Benny keeps screwing up the relationship with Jews. He had to have known what Williamson had said about the Holocaust….after all he is the TOP DOG in the RCC. But apparently it is more important to get this group back into the fold…and not worry about what the fallout is in relation to other religions.

Well, pagansister, the head of the SSPX has already sent a letter of apology to Benedict for what Williamson has said and what bad publicity it’s giving the Pope and the church right now. This is a far more complex issue that what we casual observers can really appreciate, I think.
And why is the Pope supposed to care more about relations with other religions than about internal relations within the church? Isn’t that kind of like a father not caring adequately for his children (even the wayward ones) because he’s too busy trying to make friends with the neighbors?

Well if your kid breaks the neighbor’s window on purpose hopefully you demand some contrition and payment from him.
There’s an article in the NYT about the Pope’s most recent smoothing-over action.

A couple of more articles on PB16:
One from France listing several of his gaffes* including this one I didn’t remember

Benedict made waves again the following year when he travelled to Brazil. Discussing the Christianisation of the country, he said the indigenous people had been “silently longing” for Christ, asserting that European colonisers had not imposed their faith on them.

Ten days later he sought to make amends with a Vatican statement recognising that “unjustifiable crimes” had been committed during the European conquest of Latin America.

We hear he’s such a Catholic scholar you’d think he’d know some of the history of how there got to be so many Catholics in the new world.
In the other article yet another priest pretty much denies the Holocaust, claiming the ovens were hygienic.

“I know that gas chambers existed to disinfect,” Father Floriano Abrahamowicz, a priest in the northern town of Treviso, told local newspaper Tribuna in an online interview published today. “But I can’t tell you if they killed anyone or not.”

Should people who believe things like that be allowed by the RCC to preach to the public? Just asking.

Boy, oh, boy, I sure do love when people dismiss Benny’s inflammatory and caustic and inappropriate comments with ludicrous comments such as, “Well, why should Catholics care what other people think, anyway?”
If that’s the case, stay out of politics, out of medicine, out of schools, and everything else public that has nothing to do with anything other directly than the Catholic church.
Otherwise, I’ll thank you to keep your utter hypocrisy to yourself!

And what you and so many other critics don’t seem to understand, nnmns, that the lifting of the excommunications is basically nothing more than a formal move that opens the possibility for members of the SSPX to be reconciled with the Catholic Church, but it alone does not reconciliation make. If certain members of the group, like Williamson, aren’t willing to accept Vatican II–which includes an unequivocal denunciation of anti-Semitism–then they simply aren’t going to be able to enter back into full communion. Basically, there are some pretty huge conditions that these people are going to have agree to meet, and if Williamson is as bad as he seems, I can’t even imagine he’s going to be willing to meet them, meaning that for him personally, nothing might come of this.
Again, I can’t stress enough that this is a necessary formal condition for giving Catholic Church the opportunity to corrent any of the errors that members of the SSPX are teaching. What do you suggest, that the Pope let all the people in the pews of the schismatic churches just stay there and keep being fed conspiracy-theory-laden nonsense, or make a deliberate effort to bring them back into the fold and so be able to tutor them in correct Catholic belief and practice, which includes the rejection of anti-Semitism?

Assuming the indigenous peoples of Brazil were forcefed the Catholic faith at swordpoint, there are many who still value their faith. After all, Brazil is a secular nation with citizens free to practice their own religion, or am I mistaken? Would future generations convinced of the authenticity of Roman Catholicism remain faithful knowing such a brutal method was used to proselatize their ancestors? That being the case, would Pope Benedict XVI have any reason for going there to speak to millions of faithful adherents?
“Otherwise, I’ll thank you to keep your utter hypocrisy to yourself!”
I second the motion! The door swings both ways, though doesn’t it? Libertarians who screem at the top of their lungs “seperation of church and state!” need not concern themselves with the internal affairs of the Catholic Church or how they govern their faithful.

I have just finished a Bible Study discussion of 1 Corinthians 8. I think b16 would do well to read the passage (again, I hope) and meditate on the verse that states, “Knowledge puffs up, but love builds up.” How does his knowledge of the bishop and colleagues puff up the RCC or the bishops-in-question or anyone else? And then how does his love for the Jews, victims or survivors or others, get expressed? It seems he is showing a preference for knowledge and choosing to set aside acts of love. There is more about this in the chapter, and I will not attmept to drag in into this posting. But I think he would do well re-visiting this piece from Paul.
As to why non-RCC folks should care what b16 says or does — he has assumed a position of some authority and what he says and does has effects on others outside the RCC. Members of the RCC will make assumptions, choices, and take actions based on what b16 says. If they do not, his authority is minimal. If they respond to b16s words or actions, and he dismisses, ignores, or overlooks some people for any reason, they will have a diminished status for RCC folks. If he did not want the outside attention or expect external comments then he should have stayed in the Theological Office. Non-RCC people’s response, even negatively, to b16 is an affirmation of his authority and the expectations from that. I hope he appreciates that as well as his conrtol of the inner workings of the RCC.

“Would future generations convinced of the authenticity of Roman Catholicism remain faithful knowing such a brutal method was used to proselatize their ancestors?”
Hard to say how much the “common people” know, but being brainwashed and living among the brainwashed can have a lasting effect. Even Ben agreed there’d been crimes.