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Last update - 14:26 25/01/2009
Pope lifts excommunication of bishop who denied Holocaust
By The Associated Press
Tags: Vatican, Jewish World 

Pope Benedict XVI has lifted the excommunications of four traditionalist bishops, including that of a Holocaust denier whose rehabilitation sparked outrage among Jewish groups.

The four bishops were excommunicated 20 years ago after they were consecrated by the late ultraconservative Archbishop Marcel Lefebvre without papal consent - a move the Vatican said at the time was an act of schism.

The Vatican said Saturday that Benedict rehabilitated the four as part of his efforts to bring Lefebvre's Society of St. Pius X back into the Vatican's fold.
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But the move came just days after one of the four, British Bishop Richard
Williamson, was shown in a Swedish state TV interview saying that historical evidence is hugely against 6 million Jews having been deliberately gassed.

Jewish groups denounced the Vatican for having embraced a Holocaust denier and warned that the pope's decision would have serious implications for Catholic-Jewish relations as well as the pontiff's planned visit to the Holy Land later this year.

"I do not see how business can proceed as usual," said Rabbi David Rosen,
Jerusalem-based head of interrelgious affairs at the American Jewish Committee and a key Vatican-Jewish negotiator.

He called for the pope or a senior adviser to issue a clear condemnation of all Holocaust denials and deniers.

Shimon Samuels of the Simon Wiesenthal Center in Paris said he understood the German-born pope's desire for Christian unity, but said Benedict could have excluded Williamson. He warned that his rehabilitation will have a political cost for the Vatican.

"I'm certain as a man who has known the Nazi regime in his own flesh, he
understands you have to be very careful and very selective," Samuels said.

The Vatican spokesman, the Rev. Federico Lombardi, said Williamson's views were absolutely indefensible. But he denied that rehabilitating Williamson implied that the Vatican shared them.

"They are his personal ideas ... that we certainly don't share but they have nothing to do with the issue of the excommunication and the removal of the excommunication," Lombardi told AP Television News.

Williamson's comments cast a cloud over the pope's efforts to normalize
relations with the Swiss-based Society of St. Pius X, which Lefebvre founded in 1969. Lefebvre was opposed to the liberalizing reforms of the 1962-65 Second Vatican Council, particularly its ecumenical outreach and its decision to allow Mass to be celebrated in local languages instead of Latin.

Despite concerns from liberal Catholics, Benedict has made clear from the
start of his pontificate that he wanted to reintegrate the group back into the Vatican's fold, meeting within months of his election with the current head of the society, Bishop Bernard Fellay.

In 2007, Benedict answered one of Fellay's key demands by relaxing
restrictions on celebrating the Latin Mass. In lifting the excommunication decree, he answered the society's second condition for beginning theological discussions about normalizing relations.

The decree from the Vatican's Congregation for Bishops said Benedict remits the automatic excommunication that the four bishops incurred and said the 1988 decree declaring their consecrations a schismatic act had no legal standing any longer.

In a statement Saturday, Fellay, who is one of the rehabilitated bishops,
expressed his gratitude to Benedict and said the decree would help the whole Roman Catholic Church.

"Thanks to this gesture, Catholics attached to tradition throughout the world will no longer be unjustly stigmatized and condemned for having kept the faith of their fathers," Fellay said in a letter to his supporters.

Fellay, meanwhile, has distanced the society from Williamson's remarks about the Holocaust, saying Williamson only had authority to discuss matters of faith and that he was personally responsible for his own opinions.

But Fellay also berated Swedish state television, accusing it in a Jan.
letter of having introduced the Holocaust issue in the interview with the
obvious intention of misrepresenting and maligning, the society.

While Williamson's comments may be offensive and erroneous, they are not an excommunicable offense, said Monsignor Robert Wister, professor of church history at Immaculate Conception School of Theology at Seton Hall University in New Jersey.

"To deny the Holocaust is not a heresy even though it is a lie," he said. The excommunication can be lifted because he is not a heretic, but he remains a liar.

The Society of St. Pius X, which is based in Menzingen, Switzerland, has six seminaries, three universities and 70 primary and secondary schools around the globe. Aside from the four bishops, it boasts 463 priests and 160 seminarians.

The status of the society's priests remains unsettled. While their ordinations are valid, the Church considers them illicit because they were ordained by someone who didn't have the authority, Lombardi said. Pope Paul VI suspended Lefebvre from priestly duties in 1976, but he continued ordaining priests illicitly
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After the war
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  1.   1984- I thought it was only a novel 04:04  |  Joe 24/01/09
  2.   what does it mean? where is my family? 04:33  |  Michel 24/01/09
  3.   Holocaust Views Have NOTHING To Do With Doctrine! 04:34  |  MaoSayTongue 24/01/09
  4.   Holocaust 04:46  |  Canadian 24/01/09
  5.   Time to take a stand 05:24  |  Ed 24/01/09
  6.   Groundhog Day 05:28  |  Richard S 24/01/09
  7.   Let the vatican do what it needs to 05:34  |  Dave Duncan 24/01/09
  8.   canadian 4 06:01  |  curious 24/01/09
  9.   EVIDENCE 06:02  |  AARON 24/01/09
  10.   to Joe: great post 06:20  |  Historian 24/01/09
  11.   Fairly important to note 06:24  |  Colin Wright 24/01/09
  12.   The Bishop,The Church,The Pope 08:13  |  Connie 24/01/09
  13.   behaving oddly civilized 08:18  |  Dennis 24/01/09
  14.   Joe: If Self Defence Is A War Crime, Your Right 08:32  |  Brad 24/01/09
  15.   Joe 08:57  |  Brad 24/01/09
  16.   ZYKLON B 11:55  |  Terry 24/01/09
  17.   #6, you`re absolutely right 12:20  |  Terry 24/01/09
  18.   Lifting Excommunication on Historical Revisionists 12:25  |  John Q. Public 24/01/09
  19.   Bishop´s Holocaust remarks 12:30  |  sioma Zubicky 24/01/09
  20.   Historian [ ? ] 14:09  |  Charles 24/01/09
  21.   # Sioma Zubicky 14:32  |  Terry 24/01/09
  22.   I Wonder 16:00  |  Nite Owl 24/01/09
  23.   outrage?, threaten?,I thought we were all brothers... 16:28  |  chop-chop 24/01/09
  24.   Is Hitler next as a saint? They are disgusting. 16:52  |  Eva 24/01/09
  25.   How Israel can become Vatican best friend 17:16  |  Dr. D. 24/01/09
  26.   Maybe Jews should just cut off ties with the Catholic Church 17:19  |  Damon 24/01/09
  27.   DELETED BY MODERATOR 17:40  |  hollingsworth 24/01/09
  28.   The Bishop, riding between Death and the Devil 17:56  |  Avraham 24/01/09
  29.   He says the Protocols are authentic too 18:15  |  BG 24/01/09
  30.   The gospel of Hollingsworth verse 21 18:38  |  Tulip 24/01/09
  31.   the plan is 19:15  |  paul 24/01/09
  32.   The Old farth Bendict can not shake of his 19:23  |  Israeli Observer 24/01/09
  33.   WHAT vatican-Jewish ties? 19:28  |  Arie 24/01/09
  34.   To BG:authenticity and 9/11 19:31  |  Arie 24/01/09
  35.   the man is an idiot 19:43  |  rachel 24/01/09
  36.   What do you expect? Hitler was Catholic. 19:52  |  Bennie 24/01/09
  37.   The Catholic Church has a lot of love 19:56  |  hiam 24/01/09
  38.   Hi Tulip 20:12  |  hollingsworth 24/01/09
  39.   Tulip & Hollingsworth 20:50  |  Victoria 24/01/09
  40.   True Catholics Are Aghast at This 21:50  |  Maynard 24/01/09
  41.   holocaust 21:51  |  tarlochan 24/01/09
  42.   The gospel of Hollingsworth verse 34 21:56  |  Tulip 24/01/09
  43.   pope and holocaust deniers 01:02  |  vik 25/01/09
  44.   why are you promoting him ? 01:25  |  flimflam 25/01/09
  45.   The Catholic Church 01:31  |  Jane 25/01/09
  46.   the church and all you bishops and priests. 01:40  |  alan 25/01/09
  47.   BENEDICT XVI 01:53  |  ABITBOL 25/01/09
  48.   MAO SE TONGUE 02:02  |  abitbol 25/01/09
  49.   canadian 02:09  |  abitbol 25/01/09
  50.   VATICAN 02:11  |  abitbol 25/01/09
  51.   Maynard 02:16  |  abitbol 25/01/09
  52.   Holocaust denial 03:18  |  Danny 25/01/09
  53.   Don`t fear Ratzinger, just scream he`s immoral. 04:25  |  Fortuna Benmayor 25/01/09
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