In a controversial move yesterday, Pope Benedict XVI revoked the 1988 excommunication of four right-wing bishops who had been appointed to their positions in consecrations that were not approved by the Vatican. Today's New York Times reports on the move that attempts to normalize the Vatican's relationship with the Society of St. Pius X. The Society was founded in 1970 by French archbishop Marcel Lefebvre as a protest against the modernizing reforms of Vatican II.
Most controversial of the four reinstated clergy is Richard Williamson who has denied the Holocaust and has charged that the U.S. government staged the 9-11 attacks as a pretext to invade Afghanistan. In an interview last year, Williamson said that "historical evidence" disputes the conclusion that millions of Jews were "deliberately gassed in gas chambers as a deliberate policy of Adolf Hitler." The London Telegraph quotes a Williamson interview given this week in which he said: "I believe there were no gas chambers ... I think that 200,000 to 300,000 Jews perished in Nazi concentration camps but none of them by gas chambers." Catholic-Jewish relations, as well as Vatican discussions with Israel over a planned Papal visit, are likely to be complicated by the Pope's move.
UPDATE: Monday's National Catholic Reporter carries an article titled: Lefebvre movement: long, troubled history with Judaism which says: "The historical association between some strains of traditionalist Catholicism and anti-Semitism run deep, intertwined with royalist reaction to the French Revolution in the 18th century and, later, the Boulanger and Dreyfus Affairs in France (1886-1889 and 1894-1899)."
UPDATE2: According to Tuesday's New York Times, Bishop Bernard Fellay, director of the St. Pius X Society, wrote the Pope on Tuesday rejecting Williamson’s statements, saying they "do not reflect the position of the society." He expressed regret over the problems that the statements had caused.
UPDATE3: Bloomberg reports that on Thursday, another Catholic priest, this time from the northern Italian town of Treviso, entered the arena of Holocaust denial. He told a local newspaper: "I know that gas chambers existed to disinfect. But I can’t tell you if they killed anyone or not." [Thanks to PewSitter for the lead.] UPDATE: Haaretz reported on Feb. 7 that this Italian priest has been expelled from the Italian branch of the Society of St. Pius X.
