Argentina boots the Holocaust-denying bishop

Anti-"Modernist" Pope Pius X

Cristina Fernández' government is kicking him out and wishing him good riddance: El Gobierno expulsa de la Argentina al obispo que negó el Holocausto Clarín 19.02.2009.

Interior Minister Florencio Randazzo gave Bishop Richard Nelson Williamson 10 days to leave on his own or be expelled. One of the grounds is the "public notoriety" Williams has incurred "by his anti-Semitic declarations". The government's statement said that his Holocaust-denial statement that he spouted on Swedish television "profoundly attack Argentine society, the Jewish people and all of humanity."

According to the government, being a Jew-hater isn't his only departure from Christian ideals. They claim he's been lying about his reason for being in the country, claiming to be an administrative employee of a group called "La Tradición" but really has been acting as the head of the renegade seminary in Moreno of the Levebrist Society of St. Pius X.

The namesake of that reactionary Catholic Society, Pius X (1835-1914), Giuseppe Melchiorre Sarto, was the first Pope to be canonized as a saint. But the distinguishing feature of his papacy (1903-1914) was his bitter campaign against "Modernism". Richard McBrien in Lives of the Popes: The Pontiffs from St. Peter to John Paul II (1997) writes:

Although Pius X was canonized a saint in 1954, his pontificate stands as one of the most controversial in the modern papacy. He assumed a relatively critical posture toward modern democratic governments and led a sometimes cruel and internecine campaign against Catholic theologians, biblical scholars, and historians (lumping them all under the umbrella of Modernism), from which the Church did not begin to recover until the Second Vatican Council (1962-65).

And it's the ultra-traditionalist devoted admirers of that Pope that the current Pope Ratzinger (Benedict XVI) wants to restore to good standing within the Church. Disgusting.

Tags: anti-semitism, argentina, catholic fundamentalists, holocaust denial

Another Ratzinger special

Schismatic, reactionary Archbishop Marcel Lefebvre (1905-1991)

Pope Ratzinger I (formally Benedict XVI) just lifted the excommunication of four schismatic hard-right bishops, one of whom is an overt Holocaust denier.

Dave Neiwert gives a great account in Pope Benedict reaches out to anti-Semitic Catholics, but liberals still talk to the hand (video fixed) Crooks and Liars by David Neiwert 01/25/09. I have to admit that "talk to the hand" is a figure of speech I only recently learned what it means, i.e., talk to the hand because the ears ain't listening to you.

Lefebvre movement: long, troubled history with Judaism by John Allen, Jr. National Catholic Reporter 01/26/09. The four bishops that Ratzinger just accepted back into the Catholic Church were ordained by the late schismatic Catholic archbishop Marcel Lefebvre. Allen reports:

A troubled history with Judaism has long been part of the Catholic traditionalist movement associated with the late French Archbishop Marcel Lefebvre — beginning with Lefebvre himself, who spoke approvingly of both the World War II-era Vichy Regime in France and the far-right National Front, and who identified the contemporary enemies of the faith as “Jews, Communists and Freemasons” in an Aug. 31, 1985, letter to Pope John Paul II.

Reacting to the furor over [Bishop Richard] Williamson [the reinstated Holocaust denier], the Vatican has stressed that lifting the excommunication is not an endorsement of his views on the Holocaust, and has repeated its firm commitment to Catholic-Jewish dialogue and to combating anti-Semitism. The pope’s outreach to traditionalists should instead be seen, spokespersons said, as an "act of peace" intended to end the only formal schism in the wake of the Second Vatican Council (1962-65).

The PBS Newshour reported on the issue in Pope Draws Criticism for Pardoning Bishop 01/28/09. Their report shows Williamson declaring:

I believe that the historical evidence is hugely against 6 million Jews having been deliberately gassed in gas chambers as a deliberate policy of Adolf Hitler. I believe there were no gas chambers.

Holcaust denial is a variety of pseudohistory. But it's main purpose is sneering at Jews and victims of the Nazi dictatorship. It's also an attempt to rehabilitate the image of Hitler and Nazism, but I see that as a distinctly secondary function. Holocausts deniers' approach is so full of far-right, crackpot features that I find it hard to take seriously that most of them actually believe their own line.

Williamson's brief statement is typical. Denying that there were gas chambers in the extermination camps is straightforward denial of historical facts. But the rest of his statement is full of the kind of double-talk rightwing kooks love.

"I believe that the historical evidence is hugely against 6 million Jews having been deliberately gassed in gas chambers as a deliberate policy of Adolf Hitler, he said.

No one claims that six million Jews were killed in gas chambers. Large numbers were shot, starved or beaten to death, and so on. The "deliberately" is a nice weasel word.

The six million number originated with Adolf Eichmann, who was in a better position than most to know. I believe that most historians of the Holocaust would put the number of clearly documented deaths at between 5.2 million and 5.8 million. But they also don't challenge six million as a likely number. Leading Holocaust historians did react against a claim several years ago that newly-released files from the Soviet Union showed that the number was significantly higher than six million. The higher estimate was a serious misreading of the material.

But Holocaust deniers and Hitler apologists love to comma-dance over numbers. They insist on minimizing the number of Jews and others killed in the Holocaust. But exaggerating the number of Germans killed in the Dresden bombing in particular has been a favorite obsession of the same crowd.

Also, Williamson specifies a "deliberate policy of Adolf Hitler". A variation on Holocaust denial is to deny that Hitler himself ordered it or even knew about it. In response to David Irving's work in particular, historians have looked closely at both issues. And, despite the extreme efforts to shield Hitler from documentable responsibility, there is no serious doubt that he both ordered the killing and knew what was going on.

This is part of the problem of responding in a careful way to bald-faced liars. I say "no serious doubt" because despite overwhelming circumstantial and other evidence, we don't have a handwritten order from Hitler saying "Kill.All.The.Jews." Someone looking at the question carelessly or superficially might have some doubt. But not anyone who actually is aware of the evidence. Christopher Browning deals with this particular question in The Path to Genocide: Essays on Launching the Final Solution (1995).

Additional sources on the controversy over Ratzinger's action:

Replacing dialogue with deafness by Jonathan Romain Guardian 01/26/09

Pope’s Embrace of Renegade Bishops Dooms Jewish-Catholic Summit by Nathaniel Popper The Forward 01/27/09:

The most significant impending meeting between Jewish leaders and Pope Benedict XVI is being called off due to the Catholic Church’s recent decision to reconcile with four renegade ultra-conservative Catholics, including one who has a history of denying the Holocaust.

Israel’s chief rabbinate sent a letter to the Vatican indefinitely postponing a March summit in Rome that was to include the pope. The letter came a few days after the Vatican revoked the excommunication of four bishops from the Society of Saint Pius X, a group that opposed modernizing reforms adopted by the church during the 1960s, including efforts to reconcile with Jews. One of the four bishops in question, Richard Williamson, has said that no Jews were killed in Nazi gas chambers and has accused Jews of striving for “world dominion.”

Pope decision to rehabilitate Holocaust-denying bishop sparks Jewish-Catholic row Haaretz 01/25/09:

The Yad Vashem Holocaust Museum and Memorial in Jerusalem decried as
"scandalous" Benedict's decision to lift excommunications on British-born bishop, Richard Williamson, who has said there were no gas chambers and only 300,000 Jews perished in Nazi concentration camps in World War Two. Foreign Ministry spokesman Yigal Palmor, said, however, the pontiff's planned visit in May to Israel was not in doubt. "This has nothing to do with relations between states," he said.

Tags: anti-semitism, catholic church,, catholic fundamentalists, pope benedict XVI

Confederate "Heritage" Month, April 24: Reactionary Catholic neo-Confederacy

Pius X (Andrés Jacinto Longhin [1863-1936]): Symbol for Catholic fundamentalists ("traditionalists")

Via Edward Sebesta's blog Anti-Neo-Confederate (Article on Thomas Woods at DePaul University 04/19/07), I see this article about the pro-Confederate inclinations of a guy who Sebesta identifies as the associate editor of Latin Mass magazine.

I don't know if this is the same kind of reactionary Catholicism with which Mel Gibson and his Holocaust-denier father are associated. But it's clearly a Catholic fundamentalist publication. (The title is a big clue right off the bat.)

The article to which Sebesta links is Neo-confederacy a possibilty? by Euan Hague The DePaulia (undated but apparently from April 2007). Hague writes of Woods:

Woods is the author of a 2004 book entitled The Politically Incorrect Guide to American History which the Boston Globe described as "ultra-reactionary extremism." A lengthy essay in the New York Times by Adam Cohen stated that the intent of this book by Woods is in "distorting the past to promote dangerous policies today." Cohen continues, explaining that "if the 14th Amendment, which guarantees minorities 'equal protection of the law,' was never properly ratified – as Mr. Woods argues – racial discrimination may be constitutional after all." ...

Our upcoming speaker, Thomas Woods, was a member of the League of the South and contributed to their publication Southern Patriot on more than one occasion in the 1990s. For example, in a 1995 essay Woods claimed that the 14th Amendment, which gave citizenship rights to former slaves and provides us with equal protection guarantees, was "wholly incompatible with a federal system" giving "ill-begotten authority" to "militant egalitarians."

The League of the South has been described by the anti-racist Southern Poverty Law Center as a "hate group" at the forefront of a neo-Confederate movement "increasingly rife with white supremacists and racist ideology." Mr. Woods has subsequently become involved with a group of radical reactionary Catholic scholars whom, the Southern Poverty Law Center demonstrated in a lengthy article in their Intelligence Report magazine published in Winter 2006, reject recent Vatican teachings and "may form the largest group of hard-line anti-Semites in America."

This is a reminder that what neo-Confederacy is really about is not preserving "heritage" or honor the memory of Confederate soldiers and whatever. It's about white racism and white supremacy.

Hague also provides a link to The New Crusaders by Heidi Beirich Intelligence Report Winter 2007, which uses the term "radical tranditionalists" for this brand of Catholic extremists.

Woods also has a column that runs at the neo-Confederate LewRockwell.com Web site. The titles of Woods' column reflect the rightwing isolationist position of the Lew Rockwell crowd as well as some other hard-right types. I have occasionally linked to articles at that site that I thought were worthwhile, though I identify it as a neo-Confederate Web site when I do.

They publish some columns by people like Gabriel Kolko, Tom Engelhardt, Jude Wanniski, Jim Lobe, and Eric Margolis who are critical of the Iraq War and American unilateralism but who also are not advocates of neo-Confederate ideology or pseudohistory, so far as I know. Gary North, who has a column there, is one of the best known advocates of the extreme fundamentalist Christian Reconstruction movement. Some of the links they have at their "Columnists & Commentators" page are actually links to other Web sites.

Tags: catholic fundamentalists, neo-confederate, thomas woods

Catholic conservatives

George Weigel of the Ethics and Public Policy Center gives us a good snapshot of the viewpoint of a conservative Catholic (himself) on the new Pope Benedict XVI in this article: What Benedict XVI Means by George Weigel The Catholic Difference 05/06/05.

The opening paragraph gives a good clue to where he's going, because it praises the new Pope, Joseph Ratzinger, as "one of the great Christian minds and spirits of our time." Ratzinger is a theologian. But his main contribution - if we can call it that - to Christian theology has been to enforce a rigid and reactionary policy in his former office as head of the Congregation of the Doctrine of the Faith.

Weigel makes his agenda even more clear in the second paragraph:

In the long view of history, though, April 19, 2005 [the date of Benedict's election as Pope], may mark the moment at which the forty-year effort to force Catholicism to tailor its doctrine and its message to the tastes of secular modernity crashed and burned.

That is a hostile polemical reference to the Second Vatican Council of 1962-65, in which the Church officially abandoned most of its effort to cling to the Middle Ages.

Catholic conservatives are currently saying that it what they see as the namby-pamby Vatican II outlook has caused a decline in the Church because of its lack of religious zeal. Now, this criticism makes some superficial sense in Europe and North America, where a probably irreversable secular trend has been at work for some time. But the reality is that in Latin America and Africa in particular, the Church has enjoyed a spectacular growth in recent decades.

Weigel explicitly complains about the reform Council:

Ever since the Second Vatican Council, some Catholics and most of the world media have expected - and in certain cases, demanded - that the Catholic Church follow the path taken by virtually every other non-fundamentalist western Christian community over the past century: the path of accommodation to secular modernity and its conviction that religious belief, if not mere childishness, is a lifestyle choice with no critical relationship to the truth of things. These expectations have involved both doctrinal accommodation (e.g., the question of whether Jesus is the unique savior of the world) and moral accommodation (e.g., the many issues involved in the post-Freudian claim that human beings are essentially bundles of desires). [my emphasis]

That quotation gives a glimpse at some of the religious and cultural perspectives that provide emotional, religious and political common ground for the various elements of what we call the Christian Right in the US. The fear of "modernity" (i.e., the last six hundred years of Western history), the exclusive claim of the Christian faith to religious truth and a pronounced fear of normal human "desires," he touches all of them in that short comment.

And he dismisses the ecumenical goals and modernizing impulses of Vatican II - including such changes in the ritual as using the language of the congregation rather than Latin in church services - with the following sneer:

Yet it is very, very difficult to argue that this strategy of cultural accommodation - which in some cases bleeds into cultural appeasement - has solved the two hundred fifty year old problem of being Christian in the modern world. Nor is it possible to demonstrate, empirically, that cultural accommodation or appeasement produce vital, growing, compelling Christian communities. Precisely the opposite is the case. Christian communities with porous doctrinal and moral boundaries wither and die. Christian communities with clear doctrinal and moral borders flourish, even amidst the acids of modernity.

Yet it was expected that the Catholic Church would, indeed must, take the path of accommodation: that has been the central assumption of what's typically called "progressive" Catholicism. That assumption has now been decisively and definitively refuted. The "progressive" project is over - not because its intentions were malign, but because it posed an ultimately boring question: how little can I believe, and how little can I do, and still remain a Catholic?

Protestant fundamentalists don't want to have church services in Latin. But this essentially reactionary impulse, the desire to go back to an idealized good old days, is very much a common denominator among the fundamentalists, Pentecostals and conservative Catholics that are attracted to the Christian Right and its causes.

Tags: catholic church, catholic fundamentalists, george weigel