Vatican City – Ever since Pope Benedict XVI allowed schismatic bishops back into the Catholic fold last week, his decision has been met with abundant expressions of outrage and dismay, from both inside and outside the church.
Yet the controversy isn’t fueled by the bishops’ thoughts on the church or the papacy or liturgy but rather one bishop’s denial of the Holocaust.
Jewish groups are especially incensed that one of the bishops from the Society of St. Pius X (SSPX), Richard Williamson, told Swedish television that “historical evidence is hugely against 6 million Jews having been deliberately gassed in gas chambers as a deliberate policy of Adolf Hitler.”
Which has left people the world over asking: What was the pope thinking?
One explanation offered by those who know the pope intimately was that he simply was not aware of Williamson’s statements.
“Otherwise, I think he would have made it clear at the beginning that he was not endorsing them,” said the Rev. Joseph D. Fessio, a former student of Benedict’s who is also the English-language publisher of most of the pope’s books.
Vatican spokesmen have stressed that the pope’s reversal of Williamson’s 1988 excommunication implies no endorsement of his statements on the Holocaust, but rather a desire to reconcile with disaffected traditionalists.
Even so, many who accept this explanation wonder why Benedict himself didn’t offer it at the start. “The Pope should have said more to explain his thinking,” wrote the British Catholic journalist Damian Thompson, generally a strong supporter of the pontiff. “And he could also have expressed his repugnance at (Williamson’s) views.”
The omission is especially surprising since Benedict, who as a boy in his native Germany was drafted into the Hitler Youth and deplored the rise of Nazism, has long sought to improve relations between Catholics and Jews. One of the highlights of his visit to the United States last year, for instance, was a visit to a New York synagogue.
Even if Benedict was familiar with Williamson’s long track record of inflammatory declarations on the Holocaust and other topics, he may have judged it more prudent not to draw attention to them. Williamson was hardly a household name — he was not even the best-known of the four rehabilitated SSPX bishops — until Swedish television broadcast the now-infamous interview last week.
Still, informed observers say the great misunderstanding at the heart of the current controversy is utterly in character for the pope.
It reflects not only his temperament and background, they say, but also his ideals of church leadership.
“He’s a theologian and an academic; he deals in principles and arguments and intellectual back-and- forth,” said David Gibson, a former Vatican Radio reporter and author of “The Rule of Benedict.” “He doesn’t come from the pastoral side of the church. He doesn’t think in terms of diplomatic fallout.”
The mental habits of scholarship may have made it easier for Benedict to view the excommunication issue in isolation from what he considers irrelevant questions, Gibson said.
“In his mind, this is an internal church matter,” Gibson said. “He’s not sanctioning Williamson’s views, so what’s the problem?”
A readiness to take unpopular action also reflects Benedict’s philosophy of church leadership, Gibson says, noting a 1996 statement by then-Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger that a “bishop whose only concern is not to have any problems and to gloss over as many conflicts as possible is an image I find repulsive.”
For John Allen, Jr., the Vatican correspondent for the National Catholic Reporter and a papal biographer, Benedict “is a pope stubbornly indifferent to the canons of political correctness, in part because he’s not thinking about tomorrow’s headlines but the situation of the church a century, or several centuries, down the road.”
“That gives him great strength as a leader,” Allen said, “but the other side of it is that he sometimes takes actions that seem almost deliberately calculated to offend people he cares about. … Sometimes he is, quite frankly, tone-deaf.”
As a prime example of such tone-deafness, Allen points to Benedict’s
2006 speech in Regensburg, Germany, in which he quoted a medieval Christian emperor describing the teachings of Islam’s Prophet Muhammad as “evil and inhuman” and “spread by the sword.”
After violent protests against the speech broke out in several Muslim countries, Benedict expressed his “regrets” and held a special meeting with representatives of Muslim nations. Last November, he hosted an international group of Muslim scholars and clerics at the Vatican for a conference that grew out of responses to the Regensburg lecture.
Allen assumes that the “Vatican will engage in the same sort of damage control” over the coming weeks and months.
“But the real question is why they didn’t learn from Regensburg,”
Allen said. “The only answer I can give is that Benedict is who he is.”
By Francis X. Rocca
Religion News Service
Copyright 2009 Religion News Service. All rights reserved. No part of this transmission may be distributed or reproduced without written permission.
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posted January 27, 2009 at 7:19 pm
The moral being, think before you vote.
posted January 27, 2009 at 8:28 pm
It is obvious Benny doesn’t think ahead when he does things! He lives in his little Ivory Tower, and the “little people” really don’t enter his brain. His visits to other countries to spread the word etc. are a wonderful “show.” When he gets back home, the peons are forgotten….for more important things like bringing the “ex’s ” back into the fold.
posted January 28, 2009 at 1:10 am
The moral of the article, pagansister, was that he thinks, but he’s he’s not thinking about being politically correct. And maybe that’s a good thing, because the role of the papacy isn’t to be a figurehead for public relations but to guide Catholics in proper faith and practice. His primary job is not to try to satisfy critics of the church.
posted January 28, 2009 at 10:32 am
His role is also not to be reconciling with people who believe that Vatican II was a grave error and that the last legitimate Pope died almost 50 years ago.
posted January 28, 2009 at 10:36 am
I think we are coming to the crux of the problem. This is a pope who emphasizes thinking – preferably the way he does. Hence the removal of the excommunication. However, it does not seem to be in keeping with the intent of the papcy to have only an intellectual gymnast in that role. It was, and serves both the Church and humanity best, a pastoral role.
There is still a question of integrity. If we accept that b16 is primarily a man of words, why did he not know the words that Williamson has used to alientate many people, effectively invalidating his ministry? The excuse that b16 did not know what Williamson said is more feeble than that of a 13 year olds. A man of words and intellect would look first for the words of another person whose fate he is weighing. I think this calls b16′s judgement and even his honesty into question more than anything else.
It is clear that b16 is far more interested in returning some of the staunchest traditionalists to positions of authority. Not caring is not an excuse, it is a description of the man I expected him to be, either as defender of orthodoxy or as CEO of the RCC. It is not the description of a shepherd. I know that as a Protestant the RCC does not care what I think. But I hope someone within the walls fo the Chruch has enough chutzpah to challenge b16 on poor calls like this.
posted January 28, 2009 at 11:00 am
A clear picture of what is going on, what has gone on, and what may go on, is found in the LATimes.com. It’s an article by Tim Rutten, titled Pope’s decision is an affront to Jews.
Society of St. Pius X has been live for decades. It’s headquarters is in Switzerland. It is considered “tradionalist”, and has 30,000 adherents in the U.S.; Worldwide the group has 600 priests and seminarians, and runs three universities and 70 primary and secondary schools. Not such a small influence, right? The Vatican still considers the churches, and their members to be operating outside Catholic law. Richard Williamson is now head of a seminary in Argentina. This article is pointing out that Lefebvre’s followers believe things that ought to concern “everyone”. This is in todays Latimes, read it if you’re interested.
posted January 28, 2009 at 11:09 am
[For John Allen, Jr., the Vatican correspondent for the National Catholic Reporter and a papal biographer, Benedict "is a pope stubbornly indifferent to the canons of political correctness, in part because he's not thinking about tomorrow's headlines but the situation of the church a century, or several centuries, down the road."
"That gives him great strength as a leader," Allen said, "but the other side of it is that he sometimes takes actions that seem almost deliberately calculated to offend people he cares about. ... Sometimes he is, quite frankly, tone-deaf."]
I am a Roman Catholic not fond of the Pope; not just the current one, but the top leader of the Church period. I believe that it is time to do away with the Papacy and have a governing body made up of several prelates. Perhaps 12 members?
posted January 28, 2009 at 11:57 am
KatieAngel, it’s vital for you and others to realize that just because the excommunications have been lifted (and the whole point of an excommunication is to be lifted, because excommunication is a form of discipline, not condemnation), that doesn’t mean that everyone in the society is going to be in good standing with the church. There are people in the SSPX who are so radical in their traditionalism that they think they basically think that Benedict’s own papacy isn’t even valid–so they’re hardly going to be someone that the Pope’s going to ally himself wih–and Benedict knows that, since he’s been working with these people for over 20 years now and was involved in the initial excommunication in the first place. The people with fringe views who deny key points of doctrine and liturgical and moral teaching are bound to fall back under discipline, that is, if they even choose to try to reintegrate themselves into the larger church to begin with.
From what I’m hearing from some Catholics who follow traditionalist movements is that there are quite a few people in some of these churches who don’t subscribe to the anti-Semitism and the conspiracy theory nonsense that some of the others do (just like, say, there are plenty of radical libertarians in the US who aren’t racists or 9/11 “truthers” just because a lot of the others are). Supposedly, there are people who are attending some of these renegade parishes for the richness of the Latin Mass (and this is perhaps one reason Benedict has made it easier to celebrate the Latin Mass in parishes that want it) or because in some places, especially some places in Europe, there’s simply no vitality in the dying local parishes in good standing.
Is it Benedict’s job to be trying to reconcile with groups like this? Yes, to the extent that those in the groups are willing to give up heterodox doctrines and practices.
posted January 28, 2009 at 2:51 pm
Yes, I agree, NateW., that Benny’s primary job may not be to satisfy his critics, but if he was a little more concerned about the view of the RCC in the eyes of the world, and he did something constructive to help it (women priests, married priests, real birth control) then perhaps a few more folks might consider joining the RCC or coming back to it.
posted January 31, 2009 at 5:31 pm
I think this is one of those decisions that, like those of many Americans trying to administer Iraq, is one of high level vision in conflict with street level smarts.
What it adds up to is this is a bonehead decision with little by way of positive payoff and much in the way of damaging repercussions on multiple levels.