Bishop Williamson to review Holocaust evidence

[Kiwichap]

friedrich braun: ""I presume that most of you are not Catholic"

Hey friedrich, I am a TRUTH seeker. I seek the TRUTH. My Master said: "I am the TRUTH". Joh 14:6. Hey, I figure if I seek the TRUTH, I can only but find my Master. Apparently, if I keep up the fight, I ... shall know the truth, and the truth shall make [me] free. (Joh 8:32)

Catholic, Protestant, Baptist, whatever... Everything else is a label.

Act 11:26 ... And the disciples were called Christians first in Antioch.

Yeah, Do I wonder who was doing the calling? Not at all. Those pesky Jews as usual. Now I'm a christian holocaust denying anti semite bigot, hater.., [fill in your favorite cursed labels on the dotted line] ....................................]

Because I don't believe their lies. Because I know who they are.

[friedrich braun]

I was quoting Judith, kiwichap.

[Judith]

Judith, yes, we must hope for the best and avoid jumping to conclusions but it did appear that panic had set in in high Catholic places at least in the short term. Hopefully a little time will restore faith and reason.

There are of course many suggestions for Bishop Williamson's new and updated study. I hope he is aware of them. We can only hope here too that he will be given time to sort it out. Jean-Claude Pressac's book is not a perfect start but perhaps the good Bishop knew that it was good book to mention first to calm the waters. Without having the responsibility of running the seminary he should have time to do the research unless he is next isolated in a secluded monastery off the Irish coast!

Indeed, the Catholic world is still reeling. There are those "Catholics" who have been playing slave to the Jews for decades. They are used to having their ears boxed for "indiscretions" and their wings clipped for trying to fly away. And then there are the traditionalists who have inhabited their obscure enclaves, content to fight about women wearing pants and Baptism of Desire, and oh so forthrightly courageous in speech at dinner parties.

I'd say both partisans must have had to have an immediate diaper change when this hit the fan. The first group because they know the consequences of infractions and this was an infraction that registered a 9.8 on the Richter Scale; but the second group all the more because they had no real knowledge of the ferocity and of the single-minded fanaticism of our overlords.

I do have confidence that time will restore, and hopefully even augment, a good old fighting spirit.

As for Bishop Williamson choosing the Pressac book, my immediate reaction was one of trepidation because I'm not sure if the choice was his. I wonder if someone thrust that book upon him. Also, he made mention in his follow-up interview of having to report his conclusions by the end of February. The good Kiwichap of this forum's fame also mentioned the deadline in his wonderful opus on the other thread.

That seems like a bad development to me, but God can do all things. Indeed this entire spectacle is quite miraculous. I quit television decades ago, yet from what I remember, no drama or action flick was ever as riveting as this!

[Judith]

Ha ha. Yeah, but just you wait. The excommunicated are up for it again. You do realize, that will be the Pope recanting his recantation. I'm sorry I said I was sorry, cause I'm not sorry at all.

Ha ha. Ya just gotta laugh.

I'm saving my laughing for other desired events. But I'll say this, me chap, suppose the Pope and the SSPX have a plan of some kind. Or better yet, suppose God has a plan which utilizes them both.

[Judith]

The Vatican II sect is simply a heretical abomination that has been thoroughly subverted by Jews.

Yup. And I'll say this: The recent discovery and contemplation of the affirmations of the revisionists has caused my understanding of the Modernist Revolution to crystallize.

[Radar]

Pope Paul VI famously said that "the smoke of Satan had entered the Church" and we are seeing his words confirmed in our times. It is being illustrated in the reactions to the Bishop Williamson case by recent comments from the Vatican.

A latest example, a Catholic News Service article appearing in Catholic publications, headlined in one such U.S. diocesen publication in my area as "Remembering the Holocaust: A scientific fact, a religious obligation". This article tells the Catholic faithful readers that "Acknowledging and remembering the Holocaust is not only a matter of historical honesty; it is a religious obligation, especially for Bishops...".

The article then goes on to quote Bishop Brian Farrell, vice president of the Pontifical Commission for Religious Relations with the Jews, in case you are in doubt about the source of the evil smoke seeping into the Vatican, that "denial of the Holocaust [definition not explained] by a person who should know better is indistinguishable from anti-semitic prejudice" and that anti-Semitism is BAD. In fact it is "denying evil in the world", although it is again not explained why challenging aspects of the historic event now called the "Holocaust" is denying evil in the world. The devil is in the details at they say and the last thing the Holocaust crowd wants is a discussion of the details. Must better for them to hurl broad "denial" charges.

But Jesuit Father Federico Lombardi chips in that such a "denying" person is "not living the faith" and might even be in sin if the person who "denies" this now undefined truth knows that he or she is in error. I am relieved that this is not my case.

Bishop Farrell also tells us that since "the shoah" took place in supposedly Christian Europe that makes it a religious issue, which leads neatly into the comment by Rabbi David Rosen, chairman of the International Catholic-Jewish Liason Committee, suggesting that the Catholic Church had better get cracking against Holocaust denial lest their declarations against anti-Semitism become questioned. Get it, Your Holiness?

The topper comes when Bishop Farrell assures the faithful Catholic readers that the Holocaust has been proven beyond doubt "by the testimony of the survivors of the Nazi death camps, the remains of the camps themselves and the meticulous documentation kept by the Nazis which establishes the death of six million Jews".

The idea that this Bishop would cite these supposed examples of "proof of the Holocaust" when in fact they are the very items which are cited by revisionist historians as the singular failures of evidence for proof of the Holocaust illustrates, I hope not his duplicity, but his appalling ignorance on the subject.

Indeed, the smoke of Satan has entered my Church.

I can only hope that the Williamson case will clear the air somehow.

[Kiwichap]

I reckon the Bishop was throwing ol' Judas a sop, when he chose Pressac's book.

The evidences for the holocaust are at once rare and... um.... I'm having trouble finding any and , oh, here's one... unreliable; damn!.

If the Bishop finds anything in Pressac's book, Ill eat my hat.

Pressac's book? Ya just gotta laugh.

[ASMarques]

Greetings,

I am a traditional Catholic, and an enthusiastic supporter of Bishop Williamson. I am very interested in what you folks have to say. I want to talk to you. Will I annoy you greatly if I ask you a bunch of questions?

Greetings.

Speaking for myself, not at all.

I ask you to help me understand your position, in the hopes that we might combine forces for the good of souls.

An interesting request and a good purpose. Not at all off-topic, given the nature of the "Holocaust" cult & recent ancillary matters equally of a religious nature. Of course, none of us may speak for the others, so I'll speak for myself.

My position on the falsehood of the "Holocaust" (extermination, gas chambers, approximately 6 million) is a faith-based one.

I hasten to add that by "faith" I mean here the true faith that distinguishes truth and falsehood, stemming from the pure soul's ecstatic realization of its marvelous inner workings, not the ersatz kind of faith that sweeps this fundamental distinction under the altars of mundane cults and accepts the foibles of sacred pseudo-history, while simultaneously following the unacknowledged wisdom of the true faith for nearly every second of everyday existence. We observe this wisdom if, say, in order to travel by air we take a plane rather than jump from the roof praying to heaven and waving our arms.

No offense intended, of course, but I sincerely believe the tenets of the true faith should be observed, whether we seek to ascertain the truth of alleged events in the Auschwitz of the Third Reich or in the Jerusalem of Roman times.

Perhaps building up and grouping some definitions from scrap may help in explaining my faith-based position on the "Holocaust", complicated as this apparent detour may seem. Let's start with the basics:

___________________________

THE WORLD = The global reality; that which is; the quid of being; the set of actual events as opposed to that that doesn't happen or cannot happen; apparently a global actual event itself partaking of the ontological nature of any other actual event by verifying the "1" in the "1 vs 0" Shakespearean dichotomy, so to say. If you like the "God" word, the subjective nature of this global on-going event, if it exists, may be the eventual God in the Whiteheadian pan-experientialist sense, remote from human experience.

THE I = The subjective, inner, direct reality. At the human scale, taken objectively, the Heiddegerian Dasein, if you want. Now, other than our own, we cannot know other subjectivities; we can only speculate about them. Therefore, the next step to the Cartesian cogito is to notice a plurality of entities similar to me in many objective ways, acting very much like I do myself. That crude observation should constitute elementary food for thought, even if one is a deep thinker pondering vast metaphysical systems. Three theories may follow:

a) The first one postulates a single subject and a gigantic mise-en-scène to fool himself, er, I mean myself. This might be called the auto-paranoid conception of the World, since it implies a single joker fooling himself, er, I mean myself.

b) The second one postulates two single subjects, the Cartesian one and the external unknown, with one of us -- the limited inner I or the equally limited divinity -- as the joker, and might be called diabolic in any of the two senses, apparently with no way left to determine which would constitute the truth.

c) The third one postulates a larger plurality of subjects and might be called commonsensical. It's no more absurd or naive than the others and, since there is no way to attain certitude, this is the one I find more convincing from the standpoint of good taste and good manners.

On with the expedition into the uncharted mind contents of other beings and the hopefully common experience of truth, falsehood and faith.
___________________________

CAUSALITY = The way the World works, the paracletic linkage of events (cause --> the ghost of causality --> effect), the miracle revealed by the true faith in such a marvelous, unassuming, undemanding way.

REASON = Subjective, inner, direct causality. The way the I experiences the "universal stuff" or the "fire" of the Stoic philosophers revealed in the triune quicksilver nature of events.

___________________________

BELIEF = A representation of the World or part of it experienced by the I. Really the same as FAITH, by any rigorous definition, though not in everyday usage: you tend to use "faith" when you want to underline the deep, intense experience of overwhelming belief, but it's essentially the same.

CULTURE = The habits of a given tribe at a given time, namely those that influence individual belief.
___________________________

RELIGION = Belief minus reason. I use the word "religion" in the sense of belief against, rather than simply beyond, reason. I have no objection to the notion that ways of attaining knowledge beyond, but not against, rational inquiry, exist.

SCIENCE = Belief plus reason. Lunatic asylums are full of people who don't follow any religion, but for whom the delicate link of belief to reason has nevertheless broken down. Still, I keep my faith -- the true faith, the one that works -- that tomorrow, when I awake, short of catastrophic developments within the realm of rational possibility, the sun will again rise in the East, and causality will still hold. It's the one faith that provides me with hope. Should this strictest of faiths fail me, I believe I would be lost, either committed to a lunatic asylum or to a cult where I would be venerating ghosts and appearances instead of the inner truth.

Okay. We're now finally set for...
___________________________

VATICAN II = Leaving aside the abandonment of Latin and other minor issues that I would rather condemn on aesthetic grounds, I tend to hold a positive view of the slackening of doctrine inaugurated by that Council, for the very simple reason that it appears to me to weaken dogmatic falsehood and, in the long run, hopefully lead to an increased appreciation of philosophical theology devoid of the dead weight of pseudo-historical false claims, thus strengthening the true faith present in some degree even in the clumsiest attempt to approach the truth. Catholic-originated attempts to build bridges between positive mysticism, philosophical theology and scientific knowledge, such as Father Teilhard de Chardin's seem positive to me, as do some medieval theological speculations, some forms of US Reform Judaism, some atheistic or agnostic approaches to Buddhism, and other distillations of stubborn old religions that refuse to go away, but could eventually adopt less harmful forms, yet still remain relatively accessible for mass consumption. I tend to agree with Bertrand Russell, when he suggests that religions, like wine, tend to improve with age, but not if they go on rejuvenating their dogmatic imperviousness to elementary basic truths!...


THE "HOLOCAUST" = A set of false beliefs imposed by current Western culture, in spite of being contradicted by scientific inquiry, hence in opposition to the true faith, much like any other cult that demands the acceptance of historical falsehood (Christianity, Islam, Hinduism, Buddhism, Scholastic Marxism, you name it). Evil, besides false, because persecutory in nature and demanding constant ritual sacrifice of innocent people's lives or their purses. I tend to see the "Holocaust" framework as a devotional nucleus for a syncretic Judeo-Christian revival and possible religious war with resilient fundamentalist Islam, a very dangerous state of affairs.

___________________________

My opinion of Bishop Williamson: Apparently a great guy, well-meaning, brave, undoubtedly clever and probably intellectually stimulating, open to discussion and interested in the mystery of faith. Quite right on the "Holocaust" pseudo-historical dogmas, but in the wrong about his own religion's and therefore the desirability of Vatican II style pre-revisionism. I would certainly love to meet him and proselytize a bit (while loyally reciprocating the opportunity, naturally).

I presume that most of you are not Catholic [joining a forum like this requires courage, both visceral and intellectual, no?]

Not really. Keeping it going certainly must, but not really visiting, unless you're German, French etc. I'm not. I'm Portuguese and down here we're all very inefficient, I'm glad to say. I'm also nominally Catholic and baptized, with parental non-practicing Catholic origins on one side, vaguely theistic on the other, if you'd like to know.

but the truth oft times maketh strange bedfellows, yes?

Yes. Not to speak of error and non-violent sin. I have little patience for holy wars.

[Franc]

Hello, please find below an enligthening text from a SSPX Father.

Translated from italian.
http://www.doncurzionitoglia.com/

THE WILLIAMSON CASE, by Don Curzio Nitoglia

1) Faith and Morality suppose History and politics (which is "social
morality" and has nothing to do with political parties). Separating
Faith from politics is the essence of liberal Catholicism. Moreover,
historical facts are the basis of Catholic Faith: for instance, if
Jesus' birth, death and Resurrection were not historical facts, our
Faith would collapse. Jesus was born under Augustus' reign and died
under Pontius Pilatus' authority. Similarly, exterminationism is the
basis of the holocaustical religion, which intends to replace the
Holocaust of Jesus, Redeemer of mankind, by the Holocaust of the
Jewish people.

2) It is impossible to restore Faith in its integrity without
restoring social or political life ("Restaurare omnia in Christo",
was Saint Pius X's motto) and without having an historical knowledge
based on facts and not myths, especially if those are instruments to
propose a new theological concept (Holocaust of the Jews) and to
unhinge the traditional Catholic concept (Holocaust of the Christ).

3) Holocaust was the basis of Vatican II's new doctrine about deicide
("Nostra aetate"), of Paul VI's reform of Good Friday's prayer (NOM,
1970), of John Paul II's theory about "the Old Covenant which was
never cancelled" (in Magonza, 1981). Moreover, the "theology of God's
silence" was born following reflections on Holocaust, as it is
presented by the "exterminationists." Some theologists (following
Hans Jonas' and Giovanni Battista Metz's steps) deny Providence and
God's goodness and call into question His existence because God
allowed Holocaust. Holocaust is for talmudic Judaism
a "metahistorical absolute", a sacrificial act which has a saving
value. After the destruction of the Temple (70 AD), rabbinical
exegesis replaced Mosaic Faith in a personal Messiah by Faith in
a "collective Messiah", who is the Jewish people. Christianism cannot
accept this sacralization of the Jewish Holocaust, which would be the
denying of its own identity and Faith: the only Holocaust is the
Sacrifice of Christ. Admitting another saving and "metahistorical"
Holocaust besides Jesus' would be an act of apostasy. Unfortunately,
the new Judaic conciliar and postconciliar theology of the council
grew in a progressist Catholic environment, we hope it did not
pollute the environment bound to Tradition. Therefore, the Priest's
duty is to warn the faithful.

4) It does not seem me a sin or a breaking to express one's own
opinion about historical validity of a vast literature concerning
the "re-examination" (and not "negation") of Holocaust's thesis,
introduced by the pro-Soviet Gromiko in 1948. Many historians, in
Israel as well, assert there is no historical certainty about a IIIrd
Reich's plan to destroy the Jewish people with gas chambers. Of
course, there were deportations to concentration camps, where many
Jews were killed. Killing an innocent is a crime and a serious sin
against the fifth commandment. Bishop Richard Williamson expressed it
clearly during the interview, he said nothing contrary to Faith and
Morality, outlined only his opinion, which does not discredit the
integral Catholic doctrine. If the bishop as a bishop talks about
Faith and Morality, with an ecclesiastic authority, it does not mean
he could not talk , without an ecclesiastic authority, about History
or social morality. Moreover, if Bishop Williamson's positions or,
better said, opinions about the Holocaust do not reflect FSSPX's
opinions, so I wonder: in such a case, if it is lawful for the
Fraternity to talk about History or politics, why is it not the same
for Bishop Williamson?

5) It is at least naive to deceive oneself into believing a
small "mea culpa" (one hoped they came to an end with John Paul's
death) could appease the anger and the hatred of Judaism against
Christ and His Church. In fact, the chief rabbi of Rome (Riccardo Di
Signi) said at once that Bishop Fellay's apologies (who only talked
about "inappropriateness") were completely insufficient and
irrelevant. Thus it is necessary to re-examine the old theological
positions against Judaism which, as Jules Isaac said (belittling the
Holocaust), deny religious freedom (ecumenism, negation of the
deicide, appropriateness of the Saint Pius V Mass), as the Italian
rabbi reaffirmed in 2007. Then Di Segni asked the FSSPX not to limit
itself to silence the one "negationist" bishop (who in reality is not
negationist), but to make clear its very thought about Vatican II's
doctrine and about Judaism. The very problem, according to Di Segni,
is the theological position of the FSSPX about Judaism, and if it is
not made clear (that is, if a new position is accepted, as Bishop
Lefebvre's positions about ecumenism and deicid are clear), the
question remains open. We should not to imagine to calm down a lion
who wants to waste (his prey) just by giving him a little ball of
meat. Di Segni will accuse us of anti-Semitism, as he did with Bishop
Williamson.

6) If Jesus Christ had not made inappropriate sermons ("you whose
father is the devil", Jean, VIII, 48), he would have died in His bed
and would not have accomplished the Father's will. Saint Paul advises
to "preach appropriately and inappropriately". Saint Thomas, in the
theological Sum, writes "it is necessary to preach the truth to the
Jews, without being afraid of irritating them, as Jesus who taught
publicly the truth which they hated, and reproached them for their
vice, without being afraid of irritating them" (Saint Thomas, III,
42, 2). The Apostles were "happy to suffer persecutions" from the
Sanhedrin because they preached about Christ crucified by the High
Priests and they were not frightened of disrepute, on the contrary
they loved it.

7) Cardinal Bagnasco was more firm and fair, he talked about a
campaign orchestrated by the media. He did not re-excommunicate
anyone.

8) I hope these facts will not lead to new divides. Perhaps a greater
doctrinal firmness and a real brotherly charity would have saved what
a harshness of heart and a theological-historical-political weakness
seem to have endangered. The responsible one does not seem me to be
Bishop Williamson: father Reginaldo Garrigou-Lagrange wrote "liberals
are broad-minded in doctrine because they do not believe firmly, and
pitiless in practice, because they do not really love."

9) Endly Benedict XVI intervened (this morning) in defence,
unfortunately, of the Holocaust, and he told that the normalisation
of the relations with the "traditionalists" depends on their whole
acceptance of Vatican II. Perhaps all these events have be useful in
taking away all ambiguity, the Catholics bound to Tradition know
that, if they do not accept "Nostra aetate" and the
postconciliar "Judaeo-christianism", there will be no room for them.

10) Let God give us the courage – in this sad time of "universal
apostasy" – to maintain the Faith in the Holocaust of Christ, the
only real Redeemer of mankind.


Don Curzio Nitoglia

28th January 2009

[ASMarques]

Translated from italian.
http://www.doncurzionitoglia.com/

THE WILLIAMSON CASE, by Don Curzio Nitoglia

[...] for instance, if Jesus' birth, death and Resurrection were not historical facts, our Faith would collapse. Jesus was born under Augustus' reign and died under Pontius Pilatus' authority. Similarly, exterminationism is the basis of the holocaustical religion, which intends to replace the Holocaust of Jesus, Redeemer of mankind, by the Holocaust of the Jewish people.

Great stuff. And incidentally the exact point I've been making for some time, minus the possibility of actual convergence and reinforcement of the false faiths:
http://richarddawkins.net/articleCommen ... ge8#159348

Well, I'm sure if there is a special place in the hereafter for those who engage in two front wars, I'll be meeting uncle Adolf there.

[Franc]

Translated from italian.
http://www.doncurzionitoglia.com/

THE WILLIAMSON CASE, by Don Curzio Nitoglia

[...] for instance, if Jesus' birth, death and Resurrection were not historical facts, our Faith would collapse. Jesus was born under Augustus' reign and died under Pontius Pilatus' authority. Similarly, exterminationism is the basis of the holocaustical religion, which intends to replace the Holocaust of Jesus, Redeemer of mankind, by the Holocaust of the Jewish people.

Great stuff. And incidentally the exact point I've been making for some time, minus the possibility of actual convergence and reinforcement of the false faiths:
http://richarddawkins.net/articleCommen ... ge8#159348

Well, I'm sure if there is a special place in the hereafter for those who fight two front wars, I'll be meeting uncle Adolf there.

The debate about the historicity of Jesus is not new and is still open. No law forbid it anywhere.

Nevertheless, the historicity of Jesus is accepted by almost all Biblical scholars and classical historians. James Dunn describes the mythical Jesus theory as a 'thoroughly dead thesis'.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Historicity_of_Jesus

[ASMarques]

The debate about the historicity of Jesus is not new and is still open. No law forbid it anywhere.

Absolutely. I too am an admirer of modernity and tolerance in the Church. I only wish the same outlook were extensive to the "Holocaust" devotion and didn't permit indexes and inquisitions to protect the new cult.

Nevertheless, the historicity of Jesus is accepted by almost all Biblical scholars and classical historians. James Dunn describes the mythical Jesus theory as a 'thoroughly dead thesis'.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Historicity_of_Jesus

Doesn't impress me. Compare, for example, with "Nevertheless, the historicity of the Gas Chamber is accepted by almost all Holocaust scholars and classical historians. Melvin Steinberg describes the mythical Gas Chamber theory as a 'thoroughly dead thesis'.

[Franc]

Easy !

Nevertheless, the historicity of UFO is not accepted by most of UFO scholars and classical historians. Martin Gardner describes the mythical existence of UFO theory as a 'thoroughly dead thesis'.

More seriously, there is no need to be a great scholar to see the lack of evidence concerning the so-called Holocaust, to see the lies and the facts distorted. Scholars and historians are not free to speak but scared to express dissent views on the matter. Besides, the best Holocaust scholars are revisionists (Butz, Faurisson).

About the historicity of Our Lord, things are much more complicated and freely discussed in normal scholar ways. Historicity apparently won.

[Hektor]

I will not start a separate topic on this:

Pope Must Denounce Holocaust Deniers
Like flat earthers, Holocaust deniers simply refuse to acknowledge reality. On being shown pictures taken from a satellite that showed the earth as a sphere, Samuel Shenton, the head of the Flat Earth Society, reportedly said, "It's easy to see how a photograph like that could fool the untrained eye." In a similar vein, British Bishop Richard Williamson, the renegade Roman Catholic cleric whose excommunication was recently lifted by Pope Benedict XVI, declared on Swedish television that, "I believe that the historical evidence is largely against, is hugely against six million Jews having been deliberately gassed in gas chambers as a deliberate policy of Adolf Hitler . . . . I believe there were no gas chambers." Williamson went on to say that he thought that "between two to three hundred thousand Jews perished in Nazi concentration camps but none of them by gas chambers." To the likes of Shenton and Williamson, facts and evidence do not matter.

While the flat-earthers are, on the whole, benign kooks, Holocaust deniers are dangerous, generally combining their efforts to defend and whitewash Hitler, Nazism and the Third Reich with an obsessive, more often than not virulent anti-Semitism. In addition to his denial of the Holocaust, Williamson has endorsed the authenticity of the Protocols of the Elders of Zion, the notorious Russian Czarist forgery that purports to depict a Jewish conspiracy to rule the world, and has written publicly of "the false messianic vocation of Jewish world-dominion, to prepare the Anti-Christ's throne in Jerusalem."

Pope Benedict's decision to bring Williamson back into the Roman Catholic fold has met with a firestorm of criticism. Nobel Peace Prize Laureate Elie Wiesel, a survivor of the Nazi concentration camps of Auschwitz and Buchenwald, said that Pope Benedict's rehabilitation of Williamson gives credence to "the most vulgar aspect of anti-Semitism." While American Roman Catholic cardinals and bishops have been reluctant to criticize the Pope, some of their European counterparts have been far less reticent. Cardinal Christoph Schoenborn, the Archbishop of Vienna, sharply criticized the lifting of Williamson's excommunication, declaring that "he who denies the Holocaust cannot be rehabilitated within the Church." Ad van Luyn, the Bishop of Rotterdam and chair of the Dutch Roman Catholic Bishops' Conference, called the decision "disastrous." Archbishop Reinhard Marx of Munich said that "Every denial of the Holocaust must be punished harshly." And the Archbishop of Hamburg, Werner Thissen, told a German newspaper that "There is obviously a loss of confidence" in the Pope, and that "rehabilitating a denier is always a bad idea."

To be sure, Pope Benedict has sought to distance himself from Williamson's views, albeit without directly criticizing the Holocaust denying cleric, by saying that "I wish that the memory of the Shoah will prompt humanity to reflect on the unpredictable power of evil when it conquers the hearts of men. May the Shoah be a warning for all against forgetting, denial and reductionism." This Papal pronouncement does not, however, undo the damage caused by Williamson's legitimation.

A little more than two years ago, in December 2006, Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad convened an international pseudo-academic conference in Tehran entitled "International Conference on 'Review of the Holocaust: Global Vision'," with the participation of such luminaries as David Duke, the erstwhile Imperial Wizard of the Ku Klux Klan, Robert Faurisson, a former professor of literature at the University of Lyon who, like Williamson, claims that the Germans did not use gas chambers to annihilate European Jewry, and Australian socialite Michele Renouf, who explained that anti-Semitism is caused by "the anti-gentile nature of Judaism." For two days, they and other likeminded sociopaths "debated" at the Iranian Foreign Ministry whether or not my grandparents and my five-and-a-half-year-old brother were gassed at Auschwitz.

Why do Williamson's rehabilitation and the 2006 Tehran conference have ominous significance? Because Duke, who managed to get 43 percent of the vote in his unsuccessful 1990 U.S. Senate campaign from Louisiana, is now able to tell students at colleges in heartland America with a straight face that his contention that there were never any gas chambers has international academic and institutional support, and because Holocaust deniers across the globe will interpret Williamson's return into polite Roman Catholic society as a victory for their cause.

Holocaust denial is a pernicious strain of anti-Semitism, and Pope Benedict's ill-conceived embrace of Bishop Williamson sends a clear message that anti-Semites are welcome within the Roman Catholic Church. As my friend Deborah Lipstadt, the Dorot Professor of Modern Jewish and Holocaust Studies and director of the Institute for Jewish Studies at Emory University, explains, Holocaust denial "has no purpose but to inculcate contempt for Jews. According to deniers Jews use the Holocaust to win the world's sympathy and, in the course of so doing, win reparations from Germany and political support for Israel. Such a charge, based as it is the imagery of money and political manipulation, hearkens back to traditional antisemitic stereotypes. Why a pope would want to give support to such a movement is baffling. More baffling, however, is why a pope would want to associate the Vatican with someone who preaches lies and manipulations of history."

What can Pope Benedict and the Roman Catholic leadership do now to at least mitigate some of the appalling fallout from the Williamson debacle? They must not only publicly and unambiguously repudiate and disavow Bishop Williamson's heinous views, something the Pope has yet to do, but they should make Holocaust education a required part of the curricula of all Roman Catholic seminaries, universities and schools throughout the world. By affirmatively committing themselves to serious and comprehensive Holocaust education, they can demonstrate that the Vatican is serious about improving Jewish-Catholic relations.

Menachem Z. Rosensaft is an attorney in New York City and founding chairman of the International Network of Children of Jewish Holocaust Survivors. Both his parents survived Auschwitz and Bergen-Belsen, but their families, including their respective first spouses and his mother's five-and-a-half-year-old son, were murdered in the gas chambers of Auschwitz.

http://newsweek.washingtonpost.com/onfa ... ust_d.html

Comments are welcome.

[ASMarques]

Easy !

Nevertheless, the historicity of UFO is not accepted by most of UFO scholars and classical historians. Martin Gardner describes the mythical existence of UFO theory as a 'thoroughly dead thesis'.

You got it wrong. Gardner would probably describe it as the truth, i.e. UFOs of alien provenance as mythical. Anyway, not a good example: it's not a source of violent controversy. Most reasonable persons would peacefully accept UFOs as visual confusions / illusions difficult to correctly identify, but with conventional explanations, i.e. potential IFOs with no great mysteries about them.

More seriously, there is no need to be a great scholar to see the lack of evidence concerning the so-called Holocaust, to see the lies and the facts distorted. Scholars and historians are not free to speak but scared to express dissent views on the matter. Besides, the best Holocaust scholars are revisionists (Butz, Faurisson).

Agreed.

About the historicity of Our Lord, things are much more complicated and freely discussed in normal scholar ways. Historicity apparently won.

Won what? A popularity contest establishing the truth forevermore?

You're wrong because you ignore the fact that established religion, even with no direct active censorship at its disposal, used to enjoy a degree of protection afforded to it by passive censorship -- such as the difficulty of finding publishers -- that no other historical subjects knew. And in some measure it still does. For instance, in your own country (I assume you come from France given your name and Chouan avatar) the only widely published historians of religion were until relatively recently religious themselves. I ask you: how can anyone who accepts as real history that a resurrected human body miraculously rose to heaven in the flesh even start to doubt that such a body actually walked the earth? You seriously misjudge the almost infinite human capacity for mystification and intellectual self-indulgence. Until 20 or 30 years ago, most writers of the rationalist school could only find refuge in the little read publications of the small Union Rationnaliste.

I think things are getting a little better nowadays, I'm happy to say, but the inertia of indifferent knowledge is still an obstacle to overcome. This is not surprising: a new historical outlook, less concerned with the preservation of religious illusions, needs time to be accepted.

Even so, you'll probably agree that truth is not a democratic concept. It's a quality issue, not a quantitative one dependent on popular vote. So I don't really get your point.