are affecting his judgment.

The crisis includes and extends beyond the clergy. Notably:

• Reuters reports that "Four times as many Catholics have officially quit the Church in Linz so far this year as in early 2008, the Austrian Press Agency APA reported, and departures have also been running higher than usual in Vienna, Salzburg, Tyrol and Lower Austria."
• The liberal lay Catholic movement We Are Church urged Austrians not to contribute money to the church and announced it would set up "solidarity accounts" for contributions to be held "until the situation improves."
• Franz Wild, chief church dean (senior priest) of Upper Austria province and pastor in the town of Traun, told the Associated Press that 31 out of 35 Upper Austrian church deans present during an informal meeting late Tuesday voted for a declaration of no confidence in Wagner.
• The conservative governor of Linz, Josef Pueringer, hit out at Wagner's nomination, saying it conveyed "the wrong image" of the church.

Crisis comes against the background of the Catholic Church in Austria whose clerical rigidity was driving church membership down when two "high-profile sex scandals in 1995 and 2004 turned that outflow into a veritable haemorrhage." Austria was 91% Catholic when World War II began. Now:

In the past 15 years, more than 370,000 people have quit the church, 40,500 in 2008 alone, bringing the number of believers down to 5.58 million or 66 percent of the population as a whole.

Vienna's current archbishop, Christoph Schoenborn, who called Monday's meeting, has labored to remedy the problem. Only to see the pope's twin controversial decisions unraveling all he has woven together.

Prominent Roman Catholic theologian Paul Zulehner told AFP, the church appears to be in "self destruct" mode, and "The gap between believers and the bishops will continue to widen." An Austrian church which has already lost its liberal membership, is in danger of losing its center, and Monday's crisis meeting can in itself not reverse that.

Re-excommunicate Williamson?

Holocaust-denying Bishop Richard Williamson balked at immediately meeting the pope's requirement that he recant.

"Since I see that there are many honest and intelligent people who think differently, I must look again at the historical evidence," the British bishop was quoted as saying.

Germany's Catholic bishops responded by calling for his re-excommunication.

"Mr. Williamson is impossible and irresponsible," said Archbishop Robert Zollitsch, chairman of the German Bishops' Conference in an article published Saturday. "I now see no room for him in the Catholic Church."

The German tabloid press was even less oblique in its statements and characterized Williamson as dishonest in a variety of ways.

Williamson is "holed up in the seminary he runs in Argentina," and isn't talking to reporters.

Vatican demands that Holocaust-denier repudiate his positions [Updated]

Besieged by angry response to the un-excommunication of four right-wing bishops, the Vatican demanded today for the first time that the Holocaust-denier Bishop Richard Williamson repudiate his "previous statements in 'an absolutely, unequivocal and public manner.'”

The National Catholic Register reported:

In addition, said the statement from the Vatican Secretariat of State, Pope Benedict XVI did not know about the controversial statements by British-born Bishop Richard Williamson when he lifted the excommunication of him and three other traditionalist bishops ordained illicitly in 1988.

. . .

“The positions of Bishop Williamson on the Holocaust are absolutely unacceptable and are strongly rejected by the Holy Father,” the statement said.

U.S. Bishops and others are in effect getting the appropriately high standard for reconciliation that they have demanded.

Addendum

The Associated Press reported Wednesday afternoon that the requirement is not for Williamson alone:

In addition to its demand of Williamson, the Vatican said the society as a whole must fully recognize the teachings of Vatican II and all the popes who came during and after it in order to have a legitimate canonical function in the church.

Enforced, that should dispose of concerns that this reconciliation involves either acceptance of formerly rejected far-right ideologies into the church, or a sharp rightward shift by the church itself.

It was of overarching importance. "This was the sign the Jewish world has been waiting for," said Ronald Lauder, president of the World Jewish Congress.

Pope expresses 'full and indisputable solidarity' with the Jews

Responding to revulsion at the anti-Semitism of four traditionalist bishops whose excommunications were lifted Saturday, Pope Benedict XVI reaffirmed his "full and unquestionable solidarity with Jews."

JTA reported:

The pope said in his angelus prayer at his public audience Wednesday: "While I renew with affection the expression of my full and unquestionable solidarity with our (Jewish) brothers, I hope the memory of the Shoah will induce humanity to reflect on the unpredictable power of hate when it conquers the heart of man."

Vatican Radio reported that speaking of the Holocaust (haShoa), the Pope "firmly said:"

While I renew my affection for and complete solidarity with our Brothers of the First Alliance, I urge that the memory of the Shoah lead humanity to reflect on the unforeseeable power of evil when it conquers the Human Heart. May the Shoah be a warning to all against oblivion, against denial or revisionism, because violence committed against any one single human being is violence against all humanity. No man is an island, a well known poet once wrote. The Shoah teaches both the new and older generations, that only the demanding journey of listening and dialogue, of love and forgiveness can lead the world’s peoples, cultures and religions towards the desired goal of brotherhood and peace in truth. Never again may violence humiliate the dignity of man!

In an unusual front-page editorial the Vatican's daily newspaper, L’Osservatore Romano, attempted to push back the appearanc of anti-Semitism apparent in restoration of the four bishops, said the gesture does not yet mean a return to “full communion” with the Church and moreover is a call to the “full acceptance of the Magisterium, obviously including the Second Vatican Council.” The editorial clearly addresses anti-Semitism in general and the Holocaust denial of Bishop Richard Williamson:

After noting that the declaration “Nostra aetate” deplores “the hatred, persecution and all manifestations of anti-Semitism directed against the Jews of any time and by any person” and that this is “a teaching for Catholics that is not open to opinion,” L’Osservatore Romano said that the recent statements of denial by the British bishop “contradict this teaching and are therefore seriously grave and lamentable. Made know before the document lifting the excommunication, they are thus—as we have written—unacceptable.”

The positions taken are clear, forceful and with additional action and absent further missteps may well heal the old, reopened wounds.