Word: williamson
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...last week between Pope Benedict XVI and leaders of the global Jewish community served to ease the tension between the two religions, caused by the Pope’s decision to reinstate four previously excommunicated bishops back into the Roman Catholic Church. In particular, the reinstatement of Bishop Richard Williamson has outraged Jewish leaders, who point to his public skepticism of the Holocaust as evidence of anti-Semitism. Many have called for the Pope to re-excommunicate Williamson from the church. While the Pope’s efforts to meet with Jewish leaders in order to explain his decision...
...Williamson, Bishop Richard • skepticism about the Holocaust-and especially about the existence of gas chambers...
...must first be clear that the Pope himself badly wanted the rapprochement with the Lefebvrites, a throwback movement that uses the Latin-rite Mass and shuns any attempt to have dialogue with other religions. Although he doesn't agree with all their views - and certainly not Williamson's Holocaust-denying - Benedict had hoped that by undoing the excommunication, the Lefebvrites would eventually accept the modernizing reforms of the Second Vatican Council and become a new force for contemporary conservative Catholicism in the West. (Read "Germany Confronts Its Dark Past...
...details to make way for the reconciliation with the Lefebvrites. Other top Holy See officials were, by all accounts, shut out from both the substance of the accord and its timing and presentation to the outside world. That it coincided with the airing of a television interview with Williamson in which he espoused his views of the Holocaust could be chalked up to bad luck. But the British-born bishop has said similar things in the past, as have several other Lefebvrite members; the fact that nothing was done ahead of time to try to assuage Jewish concerns doomed...
Castrillón expressed surprise when it was revealed that Williamson was a Holocaust denier. Some Catholic blogs have castigated Castrillón for not doing enough of a background check while vetting the Lefebvrites. One of the Cardinals closest to Benedict, and a former student, Archbishop of Vienna Cristoph Schonborn, took the unusual step of criticizing his fellow Cardinals of the Roman Curia, saying that "some collaborators of the Pope" had let the Pontiff down. The consequences for Benedict have been a 10-day avalanche of criticism - other Lefebvrites have come out of the woodwork with controversial statements - culminating...