The
Williamson Affair
Part II
9 March 2009
(Back to Part I)
Even after the
Carmelite nuns’ departure, the controversy over Auschwitz continued,
thanks to a huge cross, about 22 feet high, which had been erected
in a gravel pit behind the convent in 1988. It remained,
precipitating yet more Jewish ire. Cardinal Glemp insisted it should
stay. As he said during the summer of 1998, it survived as a “mark
of the sacrifice of love and suffering.” Moreover, “the right to
this interpretation and to its defense belongs not only to the
Episcopate but also to all those who, with their faith, accept this
cross.”
In contrast,
Jews mostly viewed the landmark in a negative light. In his 1989
piece for the New York Times, Leon Wieseltier said it greeted
visitors to “the greatest charnel house in Jewish history.”
Consequently, he concludes, “Its shadow, with all due respect, is
sickening.” And Jacob Neusner, contributor to The Continuing Agony,
is equally negative. “The cross stands to humiliate, to express
hatred, to serve God by acts of hatred and contempt,” he writes. As
for a possible solution to the problem, he cites one proposed by
none other than Rabbi Weiss, who would have the entire site put
“under the jurisdiction of the State of Israel,” thereby eliminating
“any possibility of symbolic encroachments.”
For Weiss to
say this after suing Cardinal Glemp over that homily is incredible,
to say the least, because in his suit he said the prelate had
falsely accused the protestors of threatening Polish sovereignty! So
what was Weiss suggesting now? Could not his proposed “solution” of
having Israel take over Auschwitz be construed as just that, i.e. of
challenging the territorial rights of Poland, which had suffered
repeated invasions over the years? Does this not, in retrospect,
tend to justify Glemp’s remark?
But if this
sounds wild, just listen to words spoken by Rabbi Menachem Joskawitz
of Warsaw, Israeli citizen and Holocaust survivor. In The Continuing
Agony he is quoted as saying over the radio in 1998: “(I don’t) care
what Glemp says,” the cross must be removed “because we Jews cannot
pray where there is a cross, as we can’t pray in the presence of
idols.”
Here we see
the fundamental problem dividing the sides. As Jewish writers
readily admit, it’s not just a matter of symbols, but, rather, of
underlying theologies. Traditionally the Jews have considered the
doctrine of the Man-God on the cross, ie. Christ — and the Trinity —
as idolatrous. The ecumenical rants of John Paul II only made it
worse, Bellinger says. Calling Jews “our elder brothers in the
faith” only irritated those like London Rabbi Jeffrey Cohen who saw
such attempts to reconcile the faiths as “particularly offensive.”
In the aftermath of the Holocaust, he considered the very idea of a
New Covenant resulting from Christ’s redemptive sacrifice to be “an
obscenity and an insult of the great proportions.”
Or, as the
introduction to The Continuing Agony puts it, “The Holocaust, the
most virulent expression of Jew hatred, fed by a long tradition of
Christian theological anti-Semitism, reveals irrevocably the
violence and brutality condoned by theological supercessionism.”
Such words target, of course, the very foundation of Christianity,
the claim to a New Covenant based on the redemptive sacrifice of
Christ. Traditionally this replaces, or “supersedes,” the Old
Covenant that God had made with His Chosen People, whose place was
assumed by the Church. There is no way of getting around it: such
doctrines surrounding the triumph of the cross are repugnant to
those Jews who reject Christ.
So what else
is new?
The answer to
this question rests in the revolutionary way the Holocaust is now
being interpreted so as to replace the sacrifice of Christ. In a
weird reversal of doctrine, the Jews seem to be implying that their
own martyrdom supersedes in importance that of the cross. Such
amazing chutzpah! We don’t dare replace them, but they will us! To
repeat, the two doctrines in question, neo-Jewish and orthodox
Christian, are mutually exclusive. No believer can accept both,
despite talk about “parallel covenants,” meaning the new one is for
gentiles, while the original remains good for Jews. That simply
won’t work, despite what Alan Dershowitz suggests. “Would it not
have been (and still be) better if Jesus were seen as the Christian
Messiah, but not as the Jewish Messiah? Why must we both have one
true Messiah, or one God?” he says in his book.
Sorry, sir, we
do not believe in fabricating multiple gods, or messiahs — or
covenants –– for the sake of convenience. Christ eliminated such
options by teaching there was but One God and that He Himself was
the Messiah. Since while on earth He, a descendant of King David,
preached primarily to Jews, the idea that He wanted all to follow
Him except His own people is absurd. Besides, as we have learned
from Rabbi Cohen, while defending their own covenant, most orthodox
Jews cannot abide the idea of a new one for Christians.
Thus our
digression to Auschwitz. Putting that controversy in context helps
to illuminate the parallels between then and now. In the light of
the Williamson affair, we see a lot that we could not before, and
the past, in turn, helps enlighten the present. The underlying
issues are ongoing. Looking backwards, we continue to find clues to
the present in a variety of places — and not just in Poland. In
1986, for instance, there was an episode of Bill Buckley’s Firing
Line that focused on the Ukrainian Holodomor, the “famine” of
1932-33, as depicted in the award-winning documentary Harvest of
Despair. Claiming that Stalin had in fact engineered the mass
starvation of millions, it was regarded as “controversial,” and in
the U.S., the three major networks refused to air it. The fact that
it was later nominated for an Oscar, however, “seemed to give it
legitimacy.”
Or so
concludes John Corry, who, in a piece for the New York Times,
describes how Buckley moderated a panel consisting of Robert
Conquest, author of a book on the disaster; Harrison Salisbury,
former Moscow correspondent for the Times; and Christopher Hitchens,
columnist for the Nation. Salisbury, for one, told how Walter
Duranty, Times correspondent to Moscow in the early 30’s –– and
Pulitzer Prize winner — insisted “there was no famine” in the
Ukraine, though he told people privately that 10 million had in fact
died! In an interview recorded on the documentary, Malcolm
Muggeridge, British writer who also reported on Stalin’s regime —
and later converted to Catholicism — calls Duranty “the greatest
liar of any journalist I ever met.”
In contrast,
Hitchens came “close to suggesting that the Ukrainians had it coming
to them,” Corry says. “Weren’t they anti-Semites? Didn’t they
cooperate with the Nazis?” When Conquest noted that Ukrainian
guerillas had fought both Soviet and German armies, Hitchens failed
to be swayed. Instead he seemed “disturbed” when Buckley tried “to
draw a comparison between Stalin and Hitler.”
Think about
it. Would Hitchens have dared suggest that the Jews “had it coming
to them?” Or is there a double standard here? Let’s fast forward to
May 7, 2003, and a piece in National Review by Andrew Stuttaford,
who starts out by saying we “will never know how many Ukrainians
died in Stalin’s famines of the early 1930’s. As Nikita Khrushchev
later recalled, ‘no one was keeping count.’ Writing back in the
mid-1980s, historian Robert Conquest came up with a death toll of
around six million, a calculation not so inconsistent with later
research “the writers of the Black Book of Communism (1999)
estimated a total of four million for 1933 alone.”
Stuttaford
concludes: “Four million, six million, seven million, when the
numbers are this grotesque does the exact figure matter?”
The answer is
no, except when referring to THE Holocaust, the facts and figures
for which have been set in stone. Even those who read the Bible most
liberally –– or not at all –– insist the official version of this
modern catastrophe be taken literally, if not ritualistically, as a
matter of faith. Indeed, at the present time, it is the only sort of
belief for which acceptance in public is enforced by law in many
formerly Christian lands.
This writer
began to sense the trend back in 1986 while viewing what I assume in
retrospect was the above mentioned episode of Firing Line. Unlike
Hitchens, host Bill Buckley did seem to accept the fact that as many
as 10 million Ukrainians had died in a forced famine. While speaking
of this, however, he had to add that of course it was not the same
as THE Holocaust. His overall manner relayed to me the impression
that the loss of all those Ukrainians did not equal that of six
million Jews, because the latter disaster was somehow unique,
indeed, sacrosanct.
Looking back,
we can see how the official form of the doctrine was being
sanctioned by key celebrities even then. The necessity for its
acceptance by the public at large explains the furor over convent
and cross, and the theme pervading the literature: who owns
Auschwitz? To whom does it –– and the memory thereof –– belong? As
Jewish leaders lay exclusive claim to their holy event, it would be
ritualistically purified, purged of any Christian taint.
Thus the
recent world-wide furor over Bishop Williamson’s remarks questioning
said doctrine. By now the reasons for such a response should be
obvious. Given this age of so-called free and scientific inquiry, it
otherwise makes no sense. Nothing is sacred anymore, certainly no
religion — except for the Holocaust. Were this not the exception,
why not simply correct, or rebut a man, even a bishop, who errs in
his facts? Whatever happened to free speech, the so-called
“marketplace of ideas”? Why should only Denial of this version of
history be such a crime?
The obvious
answer is that it is a doctrine that must be universally revered —
even by Roman Catholics and their official hierarchy, Catholic dogma
not withstanding.
A close look
at the Times story of January 25 reveals how the Williamson affair
provided the venue for religious and political leaders to make
demands of Benedict, the supposed head of the universal church.
There was, as noted previously, the crucial element of timing.
Linking the controversial broadcast with the lifting of the SSPX
excommunications allowed critics to inflate the episode in a way
they could not have otherwise. The ADL called it a “source of great
tension between Catholics and Jews.” Rabbi David Rosen, director of
the International Jewish Committee for Interreligious Consultations,
proclaimed: “We urgently call on the Vatican to reiterate its
unqualified repudiation and condemnation of all and any Holocaust
denial.”
Did such a
scenario just happen?
When the Chief
Rabbinate of Israel announced it had cut official ties with the
Vatican in protest over the decision to “reinstate a Holocaust
denier,” it was all over the news. Quoted on The Raw Story, the Yad
Vashem Holocaust memorial called it “scandalous that someone of this
stature in the Church denies the Holocaust.” A spokesman also said
they hoped Benedict would take steps to condemn such behavior in a
bishop.
Nor were they
alone. On February 3, German Chancellor Angela Merkel called on
Benedict “to make clear the Vatican does not tolerate any denial of
the Holocaust.” The daughter of a Lutheran pastor, she does not
normally interfere with church matters. “But it is different if we
are talking about fundamental questions,” she said, as if that
justified her telling a pontiff what to do. “This is about the pope
and the Vatican making very clear that there can be no (Holocaust)
denial and that there must be positive relations with Judaism.”
Note how she
bypasses any barrier between church and state in order to dictate
policy to a pope. But did German bishops object? No, according to DW-World,
Gerhard Ludwig, Catholic bishop of Regensburg, the diocese where the
interview was taped, said Williamson, “would not be allowed to set
foot in his cathedral or on any other church property.” (Though, why
would the SSPX bishop even think of going to Germany and risk being
arrested for the crime of Holocaust denial?) Furthermore, Reuters
listed a string of other German prelates who not only condemned
Williamson’s remarks, but also demanded from Benedict a policy of
“full support for the Second Vatican Council and no concessions to
the ultra-traditionalists.”
Note how
traditionalists are emerging as pariahs?
Then on
February 5, Telegraph.co.uk reported that Cardinal Cormac
Murphy-O’Connor, leader of the Catholic Church in England and Wales
“has taken the unprecedented step of condemning the Pope over his
decision to lift the excommunication of a British bishop who denied
the Holocaust.” In a letter to Dr. Jonathan Sacks, Chief Rabbi, the
Cardinal expressed his dismay at the effect of the Vatican decree
and said he deplores Williamson’s words.
“His statement
and views have absolutely no place in the Catholic Church and its
teaching,” he said.
Last November,
the Cardinal, Chief Rabbi and other British religious leaders had
prayed together at Auschwitz-Birkenau, as “witnesses to the
Holocaust that some still deny.” Now the rabbi, in his reply to the
Cardinal, said “Your dismay and your understanding of the
seriousness of Holocaust denial, matches the feeling of many Jews
around the world who believe that great damage has been done to
Catholic-Jewish relations.”
Fortunately
old Murphy-O’Connor was to able to assure his rabbi friend that “the
lifting of excommunication is only a first step towards
reconciliation of the bishops concerned. None of them is yet able to
exercise any office either as priest or bishop in communion with the
Catholic Church.” This was because as of 1988 Archbishop Lefebvre
and his society of priests were already operating without Vatican
sanction. When he and Bishop Antonio de Castro-Mayer of Brazil
proceeded to consecrate four bishops without a papal mandate, they
and those they consecrated incurred ipso facto excommunication. The
two elder bishops have both died. Now that the excommunications have
been lifted for the others, they resume their former irregular
status. Full rehabilitation is still a thing to be negotiated.
So let us now
examine Benedict’s official statement of January 28. “While I renew
with affection the expression of my full and unquestionable
solidarity with our brothers, receivers of the First Covenant, I
hope that the memory of the Shoah leads mankind to reflect on the
unpredictable power of evil when it conquers the heart of man,” he
said. “May the Shoah be for all a warning against forgetfulness,
against denial or reductionism. . . The Shoah particularly teaches .
. . that only the tiresome path of listening and dialogue, of love
and of forgiveness leads the peoples, the cultures, and the
religions of the world to the hoped–for goal of fraternity and peace
in truth.”
Think about
this. The “pope”, remember, professes to be not yet in “full
communion” with the SSPX priests or others like them. Yet he
expresses “full and unquestionable solidarity” with his unbaptized
“brothers of the First Covenant!” No talk here of any Mystical Body
of Christ, i.e. the Church, much less a New Covenant. It’s all
Shoah, Shoah, Shoah, like some catchy refrain! Wunnerful, wunnerful!
Such a warm and fuzzy way to think and dream and act! The Shoah
leads, it teaches, it warns. It’s the source of wisdom, leading us
down the path towards ultimate peace — not in Christ, however. No,
there is no mention of Him — nor of the Father, nor of the Holy
Spirit. Nor of conversion, nor baptism and all that. On the
contrary, the peoples, cultures and religions of the world appear to
travel their separate ways towards the “goal of fraternity.”
Whatever else,
one thing is clear: this “fraternity” cannot be Christian in any
orthodox sense. So what does that make Benedict? Does he really
believe such stuff, or is he just play-acting like his Polish
predecessor? And what does it say about Bishop Bernard Fellay, head
of the SSPX? Through all the furor he seems fixed on his goal of
reconciliation with Rome. But at what price? Isn’t there a need to
guard the integrity of the SSPX and, despite media distractions, not
forget the original issues?
Ironically
Lefebvre never considered the excommunications to be valid in the
first place. Who in the mainstream media ever mentions that? As
Bernard Tissier de Mallerais, one of the four bishops in question,
explains in a recent interview for Catholic Family News, Lefebvre
consecrated them “due to a case of necessity,” which is “considered
valid in canon law.” This in their view rendered any so-called
“excommunications” null and void. So why bother petitioning Rome at
all? Lebebvre himself had wavered on the papal question. While he
continued to criticize the Conciliar popes, and to ordain priests
using the old rite without Vatican approval, he nevertheless saw
them as technically valid. Not until nearly three years before his
death did he go so far as to consecrate four bishops against papal
orders.
So what now?
With him gone, how do we interpret this move towards reconciliation
with Rome? Does it represent a trend towards compromise? Bishop
Tissier de Mallerais, who heads the SSPX seminary at Econe, says no,
they are still standing firm, that their intent is, rather, to “lead
Rome towards our positions.” But how feasible is such a goal? A 2006
interview of this same bishop by Stephen Heiner for The Remnant
makes us wonder. Tissier spoke candidly, indeed, provocatively, on a
number of issues, and even his definitions clashed with those in
vogue. He said, for instance, that it was absurd to talk of not
being in “communion” with the pope!
“Communion is
nothing, it is an invention of the Second Vatican Council,” he said.
“The essential thing is that these people (the Novus Ordo bishops)
do not have the Catholic Faith. ‘Communion’ does not mean anything
to me — it is a slogan of the new Church.”
Tissier also
brought up a topic he deemed “essential”: the strange beliefs of the
current pope. The bishop said that “this pope has professed heresies
in the past! He has professed heresies! I do not know whether he
still does.” Furthermore, “he has never retracted his errors.” Asked
by Heiner to be specific as to when and how, Tissier replied. “When
he was a theologian, he professed heresies, he published a book full
of heresies.”
Pressed for
still more detail, the bishop gave the title of Ratzinger’s 1968
book: Introduction to Christianity. “It is a book full of heresies.
Especially the negation of the dogma of the Redemption.” He insisted
that according to Ratzinger, Christ did not atone for our sins on
the cross. In further denying even the necessity of satisfaction,
Tissier said, Ratzinger went way beyond Luther. “It is worse than
Luther, much worse,” he said.
Sounding a bit
confused, Heiner asked the big question: was Tissier saying
Ratzinger “is a heretic?” To which the bishop replied, “No. But he
has never retracted these statements.” Then would he use the words
“suspicious” “questionable” or “favoring heresy?” No, Tissier said,
“it is clear. I can quote him.” So he proceeded to read a passage
from Ratzinger’s book that rejects the notion of “a God whose
inexorable justice required a human sacrifice, the sacrifice of his
own Son.”
“And we flee
with horror from a justice, the dark anger of which removes any
credibility from the message of love,” Ratzinger also wrote.
But that
wasn’t his sole instance of heresy. No, Tissier alluded to “many
others” as well, including doubts regarding the divinity of Christ
and the “dogma of the Incarnation.” Indeed, Ratzinger the theologian
“re-reads, re-interprets all the dogmas of the Church” according to
“the new philosophy, the idealist philosophy of Kant.” Strong words,
to be sure. So Heiner, coming close to the obvious conclusion,
remarked: But yet, the Society is not sedevacantist. . .
“No, no, no.
no. He is the Pope,” Tissier insisted, even as he went on to say
again and again what he had already repeated over and over: that
Joseph Ratzinger “has professed heresies.”
Nor has he
apparently ever retracted them.
Also
significant was Tissier’s reaction to the question as to how the
SSPX would interpret Vatican Council II. Back in 1988, Lefebvre said
they would do so “in the light of Tradition.” Was this still the
case? “Absolutely not. Not any more,” Tissier said. “No, we would
read the Council in the light of the new philosophy, the only way it
can be read. You cannot read Vatican II as a Catholic work. It is
based on the philosophy of Immanuel Kant.”
And he really
thinks he can steer Rome to his way of thinking?
Bishop Bernard
Fellay, who heads the SSPX, remains optimistic about this. In a
letter to his followers dated January 24 he notes that, thanks to
Rome’s recent gesture, Catholics “attached to Tradition throughout
the world will no longer be unjustly stigmatized and condemned for
having kept the Faith of their fathers.” He goes on to quote from a
recent letter he wrote to the Vatican in which he expresses his
faith in Church doctrine, and in the Primacy of Peter. As loyal
Catholics, he says, he and his fellow SSPX priests, accept the
teaching of all the Church councils “up to the Second Vatican
Council, about which we express some reservations.” In all this, he
is “convinced that we remain faithful” to the principles set down by
Archbishop Marcel Lefebvre.
In a follow-up
interview with the Swiss daily Le Temps, Fellay was asked
about yet another assertion that he soon hopes to examine, together
with higher-ups in Rome, the deeper causes of the “unprecedented
crisis” afflicting the Church. What exactly were these causes? And,
in his opinion, was Vatican II responsible for the crisis? In reply,
Fellay said the crisis “is caused by a new approach to the world, a
new view of man, that is, an anthropocentrism which consists of an
exaltation of man and a forgetfulness of God. The arrival of modern
philosophies, with their less precise language, has led to confusion
in theology.”
As for who is
responsible, he said, “Not all comes from the Church. But it is true
that we reject a part of the Council. Benedict XVI himself condemned
those who claim the Spirit of Vatican II to demand an evolution of
the Church in a break with its past.” Oh really? That’s fortunate,
considering his plans to negotiate in the names of the SSPX.
Regarding these, he said, “I am confident. If the Church says today
anything that is in contradiction with what it taught yesterday, and
if it forced us to accept this change, then it must explain the
reason for it. I believe in the infallibility of the Church, and I
think that we will reach a true solution.”
Nice words, to
be sure — but confusing. And are they accurate? Note how they tend
to contradict those of Bishop Tissier de Mallerais. While alluding
to false philosophy, Fellay ties it to no one in particular. Unlike
Tissier, he names no names, not even Immanuel Kant’s. As for
Benedict, ignoring any murky past, Fellay suggests they currently
think alike on key issues. With his motu proprio Summorum
Pontificum, has this pontiff not promoted a wider use of the 1962
Missal? Fellay brought that up in his recent letter to the Vatican.
If there is a catch to this, meaning those “in communion” with Rome
will also have to accept the “Ordinary Form” of the Mass, i.e. the
Novus Ordo, Fellay does not say.
No, he prefers
to tell traditionalists that all is well, even as, thanks to the
current crisis, all hell is breaking loose and they are being
blamed.
(Click here for Part III)
Copyright by Judith M.
Gordon 2009